L.A. Noire

Posted: Sat May 28, 2011 2:58 am

I've played through about 5 or 6 hours of this so far, and it's the most fun I've had to date with a Rockstar game. I may actually finish this one. Hell, I may replay this one, as I've screwed up a couple interrogations on this play through, and I may have royally botched the last case. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of effect that may have on the game later in.

For anyone who doesn't know, L.A. Noire is a game set after WW2 where you play as a (shortly into the game promoted) detective given various cases that aren't always as straight forward as they're presented by the office initially. You examine the crime scene for evidence, question witnesses, and then go from area to area linking pieces of evidence to possible suspects. Sometimes they'll run and you'll have to chase them down on foot or drive through the city after them, sometimes they may pull a gun and try to take you out. Depending on how the situation goes, you may end up interrogating them at the police station after bringing them in. When you choose to manually drive (instead of giving your partner the wheel in fast-travel mode) crimes will happen through the city and you can choose to accept the police call over the radio and check it out. These usually send you slightly off course, but only take 5 minutes or so once you get there. There's also a very interesting side-story shown in cut scenes every time you find and read a newspaper. I'm not sure if that's going to be relevant to the overarching plot or just there as more world building, but it's an interesting way to push story without making it mandatory.

There's really so much cool stuff to do, and it's all in the gangster era setting, with a lot of very blatant racism and anti-feminist behavior that the era would have actually had intact. There are a few people that are such complete douches that I'm rooting for them to commit a crime so I have a reason to put them away. It's been a real surprise, and I can't recommend the game enough. Also, to let people know of a deal, Amazon is currently offering $20 in store credit if you buy it from them just like they did for Portal 2.

Joined: Dec 21, 2009 Posts: 339

Awesome game would recommend x 1000

The only things that threw me off was the enigma of Doubt vs Lie when you have evidence that is at least related. Sometimes I thought "no that's not relevant enough" and Lie was correct and other times I thought "haha this is easy" and it didn't prove anything.

And the car chases. Those were pretty awful.

Joined: Mar 20, 2010 Posts: 378 Location: behind you

My friend actually stood in line (well, not really) for the midnight release of this game... We all kind of made fun of him, 'cause as mentioned above there was no one else there...

Might have to check it out now though.

Posted: Sat May 28, 2011 6:10 pm

Hanukkahzomb wrote:

Awesome game would recommend x 1000

The only things that threw me off was the enigma of Doubt vs Lie when you have evidence that is at least related. Sometimes I thought "no that's not relevant enough" and Lie was correct and other times I thought "haha this is easy" and it didn't prove anything.

And the car chases. Those were pretty awful.

I have definitely had some cases where I thought something was related and "Doubt" was the correct choice instead. And yes, the car chases leave something to be desired, mostly because the computer has a horrendous tendency to swerve into an alley and drive perfectly around trash cans and boxes, but the steering on your car makes it very difficult to avoid hitting things.