These days, video games released without some kind of pre-order bonus offering are the exception rather than the rule. Publishers and retailers like to award early adopters for putting money down on a title weeks and even months prior to release, more and more frequently with content that will eventually be sold separately online as a downloadable add-on. No one ever suspected that Resistance 3 would be any different, and now we know that it isn’t. Sony has confirmed the details of the September-releasing PlayStation 3-exclusive first-person shooter’s pre-order bonus offers, which come in a variety of retailer-specific flavors.
The news comes from a post on the PlayStation Blog, which lays out the details for each participating store. GameStop is the only place you can get a proper tchotchke in addition to an in-game boost. Pre-orders at the popular video game retailer will net you a leather necklace adorned with a pair of Chimeran teeth, a replica of the one worn by protagonist Joseph Capelli in Resistance 3. You also get an insta-boost to rank five in the game’s multiplayer mode, which gives you immediate access to character customization features before you’ve played a single match online.
A Wal-Mart pre-order nets you five custom name titles, one of which is Sentinel (a reference to an in-game faction), for use in online play. Amazon buyers instead get the No. 60 Air Fuel Grenade in the single player campaign, a sticky explosive the creates a highly damaged, localized fireball at the point of detonation. The big winner for pre-order bonuses though is Best Buy: in addition to giving you a multiplayer skin for Nathan Hale, the protagonist of the first two games, a pre-order also nets you the ability to taunt players you’ve killed. You’ll have to use an ability slot, which means you’ll be sacrificing some play-enhancing character buff… but did we mention you’ll be able to jeer at downed corpses.
There’s one more pre-order bonus, for Canada and “other U.S. retailers,” which nets you a multiplayer skin for the Black Ops soldier, as seen in the series’ first two games. Best Buy still wins. And regardless, we all win on September 6, 2011, which is when Resistance 3 hits stores.
