Don’t worry though, if that doesn’t appeal, the usual banter, abuse and shenanigans is back too.

ENJOI

MP3 Download / iTunes / RSS Feed

Adam, Alan and Ms Debbie Timmins from TheAverageGamer.com join Tom in a special run down of the entire year. We have all the usual general shenanigans, including: Gaming highlights/moments of the year, a lovely 45 second review of Raskulls AND a super awesome special Newbreview Quiz of the Year!

MP3 Download / iTunes / RSS Feed

It’s a phenomenon that has existed for years, but is becoming more and more common as the games market expands. I am of course talking about expensive Collector’s Edition copies of the latest new release.

It seems every developer these days is releasing a high priced “limited edition” complete with in-game bonus items, books, soundtracks, short making of DVDs, and little action figures.

Until recently I loved them; my home is littered with all sorts of crap that I have picked up over the years through purchasing limited editions. In my Bedroom you could find Bayonetta’s Gun, a plastic Batarang, and a pewter Big Daddy statue (to name a few examples) cluttering up the place.

It is clear that publishers and developers have realised there is a very strong demand for Collector’s Editions, especially if they come with “exclusive” content. I don’t think it would be too unfair to say that the average hardcore gamer, the sort of person that jumps at the chance of buying the latest games on release day, has some geeky tendencies in him/her.

Average game. Below average Collector's Edition.

The words “limited” and “exclusive” are banded about when describing these products, and are probably enough to get any fanboy’s pulse racing, fearing that this rare treasure may soon disappear. Deep down that’s exactly how I feel when I read the details of the latest Collector’s Edition version of a game I’ve had my eyes on.

However, more often than not, these collector’s editions are released at a premium price, but come in exceptionally poor quality packaging with mediocre additional content at best.

Of course, every now and then a collector’s edition comes along and makes everything better again; take for instance the recent Alan Wake Collector’s Edition. The package included the game, a 100 odd page book that filled in some of the back story behind the events of the game (including samples of Alan Wake’s own writing), a making of DVD that also unlocks developer commentary mode in the game, two premium themes for your dashboard, Avatar awards, and the soundtrack, all wrapped in a hollowed out book. For the price I paid, a mere £40, it was completely worth it.

A Fantastic Bargain at £40

And yet, for every Alan Wake Collector’s Edition there are about half a dozen Red Dead Redemption Collector’s Editions. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the game as much as anyone else out there, but the Collector’s Edition, which I foolishly purchased, was the text book definition of a waste of money.

For £50, it shipped with a download code that entitled you to three pieces of downloadable content: Golden Guns, which increase your fame slightly, the War Horse, a steed that has better stamina regeneration, and the Deadly Assassin outfit, which refills your Dead Eye Metre a little bit faster.

Also included is a download code for the game’s Soundtrack. Let me reiterate; a download code. They couldn’t even be bothered to put it on a CD and slip it in the case. And yet it cost £10 more than the plain old regular version of the game.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I discovered that half of my downloadable content is not available right from the get go; in fact, in order to unlock the Deadly Assassin outfit you have to meet a number of in-game goals, and progress through the story beyond a certain point. It’s not the end of the world, but it is an irritation.

I don’t mean to single Red Dead Redemption out, they are not the only ones releasing crappy Collector’s Editions that fools such as myself keep buying; who can forget the “special edition” Dead Rising, with the only special feature being that it came in a tin case at a £10 premium, or the infamous Batman Arkham Asylum special edition that came with a bonus challenge map, a 10 minute DVD, a short book with character designs in it, and a cheap plastic Batarang on a stand.

To make matters worse, the copy of the game itself was packaged in a flimsy cardboard box, with a faux wooden finish, almost as if they wanted to emphasise how cheap it looked.

A Fantastic Game, But An AWFUL Collector's Edition

Of course no one is forcing people to buy these Collector’s Editions – it’s not like burley men in black kicked down my door and dragged me to my local retailer, forcing me to hand over my hard earned cash for some rubbish downloadable content. But at the same time I have to wonder, how long can this last? How long can Publishers, Developers and Retailers expect to rip people off before they start getting wise to what constitutes a good deal?

To play devil’s advocate for just a brief moment, it cannot be easy for Publishers and Developers trying to find good content for their Collector’s Editions. I would imagine that most game developers are too busy working hard to get the game out on time to spend time sitting in front of a camera talking about how wonderful their game is going to be.

When you take in to account things like Electronic Arts’ Project $10, which offers everybody that buys a new copy of one of their games about $10 worth of free downloadable content, what else do they have the time to make and cram in to the special editions? These DVDs and books don’t just magically turn up out of nowhere, they cost money, and people have put in time and effort in order to craft these bonus items.

A Very Good Collector's Edition For A Not So Great Game

Calling for a blanket boycott of all Collector’s Editions will do little else but deprive Publishers of much needed extra income. Having said that, however, there are a number of ways in which things could go in the future if we stopped buying the bad Collector’s Editions. The best case scenario is that the involved parties take a good hard look at their product and strive to put out better Collector’s Editions.

On the other hand, the involved parties may decide that Collector’s Editions are not profitable and they stop producing them all together. It’s not going to happen overnight, but one day maybe we won’t even have the option of buying expensive variants of our games that come with a load of old tosh. And that would be a real shame.

–Luke Mears–

the iPad,

Exclusive GTA IV DLC no longer exclusive

and the popularity of naked blue aliens.

We also bring you this weeks new releases and site updates as well as giving you the chance to win a fabuous prize in our Bayonetta competition.

If you want to send us a question, comment or suggestion e-mail podcast@newbreview.com

This is the game which kicks off the 2010 January to March rush of games. Cast your minds back to near the end of last year; with Modern Warfare 2 looming on the horizon, many game publishers took the decision to push their games into 2010 to ‘avoid the busy holiday season’. Now we are in the beginning of 2010 and it feels much more like a November normally would in terms of game releases. So can Bayontta stand out in this ‘busy non-holiday season’?

I’m sure by now you have seen at least some of the promotional material for the game and are fairly familiar with the character of Bayonetta. I won’t lie, I was worried when I saw the heavily sexualisation of the character of Bayonetta. It seemed to pander to an audience of spotty teenagers who have never seen a real woman in their life. But the sexing up actually fits in with the general mood of the game; both retarded and awesome in equal measure.

The game in no way takes itself seriously. It knows it is ridiculous and runs with it, and the character of Bayonetta is a reflection of that tongue-in-cheek attitude. The graphics look really good, with a great sense of style; reflected throughout the entire game. All the animations are smooth and the whole game has a very unique visual style to fit it’s overall over-the-top nature.

Bayonetta is a 3rd person action game with a heavy combat focus. You play the part of one of the last Umbra Witches, an order who are locked in combat with the Lumen Sages, but you have no memory of who you are or your past. Throughout the course of the game you attempt to regain your memories as you battle through the realms of Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, killing plenty of Angels called down by the Lumen Sages.

The story is a bit convoluted and thin, however you can look past this as the story is just a mechanism to show off really awesome set pieces. This is where Bayonetta really excels. What this game does is constantly show you really cool stuff happening on the screen. Whilst it’s generally unclear why what is happening is happening, but you can see that everything that is going on is amazing. Without wanting to go down spoiler territory, among all the fights on motorcycles, insane attacks using your hair and throwing cars at enemies, the game still finds time to out do what Assassin’s Creed 2 has done before and give you a fantastically twisted ending.

As this is a combat focused game, you’ll be happy to hear the combat is excellent. There is a great speed and fluidity to all of Bayonetta’s moves: when you press the button she does the move pretty much instantly and, for the most part, almost seamlessly in a beautiful looking combo. Many other games in this genre put too much importance on how the moves look; slowing down the action and not letting you interrupt with dodges, letting you see the stylish moves at the expense of playability. Bayonetta however, whilst having awesome looking moves, allows you to interrupt most moves by pulling the right trigger; an essential move to allow awesome combos and make the game a lot more playable.

The idea of playability is something the developers really wanted to bring to Bayonetta. Previous games such as Devil May Cry have been pretty brutal in terms of difficulty. Not only were enemies really tough, but the timing required to pull off a good combo was so incredibly strict, it pretty much became inaccessible to any newcomers to the series or genre. Bayonetta has tried to rectify this by offering five different difficulty settings. In theory, you can find one that suits you as well as making the moves easy to pull off.

However, offering more difficulty settings doesn’t completely remove all issues of accessibility. The Easy and Very Easy difficulties basically play the game for you, whereas normal mode can get really hard in some spots. It would have been nice if perhaps there was a new setting to bridge the pretty wide gap between the easy and normal difficulties.

Bayonetta does also share some of the issues that most other 3rd person action games do; namely the camera. In tight areas the camera copes poorly, often obscuring your view a great deal and leaving you unable to see where enemies are attacking from, though these situations are few and far between.

For this review, the game was played on the Xbox 360, with it fully installed to the Hard Drive. There are many reports as well as compelling evidence to suggest that the PS3 version of this game is significantly worse, has vastly increased load times and regularly choppy animation which detracts severely from the game. If you have the option, definitely get this on 360 as opposed to PS3.

Overall the game is truly amazing. The characters are likeable and fun, the story, whilst a little hard to follow at times, is very tongue-in-cheek and enjoyable. The graphics are good, animations fluid, though the screen can certainly get a bit busy in the later levels, obscuring the action. The controls are excellent and if you can get through a couple of spikes in the difficulty then you will fall in love with this game.

There is a lot of content in this package, so if you want to unlock every move, buy every costume and fully complete this game it will last you many many hours. It’s just such a shame the PS3 version isn’t up to snuff. Oh, and please put more than 3 songs in the soundtrack, as after 30+ hours you get pretty bored of the ones included.

Review Round-Up

Graphics: 4/5 – The game is smooth the entire way through, graphics are good and art style interesting, though it does end up repeating areas a little bit.

Sound: 4/5 – Has good voice acting and a cheery upbeat soundtrack that works with the mood of the game, however it would be nice to have more variety in the soundtrack as listening to the same 3 songs throughout can get tiring after a while.

Gameplay: 5/5 – The controls and different control options are absolutely spot on. It is easily accessible to newcomers and provides enough options for veteran players to really get stuck into the combo system. This, along with plenty of difficulty options, makes it a game that is really easy to get into.

Longevity 5/5 – If you are the kind of person who wants to collect and unlock everything, you will have a lot to do here. If you only want to play it through once then it still holds up as a pretty lengthy game, though it is designed for numerous play throughs.

Overall 4/5 – I spent a lot of time wrestling between 4 or 5 stars. Whilst this is a truly brilliant game, it is aggressively Japanese in style and mentality which I know can be a huge turn off for some people. If you love these kinds of games or even just Eastern videogame design, it could well become one of your favourite games.

[starreview tpl=16]