L.A. Noire' to be first game screened at Tribeca Film Festival

[derspiess]

I sure hope i'm not suppose to be kind to these criminals, everyone that has tried to run i end up headshotting.

Don't worry.  Body count seems to impress your captain more than anything.  There are a few isolated instances where you fail the mission for shooting the suspect, but the restart point is usually pretty convenient.

In some cases it's possible to fire your gun in the air to stop them, but you have to do it a specific way and it there's a timer that has to complete before it happens.

So yeah, shoot first & ask questions later.


I did the Nicholson Electroplating DLC last weekend & thought it was a pretty decent case.  I guess Reefer Madness will be the final one.

[Syt]

Finished this over the weekend.

The good:
Awesome recreation of a large chunk of post-war L.A. with lots of little details. Face capture technology worked fine for me - I played the game in black/white and the atmosphere was amazing. The story is decent for the most part.

The bad:
Half way through the game became a bit boring. I really liked the traffic cases which were rather varied. The murder cases became repetitive, and I hated that even though you had all the trimmings of a serial killing, you had to pin it on one of the suspects, even if I was rather certain that they hadn't done it and had been duped. The finale of Black Dahlia was a bit weak. Vice was where he game almost lost me. I didn't care much for the cases (except Naked City, though that was rather convoluted), and I hated Roy Earle. The game felt more like his story at this point and I was along for the ride. Arson picked up again, fortunately, and brought the story to a decent (if hillariously convoluted) end - I was surprised no "Reinemachefrau" showed up.

The ugly:
The case work mini games become very repetitive:
- search for clues,
- solve little puzzles - the one at Hall of Records was almost hillarious, but a nice demonstration how research worked in the pre-computer days,
- chases by car or on foot
- shoot outs
- interrogations (where the results were not always making sense to me, like sometimes expecting you to select "lie" which then goes off on a remote tangent of the previous statement; also, the "twitches" were sometimes very minute, though that was obviously the point)
Additionally, I didn't really care for Phelps. He was the proverbial stick in the mud and you learn little about him except during the flashbacks, so there's not much identification going on for me. Where the fuck did the affair come from? He avoided talking about his family, but I didn't take this as a hint there were marital problems (possibly related to his war experiences). Kelso was much more relatable.
Finally, the ending was rather unsatisfying (but appropriate given the style they were going for), in that the crooked cops and politicians get away scot free. Heck, the biggest jerkwad holds the eulogy. Only the real estate tycoon and the doctor get what's due (and the poor firebug). The post credit cutscene didn't really help to explain the main plot, and told you basically what you already knew.


Final verdict:
Overall, the game has three things going for it:
- the well researched setting and atmosphere (some anachronisms not withstanding), from the streets to the cars to the apartments and indoor locations. Absolutely amazing.
- the story (for the most part)
- the facial technology (which, while not perfect, did a lot to draw me into the game). I found it worked much better in b/w than in color.
It felt less than a game and more like an interactive story with a few brain teasers/action bits, very linear and always taking your hand when you were stumped. Hell, you can skip the action scenes if you fail them too often, and still make it through the game if you botch up every single case. Though considering the huge amount of data in the game (14GB or so with DLC?), I understand why branching storylines or alternative outcomes of cases or even dialogue choices like in Mass Effect weren't an option. They supposedly already cut the burglary and fraud case desks for that reason.

In total I enjoyed the ride, and I may revisit a few cases to get a better score, and maybe complete the auto collection achievement and the street crimes. For the price of €7.49 (Steam Summer Sale) I can't complain.

[Josquius]

My verdict on the game so far-the biggest pile of shit I've ever bought.
Can't get the freaking thing to even work. And googles show I'm not the only one. Very unexpected

[garbon]

[Sheilbh]

I enjoyed it a lot. I thought the whole corrupt developers thing was because it was going for a Chinatown vibe[spoiler] - especially because you end up dead and most of the baddies get away -[/spoiler] which I really liked

[Razgovory]

I enjoyed it a lot. I thought the whole corrupt developers thing was because it was going for a Chinatown vibe[spoiler] - especially because you end up dead and most of the baddies get away -[/spoiler] which I really liked

You Brits are a weird bunch.

[Sheilbh]

What's weird about that?

[DontSayBanana]

My verdict on the game so far-the biggest pile of shit I've ever bought.
Can't get the freaking thing to even work. And googles show I'm not the only one. Very unexpected

This is why I don't try to do console games on PC.  Loved it on the XB360.

[Razgovory]

What's weird about that?

You guys always seem to like it when the bad guys win.  It's like a whole nation of masochists.

[Queequeg]

I enjoyed it a lot. I thought the whole corrupt developers thing was because it was going for a Chinatown vibe[spoiler] - especially because you end up dead and most of the baddies get away -[/spoiler] which I really liked

Yeah, the plot took a lot from Chinatown.