Special Editions and You: Boy Do I Love Getting Ripped Off!

Special edition? Sure, if the special means mentally handicapped.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I absolutely love Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. Besides the Sentinel spam and terrible connection issues, I’m having a great time smashing buttons on my HORI fight stick and kicking ass. However, not all things can be so perfect in today’s world of gaming. They have to piss you off, somehow.

 

Collector’s Editions. Special Editions. Slap this onto a fancy box and up the price and you’ve got yourself a sale. Back in the day, these were actually pretty cool. For example, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion had a pretty neat collector’s edition that came with a fold out map of Cyrodill, a replica of the in-game Imperial Septim currency, a short book about the lore, and a very nice behind the scenes DVD. It wasn’t too expensive and is pretty much what a proper Collector’s Edition should be. MVC3, however, came short of being quality when it came to its so called “Special Edition”.

I’ll admit that the case is nice, although you could compare a pile of dog shit to the current game’s case and you could call it art. For $70 you get a fancy case, what they call an exclusive “comic book” (which is just 4 pages of shitty art and bad dialogue and the rest of the pages being miscellaneous artwork), 1 month access to Marvel’s online comic service, and the DLC characters Jill and Shuma-Gorath. It sounds like a pretty nice deal, right? Too bad, it’s a piece of shit.

The “DLC characters” you get are just a code you have to wait a month to use. Even better, the characters are already on the disc, meaning you have to wait a month to access content that Capcom has so happily locked away. The 1 month free access to Marvel’s comic service REQUIRES you to enter your credit card information so that they can automatically bill you once the month is up. I’m not joking, there is no way around it. As I mentioned before, the “comic” is a piece of shit although the miscellaneous artwork is nice (you can never go wrong with an artist like Shinkiro).

So why do we keep buying into these modern day iterations of “special editions”? These days they include nothing but shitty codes for content that was probably cut from the game sometime during development in a shiny case. Do we really need to pay $10 or $20 extra just for some zeros and ones? Publishers need to stop cutting corners and make a real special edition, one with some pretty neat physical objects that actually increase the value of the game. But please, don’t cut corners with the actual physical objects. Yes, I’m looking at you, Dead Space 2 Collector’s Edition. That so called “plasma cutter replica” was a tiny piece of hollow cheap plastic shit that didn’t even come with the batteries it required for its most likely shitty LED lights.

TL;DR : If you want to make some extra cash off a Special Edition big name publishers, make them worth our money. Take note from CD Projeckt’s upcoming The Witcher 2 and Gearbox’s Duke Nukem Forever. Both have really nice Collector’s Editions that are worth the buck.

It's like an orgasm in a beautiful box.

Having Your Cake and Paying $10 to Eat It: L.A. Noire and DLC

Unlock the full size version of this image by paying an extra $10 ONLY AT GAMESTOP

You walk into a restaurant and order some food. You pay for said food, but you only notice that the waiter has only given you a small portion of it. “Where’s the rest that I paid for?” you ask. The waiter grins and tells you that you’re gonna need to pay $15 extra if you want the rest, even though you already paid for the meal. The average person would surely by pissed off after being ripped off so, one would expect. However, this kind of scenario is happening every day to the average video game consumer. Why? Because the average video game player is a clueless moron who is willing to shell out $15 for 4 maps that were cut during development, as Activision has so kindly shown us with the latest map pack release for Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Rising alongside this new trend is another scam: pre-order DLC. You know those moronic GameStop commercials you see on TV promising stupid in-game content like weapons or exclusive MUST HAVE clothing items that may or may not give you an unfair advantage over other players only if you pre-order at their shitty store? We all have, and it’s bullshit. If we’re paying $60 for this damn game, shouldn’t we be guaranteed ALL the content on the disc to enjoy? Why should the store I purchase the game from dictate what parts of the game I have access too? This kind of garbage usually applies to only the most mainstream generic releases, which I suppose soothes the anal pain I suffer. However, there’s one game I’ve been anticipating this past year that’s getting the same ass-rape treatment: L.A. Noire.

….How the hell do you pull off pre-order DLC for a story-driven drama like L.A. Noire? Well, see for yourself:

This is only one of them. There's like, 3 other packs from other retailers.

So what I’m seeing is that we’re missing out on full missions if we don’t pre-order at GameStop? That is probably the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. Why should I miss out on a part of the game’s story or experience just because I didn’t want to drive down to my local GameStop and deal with annoying clerks that try to sell me magazines or premium services for 5 minutes before giving me my damn game? In fact, that poster is just entirely inaccurate. Allow my sub-par Potatochop skills to show you what you’re really seeing.

Look at that smug bastard.

Hell, what’s next? I can’t get the ending to the game unless I pre-order at GameStop? Or maybe you can only play the introduction of the game if you pre-order via Amazon. This shit is ridiculous. DLC should be content that the developers develop and release after the game does well as a way of giving their fans more to enjoy. We shouldn’t let which store is paying the publisher the most for endorsements dictate what content we get and what content we don’t.

Hail to The King, Baby (or why the industry needs Duke Nukem)

Start placing your bets.

Duke Nukem Forever recently got a release date of May 3rd. Keep in mind that this is the game everyone thought would never release. The Ark of The Covenant of gaming. With its production starting in 1999, no one ever thought we’d see it ever again. Eventually, rumors circulated that Gearbox would be getting its hands on Duke. Fast forward to PAX 2010 and lo and behold, the first booth I saw upon waiting in line to race to the convention floor was none other than the god damn King.

 

Sadly, Duke isn’t remembered the way he should be. People these days are skeptical, mocking the long development time or afraid that the game will end up not living up to the hype. Then you have the kids who, quite sadly, have no idea who Duke Nukem is and dub the game “a halo clone” upon viewing the trailer. Am I saying that DNF is definitely going to be the golden messiah of gaming? Of course not, there’s always a chance that a title can flop (as seen with 2009′s highly underrated Bionic Commando). What I am saying is that we need Duke. Not only we the consumer base, but the industry as well.

JFK wanted a man on the moon. We sent Duke.

The majority of today’s popular games share so many similarities with each other that they almost make 7-Up and Sprite look like two completely different entities. Every critically acclaimed game (aka every game that bribes the most critics) is the same bread and butter generic first person shooter that we’ve played the year before. Oh boy, yet another Call of Duty. I can’t wait to once again play an unbalanced shooter with zero color and overpriced map packs. Rarely any games have any distinguishing features, you could almost mistaken them as siblings. Games no longer have passionate development teams who create unique, lush landscapes and environments in each game, differing them from others. Instead, we get the same grey urban environments, the same brown skies, the same bald space marines, and the same “dark an’ gritty” 4 hour long half assed story line. Every game takes themselves too seriously, too much to the point where the game comes off as absolutely fucking ridiculous and stupid (Modern Warfare 2′s infamous “my men died, i’m gonna start World War 3″ scenario).

 

In an industry that is oversaturated with generic trash, we need Duke Nukem. We need to go back to the time where first person shooters weren’t terrible attempts at translating the latest Michael Bay mindless action flick to your controller. We need an over-the-top shooting gallery that isn’t about stopping generic Russians or showing off your so called “skills” on multiplayer, but about having fun. THAT is what we’re missing. That excitement you get when you’re facing Pig Cops with a rocket launcher in the red light district. That thrill you get when you’re fighting off Satan’s forces on Mars (yes, that is Doom, but its still relevant). Those cheesy one liners about kicking ass and chewing bubble gum instead of monotonous drawn out monologues about humanity that are followed by firing a nuclear missile in space that sends a space station bursting into flames (in space). We need Duke now more than ever. Not to save us from aliens, not to bone some chicks, but to breath creativity and fun back into the industry.