I'm barely kidding here. I'm on the third disc, and I'm wondering if it's even worth my time to see it through. I have six cases left, and I'm just over it. Each case takes about an hour, and if that means I have six hours of this left, I don't know if I'm gonna make it. If this is what it was like to be a detective in the late 40s, I would've let myself get shot just to have some paid vacation.
First of all, the writers are clearly big fans of L.A. Confidential. As well they should be. It's a masterpiece. But did they have to be so blatant about it? There are thousands of other books and films from this era that they could've borrowed from. And yet, the typing when you get to the scene of a crime? Stolen from L.A. Confidential. An Irish department head who calls you 'boy-o'? Facepalm.jpeg. I'm sure they borrowed from other stories from the time, but they made a couple of easy thefts from a very obvious source.
So, how is the gameplay?
Combat? What combat? Mash X and A, profit.
I'm not expecting a deep fighting engine, or someone to stop during a fight and yell 'MORTAL KOMBAT!', but it's so base-level, it could've been done on the NES.
Gunplay? Hope you like the 1911. Half the time, you don't even get to go to your trunk to get a better weapon. At this point in the game, I don't even waste the time to go to the trunk because that's just more time I have to spend playing. Again, I'm not expecting Modern Warfare here, but at least be as engaging as the gunplay in previous Rockstar games. This feels like a big step backward.
Street cases? Meh. They're always popping up when I'm in the middle of something more important. Even worse, they're almost all exactly the same, except that one time I saved some dude from jumping off of a tower. Climb to the top of a church, grab the guy, the end. Then I thought, 'What was the point of that?' Oh yeah, I know: Padded game time.
Pic related -- It's me while playing this game.The framerate is terrible most of the time you're driving or out in the open world. It took Sony 4 1/2 years, but I actually regret buying a game on the Xbox 360. (EDIT: I loaded all three discs onto my hard drive, similar to NIN)
Film reels? I haven't found a single one. Am I doing it wrong? Is there a reason why I should care?
Newspapers? Blah blah blah, bad actor doctor dude, blah blah blah. To quote Stan in the Towelie episode: "Don't care, don't care, don't care."
Lastly, I can't overlook a glaring issue with the story about half-way through the game. I'll keep the spoilers to a minimum, but let's just say that feeling you have that you might be putting the wrong person behind bars? Yeah, it bothered me. And you don't have the option to do any different. For an open world game, I found the lack of freedom in the investigations to be extremely disappointing.
There are plenty of things L.A. Noire does right. The interrogation sequences are strong, even if they're not a step up from the conversation control you have in an action RPG like Mass Effect or even Alpha Protocol. The atmosphere, the look, and the score all are amazing. The mo-cap is fantastic, of course. But those things don't make a great game without the gameplay. I give Rockstar and Team Bondi credit for trying something different, but it would've been a better cable miniseries than a game.
TL;DR -- L.A. Noire is all sizzle and no steak.
I mostly agree with you. I actually did like the Street Cases...they do get better, but most are pretty much the same. Chase random criminal who runs. Why do they always run? The gameplay isn't that great, but from the get go Team Bondi said they were making an interactive movie first, and gameplay second. Except for with the movie part, I'm not sure it would fare too well on Rotten Tomatoes if it was a movie (I like the cable miniseries analogy).
ReplyDeleteMy biggest disappointment was also what I raved about in my first impressions. While I really like driving around 1947 L.A., it's been almost 10 years since Rockstar released GTA III. Why do we still suffer through pop up? And why when I'm walking around (especially in the Police Departments are people randomly speaking to themselves or even worse, a wall? If they are suppose to be speaking to me, maybe they should at least look my direction.
It sounds like I enjoyed the game a lot more than you, but I do agree with most of what you had to say. I did enjoy the main story investigations, and they do get better. Especially once you get to Arson. Which is why I will take the time to get and play the extra DLC cases.