You Can do Better Than a Midnight Launch

I don’t care what you say, humans are the smartest being in the planet. So smart in fact the we evolved ourselves to have thumbs, yeah thumbs to pick up biscuits with, no need to pick it up with our teeth like your dog, we got thumbs bitch. I’ll like to see a dolphin try and explain physics. Ha fuck off dolphins, you aren’t all that smart all you can do is teach your own to survive. We on the other hand teach that and tons of other useless stuff we don’t actually need. But if the people at the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 midnight launch was anything to go by then we are actually in fact below every other animal in existence.

Midnight launches are the geekiest and possibly the saddest thing you could ever do outside of cosplay. Waiting outside your local game store in the freezing cold just so you can be one of the first to play a game someone smart enough to pre-order online and receive the day before. Well I’m one of those idiots. So far I’ve been to 2 midnight launches here in jolly old Liverpool, first being Resident Evil 5 and the other Modern Warfare 2. It’s nothing like all the glam you expect in launches in the likes of London or New York, all the freebies and many minor celebrities promoting games they only heard about from their agents. So games where you play a racist killing people in Africa and another where you blow up airports and slaughtering children with a butter knife.

But alas all we get is a nice small queue outside a damn GAME store where all your garden variety of nerds all come together. You have the metal nerd, the one with the long messy hair and beard wearing a Iron Maiden T-shirt who’s probably their with a few other like-minded mates who look exactly the same only with a different black band T-shirt. The skinny quiet spotty nerd, you know the generic geek that all Hollywood movie’s seem think we all are, only difference is you find them wearing a black jacket and “cool” sunglasses in an attempt to look “cool”, the kind of twat who’ll wear sunglasses in a club thinking all the chicks will cum all over them but instead attract the ones shaped like a table. I was unfortunate enough to have one follow me for my whole first year of University, when they say to never make friends with the first guy who talks to you at University they mean it, their normally the weird one. He would talk about Warhammer and Eve Online non-stop, even after I told him how much I can’t stand them, I even asked him to drop dead multiple times and said I hate him to his face and it never worked, the most annoying guy in the world period. And finally the there is the girl, the only girl who’s geeky enough turn up, and in the case of the Resident Evil 5 launch that girl happened to be my girlfriend at the time, for someone with an irrational fear of zombies she loved survival horror games. That certain launch only saw 20 or so of us waiting outside and made us wait until 0:01 until we can enter. Why it’s always 1 minute past I have no idea, it’s just as much the next day as 0:00 so why make us wait, the complete tossers. As soon as we entered the store made no effort into celebrating the occasion other than moving all the appropriate merchandise to the front of the store and constantly nag us to buy it, using the obvious logic that we’re sad and stupid enough to be here at midnight so we must be that stupid to buy a red controller and matching charge pack. A strategy guide which is just as useful as GameFAQ only it actually costs you money or better yet a themed faceplate for your Xbox. Yeah no thanks I’ll stick with the one thing you didn’t try and throw in my face and that is a poster.

Oh I bet the employees were loving having to work so late to please the likes of us because we aren’t patient enough to wait until the morning to grab a copy. I god damn hope they got paid time and a half for their efforts, I wouldn’t it for anything less. The Modern Warfare launch on the other hand was an entirely different story rather than 20 geeks there were hundreds of normal people, well as normal as midnight launches are going to get. Hundreds of gramers waiting to play the only game they play outside of Fifa or Madden, Modern fucking Warfare. I decided to get their half an hour early and to my surprise I was quite far down the back of the queue but come midnight an even bigger line formed right behind me, and this was one of the many launches all around the country, it was pretty unreal. Though all the stereotypes were there of course, and a few more girls, though I bet a majority of them were girlfriends who were forced against their will to turn up, one of which was right in front on me looking so damn bored. I bet the poor guy’s been dumped now, either for that or for totally neglected her now he has a copy. The amount of testosterone was unheard of, many guys just randomly grunting or shouting grenade and groups of guys giving each other high fives as soon as they left the store with their precious copy. There was even a mother with her 11 year old son waiting to get the game, there’s 2 things wrong with that. 1.) It’s an 18+ game and 2.) What parent lets them go to a midnight launch for this 18+ game, it’s ridiculous. God I wished I waited until the morning. Though my main worry was the fact I realised I pre-ordered my copy at the other GAME store in town. I didn’t want to wait for a hour just to be turned down but luckily they didn’t give a shit and didn’t even bother asking for confirmation. I then left as soon as possible, drove home and then slept because I had a test the next day. I’m so hardcore.