Gamestop had been advertising its Resident Evil 5 pre-launch events at numerous locations around the country. Being local to the Irvine area, Gamestop was kind enough to let me in to the happening to take some photos and whatnot. I would like to thank Laura Mustard, Gamestop PR, as well as the staff of the Barranca street store for their cooperation and hospitality.

Arriving at 10pm sharp, I was amazed that more people had not begun lining up yet. With only a few people having shown up at that point, I figured it would be a good time to go on in and fully-pay for my copy of the game. Gamestop had a system setup in which everyone would have to go inside before midnight, finish their transaction, and obtain a voucher letting staff know you did in fact pay for the game. This would allow staff later on after midnight to not worry about exchanging cash. Their only concern would be checking the validity of a person’s voucher and handing them a copy of the game…

Check out the full story after the jump!

Spirits
were generally high throughout the two hours with gamers geeking out
over topics such as the whether or not the upcoming Fallout 3 DLC pack,
‘The Pitt’, will be better or worse than their first offering and even
some breaking out into trading card games.

One gamer I spoke to
who referred to himself only as ‘Shinragod’  told me that he was their
to make sure he got ‘all the goodies that came with the game’. For
instance, Gamestop was giving out limited edition lithographs with
every collector’s edition sold. He did not want to take the chance they
would have run out by time he could get in the next day. There were
even some people at the event who did not plan on getting the game.
They just seemed content in hanging out with their friends that did. By
the time 11pm rolled around, there was much more of a crowd in place.
Also, at about this time Gamestop employees brought in three extremely
ginormous pizzas. Originally planned to be green and ‘fleshy’ these
were just normal as the pizza-artist tasked with this chore was not
available for some reason. Fleshy or not, many of the crowd partook of
the sacred pies and satiated their hunger.

Quite
a number of people in attendance had opinions on the new direction the
series has taken starting with Resident Evil 4, becoming more of an
action-shooter than its predecessors’ survival-horror gameplay.
‘Shinragod’ appreciated the ‘less puzzles, more gameplay’ style while
gamer ‘Sephiroth11’ hoped that the series would return to its roots at
some point in the future. Regardless of what type of Resident Evil game
they liked better, it was clear that everyone there had a lot of love
for the series and was looking forward to this latest offering.

Minutes
before midnight, Gamestop staff solidified the ragged semblance of a
line into a much more organized single-file. At 12:01am, they began
letting groups of five at a time into the store, beginning with our
HUNK friend, who only referred to himself as ‘Rohan’.

The only
one in attendance donning costume, he entertained the crowd at one
point during the two-hour wait with various Resident Evil trivia
questions. Now, with everyone having games in-hand (including yours
truly), it was time to go. While many were rushing off to start their
journey into Kijuju, I would be writing this up and then getting as
much sleep as possible.