Here's my thoughts on a practical (not nostalgic) point of view. The weapons are superior to their standard issue counterparts but by being unmodable will be retired when you have a mod or two on the basic model. The re-fillable canteen will look cool in your inventory and may save a pound. The value of the other in-game gear will depend on your charachter and style of play. This makes the decision easy for me. The armor in the Mercenary Pack looks like the most likely to still be useful after playing for a while. Since I like light armored charachters, I may get to use it until endgame.

You can still get the coasters @ K-Mart, because all they are pretty much doing there is giving you a $15 coupon towards NV when you purchase the coasters, they don't take your info down or anything so technically there's no obligation to complete the pre-order once you have gotten your coasters...

None, just seems like a waste to me, I want the game to be challenging and don't want any handicaps. That said I'm not sure about the hard core mode, sounds good but it will prob get annoying after a while! If I were to chose a pack, I'd go with the Caravan pack for the armor and shotgun.

In the name of the Vault Dweller....

Also, the Caravan pack is getting some attention mainly because it's on steam I guess, but fans loyal to the originals would get the Classic pack

Hmm, I might just go and do that. Thanks for the tip!

Meh, I preordered on steam. :user:

To me the packs in general are really not that great so i could care less. I will be waiting for an game of year edition though (lets be honest, there's most likely going to be one); The extra wait will be well worth it when i get the DLC's included with the game, all for around 60$, while the guys who pre-ordered will have out grown the packs (as stated previously; good catch by the way), payed 60$, and on top of the 60$ will have to pay more to get the DLC's. So in my mind waiting around an extra year is a smarter move... but thats just me.

If I had to pick it'd be caravan. But due to geographical implications(I didn't feel like driving all the wya out to walmart) I went to gamestop to preorder. But i'll admit that canteen and that 10mm will be nice to have by my side for the first hour or 2.

I'm pre-ordering it at GameStop, not for the pre-order pack, but because I trust them (except for that one time when I pre-ordered Killzone 2... "release day shipping" my ass). I'm not using the pre-order pack on my first hardcoe playthrough though. Gonna play the game the way it was meant to be played; with an Armored Vault 21 Jumpsuit and a 9mm Pistol :hubbahubba: .

The actual packs really offer nothing special, better equipment will probably pop up a few hours into the game. I like that they did it like this. That way we all dont get skimped out off good loot since all the loot is pretty meh.

yup, pre ordering at best buy is usually only if you want quality and no bonuses ive gotten in an argument trying to tell them that something comes with a bonus, eventually they checked and it was there lol