Rampancy

XerxdeeJ has announced in the HBO forum that he's started a Halo blog called Tied The Leader. There's an interesting piece there now called Sportsmanship and Anonymity that covers some well-traveled territory; the seeming need for many XBL players-- regardless of ability-- to utilize proximity voice for displaying their facility with colorful language.

(This is one of those rare social problems with a clear technical solution. Proximity voice is cool, but useless. It's only ever used for trash talk, swearing and racism. And the possibility of being overheard via proximity voice while talking to your team discourages the use of the communicator for legitimate purposes. Bungie, please-- make team talk the default without pressing any buttons, and either remove proximity voice entirely, or make the button-press a "broadcast" to all players in the game, like countless of other PC shooters with keyboard interfaces-- like PC Halo, for instance. Kudos for the innovation, but extra credit for realizing the experiment's gone wrong. The potential coolness of proximity voice for well-meant, consensual, and witty taunting is more than overwhelmed by everything else--Ed.)

Major Nelson's blog entry today has a schedule grid for 21 different countries, showing the Xbox/MTV special showing dates and times.

Aspyr Media, publishers of Wideload Games' upcoming Stubbs the Zombie title, has signed with JIN Worldwide Licensing Management to handle apparel, action figures, and other merchandise. Read the full press release.

Mike Miller has brought his fantastic Halo 2 Legendary Walkthrough to a close with a video-laden page on The Great Journey. If you've played the game all the way through but haven't read this series yet, then do yourself a favor and check it out. If you're still stuck somewhere trying to beat Legendary, swallow your pride and look for some tips. Louis Wu posted a link to this at HBO.