Oh how disappointing.

The music is awesome. The acting is fairly decent as is the vaunted facial mo-cap.

Beyond that the graphics are average and filled with draw in problems and framerate problems.

The gameplay is one half entirely redundant and the other half, the interviewing suspects and witnesses parts, broken and repetitive. It's broken because the game gives you three choices: truth, lie or doubt. The latter is where the problems appear. You need to have gathered evidence to accuse someone correctly of lying, even if they look as shifty as humanly possible (and they do), otherwise you have to doubt them. Unfortunately it's a crapshoot. Sometimes the game gets it wrong, or hides clues from you because of the order of places you visited. There is a set order of scenes that the game wants you to progress through per case, unfoprtunately the order is invisible and you can choose which to head to first, depending on which you've learned about. Sometimes you end up advancing the story without knowing ahead of time making it impossible to go back to an earlier locale to check for more clues or interview a suspect.

This usually involves a chase, which is a pointless and repetiotive exercise where after a certain period you win.

Sometimes there's a gunfight in which you can just stand there and shoot the guy dead. No challenge.

And that's the game. One of the most overrated games i've ever seen.

It's a rockstar game what did you expect? other than the red dead games they havent really done much of note in years that another game developer has'nt taken and improved upon by removing the usual broken rockstar driving or some other aspect.

I had hoped it wouldn't be a giant mess.

Unfortunately...

I'll probably still get it when it goes budget...but any chance of buying it anytime soon passed when inFAMOUS 2 came out.

I usually try to avoid buying games for "new" prices, but I don't know if I can resist...=(

theres actually nothign out im interested in till around october(then theres a ton between then and march) so im taking my time to finish up older stuff ive had waiting for awhile...stuff like this game i'll wait till my brother picks a copy up then have a play once he's done.

I was thinking about it...but meh.  I like noire, but could never get into Rockstar games.

The new Deus Ex is awesome, though, so I'm just waiting for that.

Quote from: Broken-Serenity;463599theres actually nothign out im interested in till around october(then theres a ton between then and march) so im taking my time to finish up older stuff ive had waiting for awhile...stuff like this game i'll wait till my brother picks a copy up then have a play once he's done.

I'm still working through Castlevania: Lord of Shadows, Prototype and Dragon Age (Awakenings, Golems of Amgarrak and Witch Hunt), (oh, and the "evil" playthrough on inFAMOUS) so it's not that I NEED anything new right now.

I know 6 people that have la noir and all of them completely love it.

I think it's pretty good. I've been playing it with the Black and White mode on and it makes me very happy. The pure videogame craftsmanship on this title is pretty stellar.

I like that the new face tech is not for just looking pretty, but is actually used in the gameplay mechanics as a tell for lying characters.

Quote from: Cranewings;463665I know 6 people that have la noir and all of them completely love it.

More fool them. It's insanely boring. The whole thing is the same thing over and over. Searching for clues is tedious: walk around the crime scene and press a. What makes it worse is that you can interact with almost everything in the crime scene as if it were a clue. IE, when you find something you can pick up the game gives you an audio clue. You then pick it up, whether it's a bloodstained book of matches (every fucking time) or a bottle of beer. Only then will the game tell you if it has any relevance. It's so pointless and tedious. It would have been much better to just not have the player able to pick up stuff that was of no use or relevance.

Phelps moves like a beached whale. The camera is dreadful. Driving is painful (and yes i know the cars are old). You can be en route to the crime scene and then get a prompt for one of the 40 side quests (which are themselves land and simple) which will more than likely be back the way you came across the ENTIRE city. Ugh. You can get your partner to drive - and you will, but not while driving.

The only action comes from shootouts (which are again piss easy and bland, even though the ai is not bad) or chases, which are scripted and utterly, utterly redundant: you will not catch the suspect until the game lets you. Early on in the game you learn to fire a warning shot by aiming consistently for a few seconds which forces the suspect to stop and give up. You cannot use it again throughout the rest of hte game. WHy?

The interviews are just broken. The questions are poorly worded at times, pertain to things you have no evidence for, and are given answers that are equally ambiguous. Some of the suspects respond totally in contradiction to the nature of their answer: they might be telling teh truth, but look shifty to the point of caricature, or vice versa. Sometimes you meet people on the fly (go to a bar to look for evidence and suddenly a random patron bolts leading to his arrest) and have to then, with no evidence or knowledge of who they are, question them. If you fail interviews you will likely miss clues you need to complete subsequent interviews and so you end up bludnering your way to the end of the case in a very unsatisfying way. The problem stems from the option to doubt what they are saying. It makes everything too ambiguous.

And it's the same thing over and over and over and...

Quote from: KrakaJak;463668The pure videogame craftsmanship on this title is pretty stellar.

I like that the new face tech is not for just looking pretty, but is actually used in the gameplay mechanics as a tell for lying characters.

The craftmanship is pretty poor. The facial mo cap is certainly impressive, but completely unecessary. ME looks just as good; Oblivion had the same level of facial expression. Sure this looks pretty realistic, but given how the actors play some of the parts it's no help at all. The game is predicated on reading tells, but those tells are often very misleading. It's just sloppy.

Beyond that the game has serious framerate problems and the drawin speed is almost as bad as the original Driver back on the ps1 where you can see the city draw in as you move through the city.

There is more atmosphere in the title sequence than in the game (including in black and white). 99% of the cases are conducted in sunny daylight (yes I realise it's LA). They missed a trick; i want to be pacing the streets, casing the dives, chasing the perps, and deciphering the broads in the dark and the rain. Instead I get to chase old men in cars in the height of summer with my partner doing nothing but telling me what to do and then berating me for it ("c'mon Cole he's getting away", "look for clues, i'm just going to stand here").

This isn't a game. They rushed it. It woudl have been better if they'd have focussed on one aspect rather than pretend there's an open world aspect and given a huge, pointless, city to drive around in - and you have to in order to complete the Homicide desk (one big yawn).

QuoteOblivion had the same level of facial expression.

What is bullshit? LA Noire represents all the dullest experiences in gaming over the last few years tied together with a very ropy detective aspect.

I've been enjoying LA Noir. The shoot-outs are lacklustre, I'm rubbish at driving (much to the joy of my children, who look forward to me crashing and crunching my way round the streets of LA), and I invariably ask the wrong questions during interrogation, but there's something about the game I've found to be rather charming and very immersive. I look forward to the cut scenes and seeing how the story develops, and I've really enjoyed the way that you start to like certain characters and dislike others. And the music is just great! Horses for courses, I guess...

The Rockstar games are recapitulating the history of tabletop roleplaying games. LA Noir is the birth of the storygame.