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Rockstar Offers Prepay Plan For Extra L.A. Noire Cases (Or, "You Can Play The Complete L.A. Noire")

Cole PhelpsWhile I'm generally against the whole online pass system considering that more often than not, the passes get in the way of basic gaming actions such as renting titles and buying used copies, sometimes a company uses the online pass for good instead of for greed.  Consider how Rockstar is implementing its take on the idea with the $10 Rockstar Pass for L.A. Noire for the Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360.  Rather than lock part of the game away behind a code, this pass is basically a prepayment plan for all of the upcoming downloadable content.  Buying ahead of time turns out to be cheaper in the end if you're planning to pick up the extra cases and add-ons (including all of the preorder incentive cases and items) that will be released between now and mid-July.  Joystiq has the details.

Rockstar has revealed a steady slate of L.A. Noire DLC, coming until late July, that includes four new cases for Cole Phelps to bring his seething congeniality to. (Yep, the previously Best Buy-exclusive Nicholson Electroplating arson case is on the list.) You could buy all the content piecemeal for $20, or you could pre-purchase all of it for $10 with the newly announced Rockstar Pass. After June 14, the price of the pass will increase to $12.

In even better news, two of the cases — The Naked City and A Slip of the Tongue — are available today, assuming you have the 360 version. Sadly, trying to access the PS Store on the PS3 version still causes the game to crash, but hopefully the store will be working soon.

Buying all of this DLC individually at full price as it releases would add up to a $20 charge in the end.  See, now this is the way to discourage used game sales with online passes.  Add more content at a discount rather than take expected included content away and put it behind a paywall.  I have no problem with a one-time charge for additional material for a game I enjoy if it's completed development after the base game's release (some of this stuff was previously featured as preorder incentives, so it was completed prior to the game's debut, but I prefer to look ahead to the upcoming stuff in that regard).  Let's just not get to the point where we see a monthly fee for L.A. Noire: Elite.

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