04-11-2013, 09:50 AM
L.A. Noire
When this game was first announced, I was really hyped about it. Finally, a adventure game where I could be a detective and solve crimes by interrogating witnesses, finding evidence, and delivering swift justice to the bad guys. I imagined the game was like Phoenix Wright except set in the 40s and the main character was something out of a Tex Murphy game. It would be a few months before I had a chance to experience the dark and violent crime thriller, and at first I was having a good time finding evidence and rotating it around to see the smaller details, then using that knowledge to finger the guy who committed the crime, and taking them down in a high speed chase. Everything was going smoothly until the game removed my tutorial training wheels and gave me my first case in traffic.
I was investigating an abandon car with a missing owner, and the entire dashboard was covered in blood. After sweeping the area for clues and questioning the guy who found the car I started to question the car owner's wife, and this is where L.A. Noire takes a turn for the worse. The interrogating system is borderline garbage. Each interrogation feels like a final exam that I'm never prepared for. Literally every question/topic/thought you present to the witness/suspect/anybody works out like this:
Truth? Doubt? Lie?
Everything that is discussed in this game has to be judged, and sometimes the game makes you judge some information that you don't even know anything about yet; even better sometimes you have to make a call on some of the dumbest lines of dialog like this one, because the game is so heavily dependent on the whole 'poker face' mechanic that you can pretty solve most cases by looking for shifty eyes.
And here's the real kick in the teeth, what happens if you're wrong or second guess yourself? You can't explore that line of questioning anymore; it's blocked out unless you restart from checkpoint. And here is what makes me hate this game, you can't try again or bounce back to the same question nor can you revisit interrogations unless you start over. Also the game is constantly telling you you're wrong by giving sound queues and reminding you of how many questions you got right. Even if I were to go back and work it out, I don't feel rewarded nor do I feel like I'm making any progress. This game tries to combine an adventure game mechanic with some kind of an arcade mechanic and it's doesn't work well at all.
When this game was first announced, I was really hyped about it. Finally, a adventure game where I could be a detective and solve crimes by interrogating witnesses, finding evidence, and delivering swift justice to the bad guys. I imagined the game was like Phoenix Wright except set in the 40s and the main character was something out of a Tex Murphy game. It would be a few months before I had a chance to experience the dark and violent crime thriller, and at first I was having a good time finding evidence and rotating it around to see the smaller details, then using that knowledge to finger the guy who committed the crime, and taking them down in a high speed chase. Everything was going smoothly until the game removed my tutorial training wheels and gave me my first case in traffic.
I was investigating an abandon car with a missing owner, and the entire dashboard was covered in blood. After sweeping the area for clues and questioning the guy who found the car I started to question the car owner's wife, and this is where L.A. Noire takes a turn for the worse. The interrogating system is borderline garbage. Each interrogation feels like a final exam that I'm never prepared for. Literally every question/topic/thought you present to the witness/suspect/anybody works out like this:
Quote:Player: What can you tell me about X?
NPC: (One to two lines of dialog either very straight to the point but wrong somehow or in a vague way/information you can't really judge on and is the truth.)
Truth? Doubt? Lie?
Everything that is discussed in this game has to be judged, and sometimes the game makes you judge some information that you don't even know anything about yet; even better sometimes you have to make a call on some of the dumbest lines of dialog like this one, because the game is so heavily dependent on the whole 'poker face' mechanic that you can pretty solve most cases by looking for shifty eyes.
And here's the real kick in the teeth, what happens if you're wrong or second guess yourself? You can't explore that line of questioning anymore; it's blocked out unless you restart from checkpoint. And here is what makes me hate this game, you can't try again or bounce back to the same question nor can you revisit interrogations unless you start over. Also the game is constantly telling you you're wrong by giving sound queues and reminding you of how many questions you got right. Even if I were to go back and work it out, I don't feel rewarded nor do I feel like I'm making any progress. This game tries to combine an adventure game mechanic with some kind of an arcade mechanic and it's doesn't work well at all.
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TL;DR![[Image: Phoenix_Wright_-_Ace_Attorney_Coverart.png]](/image.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fen%2F7%2F73%2FPhoenix_Wright_-_Ace_Attorney_Coverart.png&hash=4d7e5039bf86d15e1c84a3b3ad1a3b59)