This isn't a collector's edition. This is a company trying to transfer a curse. I don't think you're even allowed to throw these out -- and if you try, you get the bill for sending garbage workers to seminary school. You normally have to burn and inhale plastic to turn it into this much stupidity.
Microsoft
The theory behind collector's editions is based on overestimating how much people like a game, and the reality means diverting effort to bullshit instead of finishing it. It's not just polishing the brass on the Titanic -- it's selling commemorative "Unsinkable" handkerchiefs made of chopped-up iceberg reports.
Perfect Dark happened when Rare made GoldenEye, lost the Bond license, and decided to make an even cooler game without it. Perfect Dark Zero was an almost perfectly eponymous sequel: the original name plus nothing else. It was rushed through development to become an Xbox 360 launch title. The AI acted like it had forgotten what it was doing halfway through DIY brain surgery, the main challenge was working out where you were meant to go next, and your controls lumbered and twitched like you didn't fit in your own body any more. Though all that might have been a masterful simulation of how the main character had been reduced from an elite British agent to a teenager.
Rare
"Complain about me saying 'like' one more time. I dare you. I, like, totes dare you."
436 Comments