In case anyone's interested, I asked on gamefaqs what system's in place for replaying cases.

I got told that after you've beaten a case, you can select an option in the main menu. From there, you'll be able to select the different case categories such as vice, traffic and homicide and then you can select the case you want to play again.

This is great news for me anyway, as it means we'll be able to replay favorite cases without restarting.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/988983-la-noire/59129550?page=1

It's the top answer on the page linked.

This game is awesome.

I like the way they present the backstories, the game mechanics are fun (although the driving is typical Rockstar GTA-style wild and out of control). The dialog is great, really matching the characters and the feel of the time. And you really have to think about the questions you have to ask.

Great stuff.

I just saw the gameplay trailer for this today. [Nanny Fine voice]Oh... My... God![/Nanny Fine voice]. The facial motion capture puts this leagues ahead of anything else I've seen. It's not peopled with handmade 3D models, painstakingly animated an expression at a time. It's peopled by actual actors doing actual acting, including the slightest change of facial expression and eye movement, all rendered perfectly in 3D. In fact, the animation is so realistic (it should be, it's not actually animation as such) that it makes the 3D rendering look like the weakest part of the game, even though that's pretty damn good too. It's uncanny valley stuff.

Of course, none of this says anything about how good the game actually is, but it's certainly more visually impressive than anything I've ever seen before.

Sadly, it's console only, which means I won't be buying it, unless I stumble upon a cheap copy of the PS3 version a year or so down the line.

Edit: For anyone who hasn't seen footage of the game, watch this gameplay trailer, and note the facial animations in particular.

You can pretty much guarantee a year from now you'll see the GOTY edition for $30.

The facial capture is exceptional, and so is the acting from every voice I've come across so far. You see little ticks and casual eye and head movements that you'd never notice missing in another game unless you were thinking about it (or thinking about how poorly it's done, like dead eyes and odd head movements).

Also, the variety of gameplay is fun. You run the whole gambit of typical police procedural stuff, with some action thrown in. Each little story is presented kind of oddly where I'm at in the game now (you're just sort of thrown into it), but it's not distracting enough to pull me out of the game, and between each you get a bit of great backstory in what I assume hides the loading screen for the new story.

Well I picked it up yesterday and its bloody awesome. The controls are a little rough in places but on the whole the game is a solid adventure & action game that impresses the hell out of me in pretty much every regard. The story is pretty damned good, it took real willpower to drag myself away from it last night and go to bed because I just got my first real promising lead on the killer I've been tracking.

The facial capture is one of the very few things in gaming that genuinely lives up to the hype and more than just being fantastically expressive its used in a game critical manner, I've managed to catch a suspect out in a lie based on a tiny shift in his face. Granted I was fairly sure he was a lying bastard anyway but when I saw his tell I was certain.

There does seem to be an annoying tendency for the secondary street crime missions to be halfway across town in the exact opposite direction to where I'm going though.

On the upside the game has naked ladies

On the downside they've been brutally murdered by the time you see them but hey any port in a storm!

Wait that sounds bad...

... Why is everyone saying so many things about the faces?

The videos make them look like creepy puppets. D:

Preordered yesterday.

Not interested. I don't like that timeline, that setting, and the artistic direction they took makes the graphics look weird to me. Like Red Dead Redemption, I think I'll pass.

I'm sure they are fun games, but I'm also the one who refuses to play Psychonauts just because I don't like the art style, storyline or gameplay be damned.

Amazon offering $20 gift cards? How was I supposed to resist that?

Best Buy's doing $10 gift cards.

I suspect that you're not supposed to resist at all, its a cunning ploy to get you to spend money with them

Even though I have an Xbox 360, no way I pay full price for a console game anymore. $75 for an inferior-looking version that I can't mod? No thanks.

They got me. Can't wait to play it this weekend! And, of course, buy some DS game or Blu-ray with the cred.

Since you can spend that card on your next game it's not like it's a terrible deal. Ask me how I got a brand new XBox 360 and Kinect bundle for 150 bucks.
You could always pick it up used...

Okay, sorry, I couldn't resist. It'll be 20-30 bucks on Black Friday, probably well before then.

Because of the idiots on ebay overbidding, you'd be paying $60+ anyway which is still twice what I'd like to pay. I think we'll have to wait a little longer for it to drop in price, though - at least here.