Collector's Editions

BioShock Infinite Premium Edition

BioShock Infinite was released in 2013 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. Three different versions were available: the regular version, the Premium Edition and the Ultimate Songbird Edition. The one right here is the Premium Edition.

It comes in a paper box slightly bigger than a game case, and about four times thicker.

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The contents are separated by an inner compartment. One holds the game case, the art book and some loose pieces of paper. The other holds the two items shown below.

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This small red box contains the Handyman figure. This figure is, quite frankly, a bit laughable. I know it’s meant as a pawn for a board game that can be bought separately, but even for that purpose it’s so microscopic it seems almost hard to use. The whole thing is so light that it seems at first as if there’s nothing in the box (which is already small, but could hold ten of those figures). It’s also made out of one lump of single colored plastic, with a head as small as a match tip. The box describes it as a ‘statue’ but it must be the smallest statue in existence.

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There’s also a ‘Murderer of Crows’ keychain, resembling a potion from the game containing the vigor. While I had expected it to be a bit bigger, its size isn’t bad for a keychain. It is pretty heavy and looks nice and detailed, accentuated with different colors of paint.

BioShock-Infinite-Premium-Edition-Keychain

The edition also comes with an art book, complete with linen cover spotted with brown stains. At first I thought my book was dirty due to water damage or something, which is strange considering the rest of the box looked completely clean. But some research it is actually supposed to look like that. They employed an effect called ‘hand-distressed’ to make it look older than it really is. Now, I can understand that a worn effect can look nice, but in this case it just seems like something bad happened to the book.

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The artworks are quite nice though, there’s a lot of variety, ranging from characters and weapons to environments, items and advertisements from the world of the game. What’s nice is that a lot of artworks have descriptions, explaining why certain choices were made from an artistic standpoint. And when an art book has a hard cover, that’s always a plus.

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The Devil’s Kiss-litho isn’t particularly impressing. In fact, I don’t think it’s a lithograph at all, just a regular print. It doesn’t really look like a collector’s item and is also quite small. The colors however are rich and the paper is pretty thick.

BioShock-Infinite-Premium-Edition-Lithograph

The downloadable content consists of Avatar items (Booker and Elisabeth dress-up), a digital soundtrack and 3 exclusive gear power ups you receive at the start of the game (Bull Rush, Extra! Extra! and Betrayer).

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All in all I have to say I was expecting a bit more from this collector’s edition. Except for the art book, the extras aren’t too impressive, though they’re not all bad either. I did pay a modest price for it so I think it was worth the money, but it could have been better.