The Guide to Identifying Video Game Special Editions: Special Edition
Not all game releases are created equal. Publishers love to put out different editions of games to make more money. They repackage, add extras, and raise the price to turn a $60 game into a $150 game, or turn a $20 bargain bin game into a $40 purchase a year after the fact. Limited and collector's editions can mean you get a ton of extra stuff with your game. They can also mean you're spending a lot of money on nothing. Just because it says limited doesn't mean it is, and your game might have plenty of collectibles or you might be spending an extra $40 on a soundtrack and an art book. Here's how to figure out whether a collector's/limited/ultimate/premium edition of a game is worth it.
This is What the Saints Row The Third Headphones Sound Like
These are the headphones from the Saints Row: The Third Platinum Pack. I'm a sucker for collectors editions, and when I heard Saints Row: The Third would have Saints Row headphones that autotune your voice, I knew I had to get it.
They're pretty cool, but they feel cheap. For a $99 collector's edition of a $60 game, you can't expect high-quality headphones. They're decent, and they look great, though. The vocoder effect is pretty great, but the mic picks up a lot of background noise. I could describe it to you, but instead, here's the first Aggrogate micro-podcast, Saints Row Edition!
If the buzzing drives you nuts, here's a version I cleaned up in Audacity, for the pure autotuned goodness.
Final verdict: Pretty cool. Worth it, if you like messing with your voice and have low standards for headphones.
From the Game: New Vegas Poker Set
A few weeks ago, I covered the Fallout: New Vegas Collector's Edition, a pretty awesome collection of New Vegas feelies piled on top of the already great (yet extremely, painfully buggy) game. It came with a set of poker chips, which would be both fun and useful, except the "set" included a single poker chip from each casino. You can't exactly have a game of cards with just one chip of every color. The chips are darn cool, though, and I lamented that you can't put together an entire, poker-worthy set of them.
It turns out that you can, and that the results are both striking and eye-poppingly expensive.
Reader Greg W. showed me his new project: putting together a complete poker set out of many, many Fallout: New Vegas Collector's Editions
Greg says he's spent about $500 pulling together all of these chips from all these collector's editions. He scours eBay for auctions selling just the chips, so he doesn't have to shell out the full $70-80 for each set. He's not done yet, though. Greg says he'd like to have 40-60 sets' worth of poker chips by the time he finishes collecting them. Our suggestion is to use FedEx or UPS to deliver them; those Wasteland courier companies have been getting accosted by raiders as of late.
Top 7 upcoming collector’s editions
This fall will see a lot of big name video games on the way, and big name games mean multiple editions. Almost a dozen upcoming video games feature Collector's/Limited/Hardcore Obsessive Compulsive Editions for a premium price, offering extra features, game feelies, and the usual selection of soundtrack/making-of DVD/art book on top of the game itself. Here are the 7 most notable collector's editions coming out over the next few months.
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood collector’s edition has a jack-in-the-box in the box
Wasn't Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
Ubisoft has just announced that Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood will indeed be getting a $100 CE version of the game, complete with a large and very very creepy extra. Besides an art book, bonus disc with comic/making-of videos/soundtrack, and hard copy map of Rome, the collector's edition comes with a jack-in-the-box featuring the game's harlequin or doctor characters. The box is a mysterious black with a silver Assassin's Brotherhood logo on it, and is opened by a separate key (which itself looks pretty cool). It's creepy, classy, and creepy again.
Gamestop will exclusively offer the harlequin jack-in-the-box in its collector's editions, while all other retailers will offer the doctor jack-in-the-box. The game hits stores in both standard and collector's editions November 16.
From the Game: Jim Raynor’s USB dog tag from Starcraft 2 Collector’s Edition
Jim Raynor is a galactic badass. He fights Zerg, he rebels against tyranny, he drinks bourbon, and he looks and sounds an awful lot like Red Dead Redemption's cowboy-with-a-heart-of-gold John Marston. He plays a big part in Starcraft 2, to the point that the game's $100 collector's edition includes a replica of his old Confederate dog tag. It's not just a neat sci-fi dog tag, though; it's a 2 GB USB key that includes the original Starcraft and the Brood War expansion.
And it's pretty awesome.
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