God of War III Ultimate Edition: The Empty Box March 18, 2010

For those of you collectors out there, who just love collectors editions in every way shape and form, you’ve had to deal with extremely high priced ones with very little substance as of late.  Originally collector’s editions would be 10 dollars over the initial price, come in a slightly better package and include a second disc with behind the scenes goodies which would be well produced and informative and entertaining.

Within the past year, I’ve noticed that these CEs have become more fluff than actual content.  But recently the God of War III Ultimate Edition has earned my purchase.  I paid 40 dollars more than the initial price for a mostly empty box.  The box the game came in is quite beautiful, but it’s empty.  Other than the hardcover art book (which is the standard size and shape for most other CE artbooks I’ve seen, there’s nothing in the box.  The case the game comes in is identical to the standard edition, and the disc itself is identical as well.

The difference is (other than Pandora’s box and the Art Book, the only physical additions, and those alone would not fetch a 40 dollar price tag) that there’s a tiny leaflet included inside the game case with three download codes.  One for a downloadable skin and Combat Arena, both of which could’ve been unlockable game content, one for a downloadable documentary starring Peter “Robocop” Weller which is taking me over an hour to download and is going to use up the very last of my 60GB PS3’s storage space, and one for two soundtracks to be downloaded off the God of War site, which doesn’t work because the God of War site is no longer accepting logins or code redemptions, all attempts to do either are just frozen, and then met with an error message.

Is it that hard to make some CDs?  Is it that hard to do a second Blu-Ray?  You have to be kidding me if you charged 100 dollars for this thing that you couldn’t have done all that and still charged the same price?  Hell, I would’ve gladly sarificed having an empty Pandora’s box (which can’t fit the PS2 versions of the games, but can fit the God of War Collection if you need a place to put that disc) for having instead this content on physical discs.

I really like collector’s editions, but what’s collectable about revolving it around a leaflet with codes on it?  It’s a great empty box though.

Don’t Redeem Your God of War: Unearthing the Legend Codes Unless its on a PS3 You Intend to Watch it on for the Rest of Your Life March 18, 2010

Following up on what I was saying earlier, I decided to redeem my God of War: Unearthing the Legend documentary code. I really wanted to watch the documentary badly, so I redeemed my code and realized, oh crap, I don’t have enough space for it. The file is 3+GB. Not a problem I figured, I had another PS3 downstairs with much more storage capacity, so it shouldn’t be a problem. So I deactivated some authorizations on the one I had, and reactivated on another, and started the download of the documentary on the other PS3.

Then I tried watching it two hours later after the download finished and it didn’t work. Whatever crap Sony put in the video, even though my authorizations were all valid and allowed me to download the video no problem (If they weren’t, I wouldn’t have been able to download the video at all) refused to let me watch the documentary. So I decided if the file was going to work anywhere it was going to be on the original PS3 I put the code into, the one with very little space left. In frustration I deleted the video and set about the way to change my authorizations (again) so I could go back to watching the video on my original PS3, only to find that the HD video was no longer in my download queue, and there was no way to get it back.

I called up Sony support to get them to rectify the situation, and they told me it would take about two days for them to email me back with either a new code or for them to reactivate my download. So until then I’m stuck watching the SD version of the documentary (unacceptable if you own a 1080p 120hz HDTV). But here’s the big problem with all this. When you download that video, it’s tied to that playstation for life. Authorization be damned! So what’s the point of activating/deactivating playstations if the content’s going to be tied to whatever it was first redeemed on in the first place?

You’ll never be able to redownload it again or watch it on a different playstation! If this was a blu-ray I could watch it on any blu-ray player I wanted in the house or bring it to a friend’s house (adding to the collector’s value of the box!). Who’s brilliant idea was this?

I also asked the guy about the God of War soundtrack site (since apparently manufactering CDs and making websites that don’t crash when people try to use them is hard) and they still have no ETA on when either the site’s coming back up or when the replacement codes for people who redeemed them and had failed downloads will come back.

Lets try comparing to other competing services. Apple’s iTunes is considered by many to be draconian at best but they offer a whopping five activations for downloaded content, and even have some DRM free files for a slightly higher cost, and when you deactivate/reactivate content on your systems, it actually works! The files don’t care where they were initiatlly bought or downloaded, the activation certificate is all they care about.

Next time Sony, spend an extra dime and buy some CD-Rs.