Well, I finally did my duty as a red-blooded gamer last night and pre-ordered my copy of the upcoming Playstation 3 blockbuster, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. As an aside, I gotta admit there is no more depressing time to be at a fairly isolated Gamestop than 15 minutes before closing on a random Thursday. There wasn’t a soul in the store and the employees looked more downtrodden than Eeyore.
Anyway, what got me out there was the awesome pre-order bonus that Konami is offering when you put down your $5. You get a DVD entitled “Metal Gear Saga Vol. 2” which is essentially a well produced (it better be since Hideo Kojima himself is credited as the producer!) recap of the previous games in the Metal Gear franchise. It runs about 30 minutes long and contains a lot of in game cutscene spoilers from the previous games. So if you haven’t played through the other games yet and don’t want it spoiled, you may want to hold off on watching this bonus dvd.
As someone who has played through every game in the series, though, it was a nice refresher to get me pumped up about the new game. It even includes all of the currently released Metal Gear Solid 4 trailers too! (Including the epic 16 minute trailer from E3 2006)
The other big draw of this pre order bonus is an enclosed code to download and play the Metal Gear Online beta in mid-April. If MGO is anything like the Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops online game was on the PSP, I can see it being forgotten in the annals as the PSP title was fairly boring. But, hey, it’s free and it has a shot at being decent given its pedigree. Lord knows the PS3 could use more exclusive multiplayer experiences.
All in all a GREAT package and a shining example on how to reward customers for pre-ordering titles.
