Whilst I should be reviewing games and writing up interviews, I thought I’d take a bit of a break to do an old-fashioned unboxing of the EB Games exclusive (well, here in Australia, anyway) Batman: Arkham Origins Definitive Edition.

I pre-ordered this special edition on Xbox 360 ages ago as I can be a sucker for fancy game packages. Ironically I’d been playing the PC version of the game for a week for my review on shanethegamer.com when I got a text from EB saying that the Definitive Editions had been delayed, but I could still pick up my game in-store and await the swag when it arrived.

Deep into the PC version, I wasn’t that fussed with the 360 version, so I opted to wait for the whole thing to arrive.

I picked it up today, almost a week late.

It arrived in a huge box, even dwarfing the impressive size of this week’s Assassin’s Creed 4 Buccaneer Edition. The Definitive Edition has a box that almost rivals that of Skyrim.

I’m going to skip a bit here as I’ve not the time to narrate dull images of expanded polystyrene packaging and plastic wrapped toys.

The package comes with an assortment of printed items, most of which you are goig to look at once and then put away never to be seen again.

Things like the photograph of Bruce Wayne and his parents, and Anarky’s graffiti template.

There’s also an almost impossibly difficult to read map.

A Batman wanted poster.

And a plan of the Batwing.

Slightly more interesting is Black Mask’s assassin’s contract and dossier. Still not something that you are going to use every day, but interesting nevertheless.

Things get a little more physical with couple of pieces of evidence.

A 10K casino chip…

…and a tooth!

The art book, on the other hand, is rather nice. Instead of those shitty little tomes, that we’ve had included with everything from God of War to Assassin’s Creed 4, this one is quite a lot better. It is a nice coffee table sized book with a dust jacket.

Inside it is packed with beautiful production images and a fair amount of accompanying text.

I’m actually very impressed with the book, as I wasn’t expecting much from it at all.

But what made me pay the asking price for a game that I already had was the Joker statue.

Meticulously detailed, the diorama features illuminated bashed-up odd TV displaying blurry pictures of what I assume to be the various assassins in the game. It looks very cool, indeed.

The level of detail is usually good, as this closeup of one of the Batman assassination posters shows.

The illumination is provided via two batteries that I fun working out were to install. At the back there are two little doors.

One houses the battery compartment and the other a tantalizingly secret item with a warning not to open it until the end of the game.

The Joker statue looks very nice, especially when illuminated. On closer inspection it is clearly not very well finished with the base warped and the bottom of the model badly fitted. It looks like it was hurriedly put together. It is very well painted, so you are not going to really notice its faults.

What did piss me off was how the printed material was just thrown in the top of the box, resulting in the photo of the Wayne family having a nasty crease. There was also no sign of the 1st appearance Batman skin DLC.

What should have been a premium collectors piece has been delayed, presented in a slightly knocked about box, with the printed material thrown in the top and bits missing. Even the fantastic statue of the Joker could have done with a few more minute to just make all the pieces fit.

Still, at least it is a hell of a lot better than Arkham Asylum’s plastic Batarang!