Last night I attended the Resident Evil 5 launch event hosted by Capcom and GameStop. The place was themed for an infection outbreak and it was a much larger event than I expected. First off, as you walked up to Union Square in San Francisco it would have been impossible for you to miss the huge decontamination tent with the hazardous materials symbols projected on it. The event started at 8pm and when I got there at about 8:15pm there was probably about 75-100 people already in line (thank god for press passes). When you entered there were two guys dressed in Army fatigues with "contamination scanners" and they would scan each person before allowing you into the main area of the tent.
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The inside was full of smoke, making it impossible to get good pictures, and there was a huge projection screen playing clips from RE5 set up behind the DJ. There was also several vendors set up handing out freebies like M&M's packaged in little viles labels "antidote", there was a Scream Booth set up where they were holding a loudest-scream contest, also Venom was there handing out bottles of their energy drink, and lastly a booth called Coveroo who was printing RE5 decals on peoples phones, iPods and PSP's.
The Coveroo booth was by far the most popular among the crowd. You were given a sheet of different decal options to pick from. You could get Chris or Sheva printed, or the RE5 logo, or even the GameStop logo (I would like to know how many people picked that one). Then you would pick out the one you want, hand over your phone, iPod, PSP, or camera and in 5 minutes your newly Resident Evil decorated device was finished. I went with the simple yet awesome Resident Evil 5 logo.
In the back there was a game room set up where people could get some game time in, altho it was the same two levels that were in the Xbox 360 and PS3 demo. This room was steadily busy but never full, I think it was because they were checking peoples IDs before allowing them into the game room. There was a strange amount of giggly 13 year-old girls running around at this event, who would screech and act like idiots whenever a camera was near them.
I think the worst moment of the night was when all of the socially awkward teenagers started having a rave danging contest in the middle of the floor. It was seriously like watching 30 sweaty teenagers all have seizures at the same time. That is a moment then when they get older they will look back upon with embarrassment.
Some of the creators of the game where their signing autographs along with the actors for Chris and Sheva. The event was a lot of fun, it seemed to have had an amazing turn out and it was great to see so many people there all excited for the release of Resident Evil 5.
Did any of you already pick up your copy? If so, did your local GameStop or Best Buy do any kind of launch?
