When Eidos invited the guys and gals of the Gamercast Network to attend their pre-release Kane and Lynch Event, we were stoked. Originally Doc was the one visiting Eidos on behalf of Sarcastic Gamer. Due to scheduling conflicts, I was chosen to go in his place. Doc was really looking forward to going, so when he told me, I had to hold in my joy because I could see how upset he was that he didn’t get to go.

Find out how the trip went after the jump!

First off, my whole trip was paid for by Eidos. That includes: airfare, hotel, meals, basically everything. Call me a sell out, or say that my praises were bought, I personally don’t give a s***. This is the only reason that I could even go to something like this, unless of it happened in Houston or Dallas. I assure you that my opinions were not biased by the free airfaire, hotel, food, drinks, game and various cool game swag I recieved. I promise. As a poor gamer, I ordinarily would not in good conscience recommend that anyone pick up a game that I wouldn’t spend my money on. Lono would kill me if he bought a crappy game that I recommended.

In all seriousness, I salute Eidos for giving the sites like those in the GCN the chance to come see their game. Disclaimer over. Back to the story. Off to San Francisco!

I was really excited when I touched down in San Fran, because I knew that I was in for a world of fun and swag. As I reflect, I guess the whole trip was giant piece of swag that I will carry with me always.

The first person I bumped into was Duff from VGS that over heard me talking to Godfree from GTR on the phone. “Are you Dave from Sarcasticgamer?” he asked. At first I thought I had met a fan. Nope, just a fellow blogger. We discussed our dreams and aspirations about the trip while we waited on our shuttle.

When we got to the hotel, I found out that I would be rooming with Jay, aka Skittles from Uncle Gamer Radio. After checking into my suite that I shared with Jay, we all gathered in the lobby. Back up… I forgot to mention that our room had two HDTVs in it!

Okay, so were in the lobby and Godfree from Gamer Tag Radio says,” We are just waiting on the van to get here.” Diego from Podtacular was there, as were a few guys from other sites like gamervision and gamernode and other sites with the word “gamer,” in it. They were all cool, everyone got along and we talked gaming, as if you didn’t see that coming.

So, our chariot arrives and it is, of course, a huge party bus. Thank you Eidos! Then Jesper Kyd, the composer for Hitman and Kane and Lynch, pops in. It’s Champagne time! We took a long ride through San Fran traffic to get to our dinner destination. It would have sucked in a van, so glad it was a nice comfortable party bus.

We arrived at our dinner destination and we met our host, Jennie. She informed us we would be eating Brazilian and we headed for a table. We were then joined by a few more Eidos employees and then the meal began. The best part was the conversation with the blogger guys and getting to know the Eidos reps. They were all gamers and we talked about game of the year candidates, favorite games for past consoles and the game boom that happened this holiday season. We then headed back to our hotel and talked about gaming some more and then went to bed about 1am.

The next morning at about 7:30 pacific time I get a call from Doc, who woke me and Jay up. Thanks Doc! Anyway, we got ready, checked out of our rooms and piled into the limo waiting to take us to the Eidos facility. The Big Day had begun!

Upon our arrival, I instantly noticed the gift bags in the corner of the room. I, however, played off my love of swag and pretended they were not there instead of acting like an eight year old that came down for Christmas morning, like some other guys. I used restraint and waited until after we played the game for a bit and had lunch to dig into one of the bags, and I hit a treasure chest of swag. No real hunting or begging involved. I was so relieved.

In the bag were Kane And Lynch shirts, a money clip, and a ski mask. As far as the shirts go the biggest size I received was a large, and there was also a small pink one for the ladies, or a small guy. We’re not judging.

After playing the game some more and doing interviews, (check those out in the podcast!) we piled back into the limo and headed to the airport. Upon arrival I was informed that my flight to Phoenix has been delayed and because it was delayed I would miss my connecting flight to Houston. The good news was there was a 12:30am flight that was non-stop, too bad it was only 6:30pm.

I sat there for all that time and all I could think was swag…swag…swag. I thought that the whole ride home as I sat on that crowded plane. When I finally got back to Houston at 6:30 am, the 10 hours of my life that I will never get back didn’t phase me. Because I got swag. Memories and real swag. It was a great trip. I really enjoyed meeting all of those guys, bloggers and Eidos reps, they added the same amount of greatness to the free trip as the swag.

Keep an eye out on the site for my swag giveaways coming soon!

Special thanks to Duff for letting me borrow a few pics. His camera made mine look like a toy.

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