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.