GTA:IV Midnight Release
A week before the game Grand Theft Auto 4 was released I went over to my local GameStop to put money down on a preorder. We had some money already on our Edge card from a previous trade in so I used that for the deposit. The game was slated for release on Tuesday April 29 but some retailers were doing midnight releases on Monday night. I heard that at some of these midnight releases they do some trivia games and give away prizes. In Canada they were giving away limited edition Xbox360 consoles, I didn’t hear anything about this happening in my area or at the store I was buying from. After work on Monday I went over and paid the remaining balance by trading in a game I no longer wanted, they had a promo where they would give you 20% more for your trade-in if you were using the money towards the purchase of GTA PLUS 10% more for using my Edge Discount Card. The reason why I paid my balance right after work is that I heard that sometimes these midnight release get crazy and having to wait in yet another line to pay just wasn’t something I wanted to do at midnight.
At 10:00pm I headed over to hang out in front of the GameStop on Santa Gertrudes and Whittier Blvd in Whittier, CA. Three people were already waiting in line, playing DS and talking about high school. They attended the same high school my wife did and some funny stories came out out of that. Around 10:30 one of the workers came out and asked a trivia question “What is the name of the protagonist in GTA 3. I was sitting there reading Wikipedia on my blackberry and told one of the high school kids next to me “say Claude”. He did and he won a Liberty City GTA IV license plate. I personally saw no use for the item and he looked excited to win it which made me happy all the same. Later they came out and asked each of us “Red or Black?” I chose BLACK and got a black Mario Xmas Stocking… a $0.99 value. For being one of the first 5 in line (I was 4th) we received GTA IV stickers, the first guy in line got a 2’x2′ version of it. Mine is about 8″x8″
At 11:00 they opened the doors of the store and let 5 of us at a time come in and have our receipts stamped indicating we could get a copy of the game. They attempted to upsale us on anything we wanted to buy and also on the BradyGames Guide Book. By stamping the receipts they knew how many people were at the event and to get enought ready to hand out at 12. They also had us form a new line once you got your receipt stamped the front of the line was near the side exit of the facility. At midnight everyone was excited to get the game and more and more people were showing up. People in cars were driving by screaming “GTA!!!” out the window. At one point someones girlfriend in front of me walked the line and counted 65 people behind us. Once the side door opened the midnight sprinkler system turned on and some of us got our shoes wet, jokingly people asked for a new copy because theirs were getting wet. It’s in plastic wrap, I doubt that happened. My new found friends each bought the Limited Edition version which came in a bigger white box they didnt want theirs to get wet so ran off to head home and play it. Earlier they indicated that they were going to call in sick to school the next day and would be playing the game all night. By the time I got my copy and arrived at home it was 12:07, I loaded the game up and gave it a whirl, sure enough after playing for 2 hours it’s as good as the review websites say it is.
In the next few days I wanna checkout the online play and hopefully more of my friends on XBL will have their copies of the game. Playing with random people is fine but playing online with friends is even better. Sandbox style multiplayer should be pretty fun and the Mafiya Work and Team Mafiya Work sound interesting too. Not to mention Team Car Jack City and Turf Wars and the many other modes of play as well. I can see how this game is going to be popular with the online players for quite some time.
Wanna play? I’m abstrak01 on XBox Live
