Thanks for posting that, it was a good read. I'm a little creeped out by their desire for gamers to stop using aliases and go by their real names, though. I think anonimity gives a lot of people a sense of safety.
That's a clip mic, it needs to be clipped onto a headphone cord. I like using a desktop boom mic, I have one by Cyber Acoustics that cost all of $10 and works great.
I bought it at launch but was too busy to play for a few days, guess I lucked out. I kinda like the dumbed down gameplay though, it's giving me a chance to figure stuff out.
I definitely think that mismanagement and stupid budgeting is more of the problem than AAA gaming itself. It's insane that Tomb Raider is considered a failure, I think SE just needs to change their expectations.