I was a late starter to the Call of Duty series and was first introduced to Modern Warfare 2 during a post-New-Year-party recovery ‘cotch’ on a mate’s PS3. It wasn’t long before I caught the Call of Duty bug and bought myself a pair of try-hard panties. In fact, I’m pretty sure the first time I wore them is captured [retro video alert] in this MW2 SnD 4 man clutch. By the time Black Ops came out I was hooked, which meant the need to attend a midnight launch.
My first experience of a COD midnight launch was pretty disastrous. I took a trip up to my local GAME and paid for the pre-release of Black Ops, thinking I could stroll on up at midnight and pick up my copy. Not so: I completely underestimated demand for a new Call of Duty title and I spent a good 2 hours stood in the freezing rain whilst the GAME staff attempted to up-sell every single one of the 500 people who had turned up. I found myself logging on only an hour or so before my pals across the pong – which is madness given we should have a 6 hour head start.
The following year I thought I’d go for a company that doesn’t want crowds of people loitering round their store late at night – TESCO. My mistake the previous year was pre-ordering as this meant I was “locked in” to the GAME queue whilst neighbouring shops were dishing out the game to anyone who wondered up. My mistake this time around was NOT pre-ordering as it meant I found myself in a queue of several hundred disorganised gamers. TESCO made sure that anyone who pre-ordered Modern Warfare 3 was out the door within 15 minutes of the tills opening.
Roll on Black Ops 2. Third time lucky, right? Not so. This time around I decided to pre-order from TESCO and arrived 20 minutes before the official launch, with the aim of being out the door by 5 past midnight. Sadly, an operational disaster by my local TESCO prevented this from happening. Those who had pre-ordered were in a 200 strong queue being served by only 1 assistant with a semi-functional till. Those who turned up on the day were all catered for by 12.30 whilst the pre-order mugs were still there as the clocks turned 1.
Therefore, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that I have opted against pre-ordering Call of Duty: Ghosts. Instead, I have just popped in to my local Sainsbury’s and grabbed a copy. No queues. No fuss. No sleep deprivation. No ability to mock my American pals for having the game before then. A fair trade-off, I suppose.
I’ll try and get a Ghosts video on my channel by the weekend. In the meantime, I shall leave you with a clip from last weekend…
Yes. I know what you’re thinking: that was a pretty heroic flag defend & subsequent capture. Pretty standard for The Average Joes.
See you on Ghosts 🙂
