The game seems interesting, and I've long wanted to see a Rockstar game where you aren't some kind of criminal. That said, the game reminds me a lot of a cross between "Mafia II" (which I bought from Steam cheaply) and "Heavy Rain" (interactive movies underwhelm me) in the way it's set up and presented. The content might wind up being extreme, but I get the impression it won't be much of a sandbox in the end, probably a lot of pretty scenery with little to do with it, a decent storyline with good acting, and very little in the way of actual replay value even if the cases do get mixed up.
For me a warning sign was when you see collection quests being advertised as pre-order incentives (as I understand Gamestop's deal), hardly one of my favorite things in games, but when your looking at that kind of most basic sandbox side activity being presented as an optional, feature, I can't help but wonder "what is in this game?!?!?!?".
I'll probably get LA Noire at some point, but it's not one I'm going to be running out to buy it brand new I don't think, unless I luck into some money. I buy too many games, and being disabled am fairly strapped for cash (getting by the way I do with gaming due to living at home).
Still, the game does give me some hope that perhaps one day we'll see a decent sandbox horror game. As an old fan of PnP Call Of Cthulhu games (sadly I haven't been able to find any PBP ones, or horror PBP games in general for a while) I'd love to see something that's a combination of say "LA Noire", "Deadly Premonition", and Bethesda's "Dark Corners Of The Earth". Or simply a more open (than it appears) LA Noire with the cases being investigations into supernatural occurances rather than crimes.
Still, I wish Rockstar luck with this endeavor, love the game concept, not too sure about the implementation from what I've seen. Seems like it would wind up boring me, or burning me out too fast, assuming I didn't just blitz the campaign and wind up feeling like "that's it?".
I'll go back to Mafia 2, but I played the beginning and felt that the game had potential, but really didn't live up to what it could have been. It's not Rockstar (2k) but on some levels I think that game kind of tainted my anticipation for LA Noire as odd as that might sound, even if there is no real logic for it.
