L.A. Noire: Not all Rockstars peak early

These guys take Rockstar to the top of their game.

Rockstar has their formula down. They’ve been building greek tragedies in a sandbox for years and they’ve polished that pearl quite nicely. GTA IV showed us some new things, Red Dead Redemption brought them to the next level, but L.A. Noire is the sweet culmination of all that hard work. I’ve been a Rockstar fan since I memorized the weapons codes for GTA III on Venice’s Playstation, I even played a little top-down GTA II with my senior year roommate. But looking back it’s almost unfair to make comparisons. The story telling has come so far it makes the likes of Vice City and San Andreas seem cheesy. But let’s face it. They were cheesy. Remember the Scarface homage in Vice City? Or watching Sammy L. driving that fire truck off the bridge in San Andreas? It was fun, but boy was it awful. Fast forward 10 years to L.A. Noire. Here we have a story that lives up to the genre. A gritty murder mystery full of corruption and Colt .45s that keeps you on your toes to the end. I seems Rockstar needed to team up with Sony’s men down under to bring it all together.

Pre-order bonuses: ransoming content

Micro-payments have become big business on this console generation with the introduction of downloadable content and love it or hate it it’s here to stay. Add that to pre-order bonuses and things start to get a little hairy.

Gamestop has been giving downloadable bonuses for pre-orders for quite some time, whether it was a nuclear gun Mass Effect 2 or a fast horse in Red Dead Redemption. Apparently Rockstar felt the pre-order bonus worked so well they’re stepping it up a notch for L.A. Noire. Not only are they releasing custom clothing for your character, but they’re actually releasing cases as pre-order bonuses.  The concept of receiving additional playable content as a pre-order bonus is annoying enough, but Rockstar has seen fit to offer separate content at different stores.