Comment

Comment by Nick Kroboth (Herr Daimyo) on May 29, 2011 at 7:36pm

The facial recognition software will be the next big step (hopefully) in gaming. The things it has the potential to do is right up there with the kinect.

 

NOW, the game itself reminded me a lot of Mafia 2, A very story drivin game in which you get this INSANELY large "open world" but your better off sticking to the beaten path the entire time. I think this made an excellent first attempt at a true detective game, but the flaws are VERY blatent. 

Comment by TheVern on May 24, 2011 at 3:51pm

I'm not a gamer and even I want to buy this.

Comment by Arkduune on May 24, 2011 at 7:13am

I have to echo Cheezyspam's comments. The lack of being able to control the outcome greatly effects your satisfaction when playing this, and, to a degree, inhibits your decisions when playing because early on it becomes apparent things are not as they seem, and so when trying to expose that, you wind up failing because you are stuck on a linear path. The game goes against your natural instincts because it's following a story.

 

I was all hyped up, thinking when interrogating I needed to be aware of the speech tone, the eye movements and the facial/ body gestures. Nope, not needed. Which REALLY disappoints me as that was the main selling point of the game I was interested and excited about.

 

Conclusion: I'm glad I paid full price as the story/ environment/ characters/ dialogue/ graphics/ facial mo-cap/ tone are outstanding. It's the standard we've come to expect from Rockstar. However it seriously drops the ball with it's gameplay. It is more an interactive movie (a la Heavy Rain) than a detective game. Although my hopes are Rockstar take note and bring out a sequel that will incorporate the missing elements we have with this one.

Comment by CHEEZYSPAM on May 23, 2011 at 3:12pm

here's my to cents and I'll preface this by saying I enjoy this game a lot! but there is one major flaw that I think really disappointed me to know end...

 

the entire game is on RAILS!

From the beginning you never have any freedom. You walk around finding clues, but the game tells you where they are (rumble/vibrations) and lets you know when you are finished finding everything there is to find in the area (music stops). And then there is the questioning/interrogation scenes. At 1st I was kinda nervous picking the right answer and making sure I had pointed the right clues to the right answers, when it quickly became apparent that I had nothing to do with the outcome of each case. Right or wrong the game was going to go on and the cases were going to be completed with or without my "expertise".

 

That's where this game ultimately fails. There are no consequences to your actions. Nothing you do really matters par from just walking to another scene to continue this elaborate interactive movie. I would like to have had multiple endings, branching outcomes. I want to know that if I don't charge the right suspect then a killer could potentially walk the street. That I have some influence on this world.

 

Another thing is, as a cop, you run into so many scenes where the ONLY option you are given is to kill the suspect rather than have the opportunity to arrest them. Likewise you will be chasing down fleeing suspects and the game doesn't EVER give you the option to pull your gun unless it has already been scripted to do so. You aren't even allowed to run people over on the street with your car. I know you're supposed to be a "good guy" but that to me defeats the purpose of a sandbox game... which this is not.

 

This game does have an amazing story, the graphics are nice, the facial engine is the best I've ever seen, but the game play is pretty much non existent and you are never left with feeling like your actions impact the world. It's certainly R* quality, but I think they dropped the ball and were pretty misleading about YOU being able to solve crimes.

Comment by Detective Marlowe on May 22, 2011 at 9:21pm

Its a solid detective story. It's of the most memorable games I've played since Metal Gear Solid 4

Comment by Jason Straub on May 22, 2011 at 11:53am

L.A. has been so accurately recreated in this game that when looking for landmarks, I was able to look up the places on Google Maps and been able to navigate my way to them in the game itself.  Not only that, but where in Grand Theft Auto all the vehicles are made up ones that sort of resemble actual cars, all the cars in this game actually existed.

Comment by Kurei Scott on May 22, 2011 at 10:57am

@Cthulhu R'lyeh  Not condemning it, just pointing out that its there.  I think if any other publisher apart from Rockstar was doing this game though, it would've gotten ignored, and just been praised for its facial animation.  While personally I don't like the game, hopefully it will sell well and encourage more developers to take chances on games like these, and we can escape the plague of sequelitis, bu then again not every studio has oodles of money to back projects like this.

Comment by Cthulhu R'lyeh on May 22, 2011 at 5:36am

Like you said, there pretty much no open world "point and click adventure games" like L.A. Noire, so its gameplay is unique, even if only because no one has tried to combine all these elements on such a scale.

All those other things you have mentioned, there are moments of them, but I am always so immersed in the story that I won't condemn a game like L.A. Noire for it.

Comment by Richard Watson on May 22, 2011 at 4:44am

It's the second best game I played this year. First is Portal 2. If any title deserve the 'Game of the Year' it is Portal 2

Comment by Kurei Scott on May 21, 2011 at 9:53pm

Edit* uncanny valley moments

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