One very important, but largely ignored bi-product of the Little Big Planet delay is the fact that the game is now getting almost shut out in the ultra-competitive Sunday Paper ad space.  Most ads are laid out by retailers almost a month in advance, and the delay of LPB due to the controversial background song has completely robbed the game of its time in front of consumer’s eyes. 

Here at GamingNexus HQ in Columbus, OH, the Best Buy and Target ads have no mention of the game at all and the Circuit City and Toys R Us Big Toy book have just small mention of the game (as a follow up to last week’s former release date).  The video game ads for Playstation 3 are of course completely dominated by Guitar Hero World Tour and to a lesser extent Fallout 3 and Motor Storm: Pacific Rift.

The people looking forward to the long-awaited release will still undoubtedly pick it up, but with the sudden choice between Motor Storm: Pacific Rift, Guitar Hero World Tour and Fallout 3, some parents and casual game buyers that are not ardent followers of games and release dates could miss the opportunity to pick up LBP during the new launch week and hurt the initial week sales.  So not only is Sony eating the costs to re-press Blu-Ray disks of the game, but they also have lost all the valuable promotional time it should have had in a week devoid of any top level competition.  Now, with the release supposedly coming sometime in the week of October 27^th, launch-week game sales potentially could suffer and the game itself may need a strong Holiday season in order to meet year-end sales expectations and recoup the costs of pressing new disks.

Some might say that my “fright reactions” are often at an elevated state.  I’m easily startled by people rounding cubicle corners, I overreact to drivers inching towards my lane in the road, and static electricity in particular makes me jump back inordinate and embarrassing distances.  Those things may all be true, but I prefer to re-label “fright reactions” as “anti-predatory mechanisms.”  I mean, my ancestors didn’t survive billions of years just so that I would suffer cardiac arrest from a fast-moving cubicle farmer balling out of control for the laser printer.

We all like to think that games release some intangible level of endorphins or adrenaline into our bloodstream, relaxing or exciting us in controllable doses.  But Dead Space?  EA’s just-released sci-fi horror game is certainly “exciting,” but in more of an “alarmed response” way than I’m used to drinking up during a videogame.  Onboard the USG Ishimura, I’m experiencing sensory overload – ironically – through sensory deprivation.  Trying desperately to dig through the dark, my pupils are dilating like I’m high on THC.  Straining to categorize between innocuous versus dangerous sounds, I can practically feel my cochlea throbbing in my inner ear.  My mouth is going dry, presumably to keep my unblinking eyes from drying up and perma-gluing my contacts to my cornea.

Gee, other than that, I’m great.  While I’m feeling the chemical reaction from being “thrilled” from the expected cat-jumping-out-of-the-closet tricks, the auditory frights are on par with anything being thrown at me visually on the screen.  Perhaps the audio is so frightening because I have so little control over it.  In the game, when a violently-disfigured Necromorph is plodding towards me, I can (sometimes, definitely not always) fall back, rapidly assess the situation, hone my target, and saw off a limb with a prize-winning gunshot.  And I could do this with far less panic if I decided to cheat myself, mute the volume, and nullify the $60 I just dropped at Software Etc, sure.  But it’s that volume.  The volume that pours horrible ambient sounds into my ears.  And the volume of darkness poured into the set pieces making the blood pulse through my ocular veins.

Dead Space is, and already has, set off a disturbing number of dormant anti-predatory mechanisms in my brain.  This, coming from a guy that’s already beset with daily elevated fright reactions.

Arriving at the hotel Renaissance in Agoura Hills, CA was almost horrifying. As an Ohioan I've never been exposed to the wild fires of California. The sky was a yellowish haze because of the smoke that filled the valley and ash floated from the sky and were blown into small piles by the wind. Needless to say it was an interesting start to the THQ Smack Down vs. Raw 2009 preview event. Eventually the fires died (or the wind shifted I'm not sure) and the smoke cleared. California is a pretty nice place when it isn't on fire. The hotel was stylish and very bisiness and the bartender is the kind that will go out of his way to find out how to make a drink that you request that he doesn't know how to mix. After a few beers and an Irish car bomb the drinking continued at the resturant MOZ which was right across the street. The group of 12 journalists followed the three PR ladies and we all sat down for a delicous if somewhat intresting dinner. The conversatoins that took place were of video games and food and eventually devolved into random Family Guy qoutes and talking about someone's favorite episode of South Park. It felt like college and the lunches I would have with my friends. None of the journalists there were from highly popular sites like IGN or Gamespot. We were just a bunch of people who were enthusiasts that loved all things video games. My kind of people. Later after the food it was back to the hotel bar and drinks with Brian the lead creative director for the game. While many things discussed were off the record (partly due to the consumption of alchol) it was obvious that he was a man who passionate about his job and very passionate about the game he worked on. He even talked about how he reads all the feedback from the press and the players and took everything they said to heart. While I haven't been excited about a wrestling video game in a long time Brian's passion was infectious and now I can't wait to get my hands on a controller tomorrow. Of course I also can't wait to get back and play the Call of Duty World at War beta but that's another post for another time.