God of War 3 Release Party News Alert!

Tonight, I’ll be attending the GameStop midnight release party at the Highlands Mall location north of Pittsburgh. I don’t know if I’ll have the ability to take pictures inside the store – they’re checking with the district manager – but I’ll get photos outside and will try to get some gamer interviews recorded, which will be transcribed in detail here with their permission.

I’m going to use this article to cover the entire event, from pre-release to release, unboxing the Ultimate Edition to my first impressions review tomorrow, all will be contained here. I’ll just add and update this thread, but the title will remain the same so as to not upset Google News.

Have fun out there tonight, you God of War freak, and be safe.

PHASE I: Pre-Release

I have to admit, I’m a bit nervous. I’ve never been out of the house this late since the baby was born, so fortunately the GameStop is about 4.5 minutes from my house. I’ve also never been to a midnight release party, so I’m not exactly sure what to expect. I’ll be leaving the house at approximately 10:50 p.m. to arrive by 11:00 to scope out the situation. I’m armed with my Canon SX10 IS digital camera with 430EXII flash unit. I’ll get some shots of the store and the crowd…hopefully it will be a good size crowd. If I’m allowed to take pictures inside the store, I will do so, but don’t count on it. While in line, I’ll also work on interviewing the store clerks and some of the crowd people to get their thoughts of the series as a whole. It’ll give me practice at being a journalist reporting on a major event…E3 practice.

So yeah, it’s 9:41 p.m. EDT right now, and I’m pounding some All That Remains and Five Finger Death Punch to prepare for Kratos, the God of War. Don’t hate me for being a 32-year-old nerd.

PHASE 2: Midnight Release Tales (Updated: 3/16/10, 9:41 a.m. EDT)

B.T. is human, and makes human errors. So I reserved the Ultimate Edition so long ago that I’d forgotten which store I reserved it at. Wa-wa-waaaaa…epic fail. Turns out the store I reserved it at is a mall-based store, which means they weren’t open for a midnight release!!! Dejected at my “home store”, I had to shuffle away empty-handed and embarrassed. I will be picking up the Ultimate Edition first thing this morning from the mall store when it opens. I guess when the mall needs to be open for a single store, that store needs to foot the bill for the overtime staff needed – security guards.

Buzzkill, I know. I apologize for being so ill-prepared, but fear not, this is just an interesting twist in this sordid tale.

PHASE 3: Daylight Release Tales (Updated: 3/16/10, 11:00 a.m. EDT)

Recovering from my epic fail, the Ultimate Edition I reserved is safe and sound in the domicile of the B.T. (that’s me). The video is uploading on Vimeo as I’m typing this, and is about 15% complete. Shouldn’t take more than a half hour or so, so expect the embedded video to show up in Phase 4 below in approximately an hour. In the meantime, I’m going to go fire up God of War III and play the opening sequences…

…how I wish my Astro A40 headset system was here already!!! It’s not arriving until Thursday! Come on UPS, I need Dolby Digital 7.1 in my ears for this!

PHASE 4: Unboxing God of War III Ultimate Edition (Updated: 3/16/10, 2:02 p.m. EDT)

And now, the unboxing video for the Ultimate Edition: