It was. I could write a 9 paragraph rant on how weak RDR was and how there's a huge mass dillusion on the internet when it comes to people's dislike of GTA4 and like of RDR. I'm not going to write too much but RDR was massively disappointing.
I love the setting, everything about the game before-hand looked great. I bought the game day one and it became the first PS3 game I ever traded in, before Red Dead I never thought about the concept of trading things in. I always got a good amount of enjoyment from my games and replayed them from time to time, but Red Dead was dreadful enough that I didn't even want it sitting in my house anymore, reminding me of what a bad decision I made.
Take out all the buildings, cars, pedestrians, and interesting characters from GTA4, and you've got Red Dead. The combat/movement was very much improved over GTA4 but that means nothing when the rest of the game has so little to do. This game as far as i'm concerned had less to do than GTA4, and GTA4 was as bare bones as you could get. I was thoroughly disappointed because this could've been a Sergio Leone kind of masterpiece and they could've done SO much more I don't even know where to begin, but they just didn't, it was gunfight after gunfight. Terrible.
Red Dead definitely suffers from new IP syndrome, ie Assassins Creed, Infamous, etc. where the first game is often bare bones and doesn't quite have enough things to make it great, but the sequels usually end up vastly improving them. I suspect Red Dead will have an amazing sequel, but the first game is very weak imo.
Anyway in regards to this topic LA Noire looks amazing in every way, and I know Team Bondi is making this, but after Red Dead I'm not sure I can bring myself to do a day one buy 'just incase', fool me once etc. kind of thing. I'm gonna wait until I see another one of the gameplay videos, hopefully detailing the environment/city, this 25-30 hour news definitely has me much more interested in a day one buy though.