[twistedsymphony]

Best: 3
Dead Space Ultra Limited Edition - It's autographed by the creator, comes in a nice sturdy case with a nice hard cover art book... and it's actually LIMITED (only 1000 made)... amazing. Expensive yes but we're not buying these things for a bargain.

Grand Theft Auto IV - The Bundled items were of good quality, I was particularly impressed with the R* keychain, small, also just the whole package together with the deposit box, duffle bag, keys and key chain, it's functional and fits the game well, the box art is really nice too and it's a high quality displayable box.

Getting Up: Release for the Xbox 1 & PS2 it came in a nice tin case, presentation inside the case was well thought out, it also came with a notebook and a sharpie encouraging you to create your own grafitti and a soundtrack with the games really unique hip hop (all tracks that are unreleased anywhere else and all by mainstream artists)... consider it came out before the whole CE fad really took off, it's an amazing CE to own... the soundtrack is even in regular rotation in my car.

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3 Near Misses: Almost perfect CEs

Bioshock 2: big hard cover art-book, nice sturdy box, an actual Vinyl soundtrack.. attention to detail in the unboxing process... all awesome, it loses points because of the stupid sleeved CD soundtrack and the papery sleeve over the high quality box.

Halo 3 Legendary Edition: you guysare slagging on this one but really it had most of the markers of a great CE, a really high-quality displayable box, the un-boxing experience was really well thought out (something that is lacking with most CEs)... I don't know how many of you noticed but the helmets are actually numbered which is welcome in ANY CE IMO... it loses points because of the game case being a regular plastic case rather than the metal case from the Limited Edition, also from the fact that they FLOODED the market with these making them so readily available that they actually sold for less money new than the Limited edition at some point... sad really. Far be it from me to ding them for the price... if it was actually limited... it'd be worth every penny.

Batman: Arkham Asylum: Again, not going to slag on it for the price, I thought the case was awesome, I thought the unboxing presentation was really well done too, I especially liked the faux-leather bound notebook with the criminal details. This failed on 2 points... the first being the poor quality baterang that looked good in pictures but looked cheesey in person, if they had at very very least made it separate from the holder it would have been 1000 times better. Or even still ditched the holder and ha made people display it in the bat shaped case, that would have been even better IMO, even if it was made of plastic. The other problem with this was again, over-flooding of the market with the CE release... even months after it came out I can still go to a store and see these things on the shelves at walmart discounted $30... flooding the market like that is a total slap in the face to collectors.


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3 Biggest Disappointments:
I can't say "worst" because IMO for a CE to actually be bad you would have to go out of your way to get the regular edition over the CE... maybe not worth the money yes, but I can't think of any that are actually BAD. So instead I'll list the CEs where we were promised the moon and delivered dirt.

Stranglehold CE for Xbox360 - The PS3 version got a copy of HardBoiled on Blu-Ray for the same price, they never bothered to include anything to make up for that on the 360... the case was pretty much identical to the regular edition except for some metalic flake in the ink... at least Europe got a steelbook. The bonus DVD was in a paper sleeve shoved in next to the manual... pretty much you paid $15 for a poorly made documentary DVD without even it's own case. Considering if you bought the PS3 edition in europe you got a nice steelbook with a full length Blu-Ray movie AND the documentary... the US 360 version owners got HOSED...

Fable II LE: Advertised as a nice big lavish case with a plushie, bonus DVDs, etc... the end result was essentially a glorified slip-case edition. I suppose it was to be expected since with the game itself they promised the moon and delivered only a fraction of what they said they would.

Resident Evil 5: What happened to the fake vile of the T-Virus we were promised? the nice looking tri-fold case with the game the vile and some other goodies? they got it in Japan... just not anywhere else. instead we got a cheap paper box with the game disc and a bunch of random crap that I don't think anyone was actually interested in. Really, a necklace with Africa pendant? a crappy 1" tall figurine... a poorly constructed messanger bag, the only worthwhile item in the box was the BSAA patch... I want my damn T-virus vile!