The hotly anticipated title from Rockstar Games, L.A. Noire brings you to Los Angeles in the 1940s, with the usual kick-ass Rockstar attitude and environment you'd come to expect. Released just last month on May 17th 2011, the game is already doing very well in the sales chart. (Our European friends had to wait till May 20th to check the game out).

Your player character is an LAPD officer named Scott, rising through the rank of the force, where during each rank/level you get partnered up with different partners to investigate and fight various type of crime. This game, unlike previous familiar Rockstar titles such as the GTA franchise, blends mystery and crime solving along with the usual open-space exploration and arsenal of guns to choose from.

Via this reddit thread, L.A. Noire is:

• 7 Years in Developement by Team Bondi with Rockstar
• $50 million to $100 million budget
• Hugely detailed recreation of Los Angeles, open world with 20+ hours of narrative
• So much content that it fills 3 disc while GTA four is only 1 disc
• Such a large script that even cutting 90% of content would still leave it filled with more content than vast majority of games.
• Less than 5% of the content is cut for DLC purposes (whew).  The exclusive pre-order DLCs you see above will eventually be availble for everyone after release.