Metro Last Light Pre-order Bonus

Watching Angry Joe's rant on Metro Last Light brought this title onto my radar, and not in a good way. Actually I totally overlooked Metro 2033 even though I really like horror games, especially survival ones. I guess it was during the period where I was getting sick of first person shooters. If I had found out what kind of series the Metro games were in another circumstance, I might have purchased Metro 2033, and bought Metro Last Light once it's out. As it stands, removing a hard difficulty that's "the way it was meant to be played" and forcing players to either pre-purchase or buy it, is like selling the endings to games as DLC.

Is the publisher forcing players to pre-purchase because the game sucks, like Aliens: Colonial Marines did, or is this just a cash-grab? Should pre-order bonuses include essential content so that gamers can't play "the way it was meant to be played" so people will have to pre-order, without the chance to wait for reviews before deciding on the purchase? Would there be ridiculous pre-order bonuses in future, like mouse support for RTS and controller support for action games in future? Either way, things don't seem to bode well for gamers.

PC Gamer asked the publishers "If Metro: Last Light Ranger Mode is “the way it was meant to be played” why isn’t it included for all players? We ask Koch" Read it and see if you agree with them. At least they can now push the blame to retailers for whatever crap day-one, pre-purchase DLC they want to do from now on. Too bad gamers, deal with it.

Well, that's more money saved on a couple of games I would have bought. Thanks!

And here is AngryJoe's rant.

What bonuses do you think is ok and what's not? Is this pre-order trend good or bad, or is it just getting out of hand? Let us know in the comments.