Halo 4 Midnight Release

-Kaz
Convention Reporter

‘Ello again MSP faithful!  I’m here reporting at the GameStop off of Garfield and Greenback yet again to cover another midnight release.  While I do regret to inform you that the Assassin’s Creed III release was less eventful than desired (I was the only one wearing an Assassin’s Gauntlet), I am glad to announce that the Halo 4 release was nothing short of entertaining.

To kick things off, the guys here had set up a Halo tournament with a copy of Reach set up in the 360 consoles across the store... Although much to my surprise, the entrant list was rather minimal, only consisting of 16 people; even though the expected draw of the evening was supposed to be somewhere four times this amount.  That aside, the earliest part of the festivities held itself up to be the most surprising as a ‘loser pool’ round was set to become a best out of three match that ended up going on for six rounds with the matches preceding all ending in draws.

The night itself was decently eventful though, as a bevy of people swarmed the store within the last hour, effectively flooding the side of the store.  Okay, flood might be an exaggeration, but there was definitely a familiar and desired pull to this evening.  As the drawing drew nearer, a raffle was set up in which display boxes and Ghost Recon t-shirts were handed out to a number of selected winners.  With four shirts and two boxes handed out, I was actually rather surprised to see how many numbers were called with no shout-outs.  Regardless, the crowd seemed pretty happy with how things were set up and frankly, that’s all I could ask for as a reporter.

The crowd was pretty darn big for the event and yet I still hoped for more...

The line itself held itself with perfect composure (another thing I’m thankful, but this isn’t Thanksgiving yet and I’ve yet to worry about the imminent tramplings of the soon to come shopping season) and copies of the game were meted out according to the paid off receipts.  In the end, the store looked at roughly sixty pickups for the night and it was all handled over the course of fifteen minutes.  If there was one thing I would like to call to attention to though, it would have to be that with many of those who had preordered their copies of the game (thus entitling themselves to multiplayer skins) were unfortunately denied their codes.  Due to a minor system error, codes were intermittently dispersed between a random crowd of people and customers were advised to either call or stop back into their respective stores nationwide in order to pick up their codes for future use.  My personal guess is a system overload which should be of no difficulty to handle.

Once the clock struck 12, Halo was made available to the public!

All in all, the night was fun, even though I only got to enjoy its festivities for a couple hours.  Getting to hang out with the guys here was another refreshing element of the evening, although I do wish it was possible for me to cover the events from other stores.  I will post below recommended locations for game pickup, only by the basis that these stores have established themselves with a standard of good customer service.  It’s been fun, guys; Kaz signing out.

-Kaz

Personal Recommendations on Store Pickup (No Specific Order):

SACRAMENTO
6306 Garfield Avenue
Sacramento, CA
(916) 334-6191

ROSEVILLE
1450 Lead Hill Boulevard
Roseville, CA 95661
(916) 781-2466

ROSEVILLE (Galleria)
1151 Galleria Boulevard
Roseville, CA 95678
(916) 788-4490

PLEASANT GROVE
920 Pleasant Grove Blvd
Roseville, CA
(916) 781-4929

MADISON
5161 Madison Ave Ste 2357
Sacramento, CA
(916) 332-9204

PORTLAND
12000 Southeast 82nd Ave
Portland, OR 97086
(503) 653-9571