Sugar Rush Gear (makes you run faster)

Fleet Feet Gear (makes you harder for the enemy to hit)

Handyman Nemesis Gear (makes you do more damage)

500 Silver Eagles (free money)

5 lock picks (lets you open doors to get hidden items)

...and a puzzle game.

Start with an undetectable long-range weapon? No balance problems there!

Sniper rifle too subtle? How about starting with a grenade launcher?

What timing! On Tuesday of this week we posted a feature about some of the many pitfalls of preordering . Today BioShock Infinite has released a trailer for its Industrial Revolution Pack of items, giving us yet another example of how preordering can actively make your gaming experienceThis pack gives you the following:This. Is. Awful. Here's why:Games -- good ones, anyway -- are delicately balanced, finely honed pieces of virtual machinery. In a linear game like BioShock Infinite in particular, levels are designed to run smoothest when the capabilities of the player are known quantities. Game designers create challenges appropriate to match the player's expected power level and abilities -- early enemies tend to be weaker and more vunlerable to early weaponry, hurdles you must jump over are shorter, and doors are easier to open with the equipment available.What happens when you give the player extra starting power? Basically the same thing as entering a cheat code: everything goes out of whack, and the machine breaks. Those early enemies are pushovers, destroying the balance and any sense that our character is supposed to be weak or evenly matched -- that can break the story as well as the gameplay. The levels are easily cleared, sometimes in ways that the designers deliberately took steps to prevent us from doing. We have access to areas we shouldn't have access to, allowing us to getpowerful and unbalanced.Of course, some peopleeffectively cheating their way through games, swatting enemies aside and bypassing obstacles with god-like power. That's fine, and if that's you, go for it. For me though, removing the challenge is a huge waste of a game. Particularly the first time through, I feel a game should be experienced as the developer intended. If you're not having fun, or want to play through again in a different way,you start changing things around and seeing in what interesting ways you can break it. But give it a chance first! Don't risk breaking your toy before you even play with it.I generally avoid pre-order items like these, but I've come across a few that've had a significant negative impact. The original Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 2 , for example, had some retailer-exclusive wargear that makes the Space Marines so powerful that the first several levels feel like a complete waste of time. Fallout: New Vegas ' various preorder packs (now available as the Courier's Stash DLC) give you so much armor and gear that, when you have it all, you actually start out over-encumbered. It's a game-changing advantage in durability, firepower, and stimpacks. And my copy of Deus Ex: Human Revolution came with the Tactical Enhancement Pack, which not only gave me a double-barrel shotgun and a freakin' silenced sniper rifle from the word go, but dumps additional 10,000 credits into Jensen's account. That translates into being able to buy a free augmentation that the designers didn't expect me to have at that point.None of that junk made my experiences any better. At most, they're toys I'd play around with on a second or third playthrough. I know getting "free" stuff is enticing, but take it from me: if you value a challenge or the experience that BioShock Infinite's designers intend for you to have, you'll want to pass on this.