L.A. Noire

Yeah, I picked up LA Noire on the sale too and I've been enjoying it. It has its quirks, I can see why people became disenchanted with it over time, but it's still a pretty good and unique experience in the video game space.

I started playing this last night after picking it up on the steam sale. Its a pretty cool game so far. Runs fine on my PC and the controls are okay I think. I'm really impressed with the face animation technology. This needs to be the new standard in games, it's amazing. So far the game really reminds me of the old Police Quest games I loved back in the day.

I finished this up over the weekend.

The Arson desk really took the game in a different direction.

RoyalApe wrote:

I finished this up over the weekend.

The Arson desk really took the game in a different direction.

I got a few cases into arson and just gave up on the game. Is there a payoff at the end that's worth coming back for?

I've put about 15 hours into it so far, and I must have a long way to go still. I'm really loving it, however, I will get a little frustrated with some of the choices when interviewing people and end up repeating sections. I actually think the original soundtrack for L.A. Noire is my favorite soundtrack of 2011 above Bastion. I'm going to order the regular and remix CDs today.

I figured out which graphics settings are apparently anti AMD. It seems that LOD - performance, shadow quality - balanced, lighting quality - balanced, environment map - balanced is the best compromise. Turning any of those 4 settings above that causes massive dips of 10 or so in FPS for whatever reason, and since the max is 30 which is hard on the eyes as it is, anything below that is just terrible. I had the rest of the settings maxed and none of the other settings seemed to affect the FPS, so it stays at a solid 30. The graphics quality is a little bit worse, but it's okay. I mostly wanted to at least keep the texture quality and facial quality maxed, because that's what you end up focusing on in the game anyways.

gore wrote:
RoyalApe wrote:

I finished this up over the weekend.

The Arson desk really took the game in a different direction.

I got a few cases into arson and just gave up on the game. Is there a payoff at the end that's worth coming back for?

You're probably one case away from being done. Arson felt really short in comparison to the other desks.

I liked some of the revelations in the final case, but the actual "gameplay is over, here's the ending" ending just seemed to fall flat. However, it was enough that it makes me want to replay the game a second time just for the new perspective on Cole Phelps.

Big payoff? Not really, but most of the loose ends get tied up at least.

When I say that the game took a different direction, I mean that most of the other desks had cases that could stand on their own. The Arson desk was more of a way to shove the meta-story to a close.

L.A. Noire makes me sad. I posted a huge wall of text in another thread, but the short version is that the tech and idea are great. They did an excellent job of creating a good world. The gameplay is sometimes...weak. Very frustrating.

The thing is that there are simple solutions to a lot of L.A. Noire's problems, and a sequel could be a mind blowing game. But with Team Bondi's departure, and the overall mediocre sales performance of the title (at least, that's how I remember it), I dunno if we'll get another one. I'd love to see one set in other areas of policing, like the 1960's race riots, the 1990's gang culture era, etc. Who knows if that will happen now, but some TLC could take this from "Flawed but intriguing gem" to "Play this or you have missed an experience".

gore wrote:
RoyalApe wrote:

I finished this up over the weekend.

The Arson desk really took the game in a different direction.

I got a few cases into arson and just gave up on the game. Is there a payoff at the end that's worth coming back for?

I'd suggest going back and finishing up; you're so close! Unless you really were turned off by it, it's worth wrapping up, for sure.

I actually just started playing it again last week. I'm on the Silk Stalking Murder case, Homicide Desk. For me, this is where the game really shines: the cases both here and in the Vice desk are engaging and take some pretty cool turns. Plus, Rusty is the greatest partner of all time. "If I killed every women who served me divorce papers, I'd be a serial killer, too".

When Rusty

Spoiler:

punched that weird chomo type in the rail yard

I fell in love with the game.

I've put about 25 hours into the game and am in the vice section right now. I sure love this game, but MAN are there some huge problems with it. The most recent frustration is the tailing. Either I'm really stupid or it's just a plain broken mechanic. I suppose it could be the former. I just end up failing them as fast as possible so I can skip the action sequence. After trying pretty hard at it, I gave up.

I'm still loving the music, and I ordered the both the regular and remix CDs.

I'm surprised how similar this is to Mafia 2. The pacing and linearity feel very similar. They're pretty much the same game except one is about the Mafia and the other is about detectives.

After 40 hours (I think it was probably more like 30-35 because I left it running once in awhile while I did other stuff), I finished! It was way longer than I expected. I loved the episodic linearity. I don't really see why people would be annoyed with that. It would just be too much any other way for the developers to make and for the players to play. I do understand how people would get annoyed with the repetitive nature of the game because that was actually annoying. Also, the interview system seemed a bit on the broken side to me. I replayed quite a few interviews in frustration. I wouldn't have minded going with it if it weren't for that god damn music cue. Whenever you can't figure out what they are going for and get something "wrong" that stupid cue plays and it makes your heart sink into your stomach. Yuck.

I think the superb score added about 25% enjoyment for me at least. I bought the soundtrack and the remix songs too. I can't get enough of the start screen theme. The graphics worked okay on PC once I figured out the goofy settings that were killing the FPS. I think the overall game would have looked so much better if they could have done it in the engine that Mafia 2 used. That game ran so much better and looked better except for the facial capture stuff.

I didn't realize that the DLC in the complete edition was just added into the main story and found out after I finished. I really liked that Spruce Goose mission.

To top it all off, that ending was tremendously satisfying! It was a total film noire ending with a bit of tragedy to it. I did not expect a great ending. Also:

Spoiler:

The video after the credits was a nice to touch to bring everything full circle. The only other story thing that I think they screwed up on was the Elsa bit. They showed a couple really minor brief scenes throughout leading up to it and then it just dove off a cliff. It definitely made the romance between Cole and Elsa unimpactful. There was a lot more they could have done. For example, I think they could have developed more of a love triangle thing between Cole, Elsa, and Jack. Hey, they gave that part of the story a good shot, and I get what they were trying to do with it. It just needed a little more. Probably could have used a cliche femme fatale rather than the Elsa character.

It's a shame there won't be any more DLC or a sequel of sorts. I would think they could have fixed most of the issues. There are so many settings they could have used. It would be so cool if they could have tried a 1920s England setting for a future game or maybe done something Sherlock Holmes era without being Sherlock Holmes.

I think the problem with LA Noire is that, oddly enough, Team Bondi did too good of a job with the detective story presentation for Cole's story to have much meaning.

RDR is all about John Marston. You're dropped off in the middle of nowhere, and told to hunt down a man that he ran with before the story started. The entire story arc deals with Marston trying to come to terms with his past, while trying to keep his family safe. The entire reason to play through RDR's story is to discover Marston's past, and how he is trying to atone for it.

LA Noire is basically Dragnet: The Video Game. The focus is on the cases themselves, not on Cole or any of the characters. You don't read a Sherlock Holmes story to learn what Holmes was doing during the Afghan war. You're reading the story to see how he solves the case. In LA Noire, you're playing to see Cole solve the case(or fail to solve the case). This removes a lot of personality from Cole, because he's basically the player's avatar instead of a real character in the story.

cube wrote:

LA Noire is basically Dragnet: The Video Game. The focus is on the cases themselves, not on Cole or any of the characters. You don't read a Sherlock Holmes story to learn what Holmes was doing during the Afghan war. You're reading the story to see how he solves the case. In LA Noire, you're playing to see Cole solve the case(or fail to solve the case). This removes a lot of personality from Cole, because he's basically the player's avatar instead of a real character in the story.

I think it can't really decide which it wants to be. You get a sense in many ways that this is a game that just overstepped its reach.

The thing that I feel most frustrated about is how important decisions are up to Cole the character, and I as the player can only sit back and watch them unfold with no way to intervene. It's like watching a train wreck.

Spoiler:

Cole's ultimate downfall from homicide is due to Cole's bad judgment, something that you as the player have absolutely no agency or control over it. Likewise, when Cole fingers the wrong guy (how many times does that happen? it seems like a half dozen) and you know he has the wrong guy, there's again nothing you can do about it.

It goes back and forth between open world, Cole's story on rails, and adventure game style detective work. Every now and then everything comes together, and the game just works, but so often I feel betrayed by one of the elements and the whole thing falls apart.

Picked this up on the xmas sale and am almost done Homicide, I think. I like a lot of things about this game (The acting and animations are fantastic), though some of the gameplay is pretty repetitive - searching for evidence and looking at a never ending stream useless bottles is getting pretty dull. That being said, my biggest frustration is with the "lie" mechanic. I hate the fact that you can't go over the same question twice. I understand the fact that living with the consequences of your actions is a big part of the game, but it breaks the immersion for me to not be able to repeat a question with a suspect and present new evidence. That, and some of the evidence does not at all tie into the lie. For example, in the White Shoe Murder:

Spoiler:

At one point you're interrogating the husband, and you ask him if he knows of anyone who would have a reason to kill his wife. He says no, and looks me straight in the face. I have no reason to doubt him, and no evidence to prove he's lying, so I choose truth, which is apparently wrong. I had no idea what I did wrong so I decided to look it up - apparently, you're supposed to use the cut piece of rope you found in his backyard as evidence. YES, I know that the cut rope is suspicious because it matches the marks on the victim's neck, but we were talking about MOTIVE, not the MURDER WEAPON! Looking at the notes for this dialogue option in the notebook, it says "possible suspects", and there the rope makes sense, but it doesn't make sense with the actual dialogue of the conversation. That's just bad design.

So, I added a bunch of film noire that I haven't seen to my Netflix queue after playing this and happened to start with The Naked City. I was surprised to find that it's the exact plot of one of the DLC cases in L.A. Noire. I looked it up and it's called "The Naked City." Pretty cool homage to a classic film.

Yeah, it's a fun film noire movie that everyone should watch. I hadn't seen it before.

This is what I'm saying, guys. This game and tech can work, but they need a real life detective, and a murder mystery author working together on the actual clues/interrogations.

Means, motive, and opportunity are what you are trying to find. But that's not always how it goes in L.A. Noire, which makes it very frustrating.

Arise Thread!

Picked up the Complete Edition (4 discs on Xbox!) and have been perusing the thread and Zacny's article. Totally agree with the assessment of interrogation, and I've only just finished the Traffic Desk.

Cole: What's your relation to the victim ma'am?
POI: We were just friends. Good friends.
Cole: [doubt] YOU FILTHY WHORE!! I KNOW YOU'RE LYING, AND I'M GONNA GET THE WHOLE LAPD UP IN THIS BEYOTCH AND TEAR YOU A NEW ONE!
POI: Ha! Where's your evidence?
Cole: Thank you for your time ma'am. Here's my card if you think of anything else.

But the atmosphere and presentation are great, the facial animation tech is amazing, and the controls are leaps and bounds above GTAIV, so it's keeping me engaged. I'm also very impressed with the Street Crime side missions. They all feel very unique, even though they clearly break down into doing one of the main 'gamey' mechanics (chasing, shooting, driving).

Keep in mind that originally the three options were "Coax, Force, and Lie" instead of "Truth, Doubt, and Lie", makes more sense that way.

http://gamerant.com/la-noire-differe...

Well I'm sort of enjoying this. Not the gameplay but just seeing where the story goes. I've more or less given up on doing well at the interrogations. After reading up on all the advice here and elsewhere I'm still ending most cases with one or two stars. Not sure what it is I'm not "getting" about the system but I may as well just press buttons at random for all the good it does me.

strangederby wrote:

Well I'm sort of enjoying this. Not the gameplay but just seeing where the story goes. I've more or less given up on doing well at the interrogations. After reading up on all the advice here and elsewhere I'm still ending most cases with one or two stars. Not sure what it is I'm not "getting" about the system but I may as well just press buttons at random for all the good it does me.

I started doing the interrogations with a walkthrough for much the same reason, and found that it improved my enjoyment of the game. Not getting the interrogations right can mean that you miss out big chunks of story, which is why I went that route rather than just picking at random.

Sonicator wrote:
strangederby wrote:

Well I'm sort of enjoying this. Not the gameplay but just seeing where the story goes. I've more or less given up on doing well at the interrogations. After reading up on all the advice here and elsewhere I'm still ending most cases with one or two stars. Not sure what it is I'm not "getting" about the system but I may as well just press buttons at random for all the good it does me.

I started doing the interrogations with a walkthrough for much the same reason, and found that it improved my enjoyment of the game. Not getting the interrogations right can mean that you miss out big chunks of story, which is why I went that route rather than just picking at random.

Yeah, I kind of did that too. I'd try to make it through without but kept the walkthrough close, and when I thought something like "okay I know that isn't true but I'm not sure whether doubt/lie is appropriate" I cheated.

I agree with you guys and wish I would have used a walkthrough. It's that damn failure music that's the problem. It's too good at making you feel like a, wait for it, failure.

So my previous play-through fizzled out when I started getting into Tribes: Ascend earlier this year. However, I'm back into it hard. I just got to the Ad Vice desk, and man, I'm reminded right from the get-go how much I hate Roy Earle. He's a great character, but he's little more than a piece of trash with a badge. I always try to find some redeeming quality in any character - game, movie, or otherwise - but with Earle, I just want to run him over with his fancy car and toss him in the tar pits.

I miss Rusty and Captain Donnelly. =(

Yeah, he's the character I despised most. I think Albert Lynch was my favorite partner, during the Arson desk.

Finbarr.

I decided to ignore all side missions and avoid all driving where possible and as a result I'm enjoying the game a lot more. I guess that it doesn't really work as an open world game for me but as an interactive movie it's a lot of fun.

Finally finished and really loved the ending and the post credits cut scene.

Did anyone else

Spoiler:

Burst through the the fire and insurance bosses bedroom door...

...and get a really really horrible surprise

strangederby wrote:

Finally finished and really loved the ending and the post credits cut scene.

Did anyone else

Spoiler:

Burst through the the fire and insurance bosses bedroom door...

...and get a really really horrible surprise :-(

Remind me, what happens?

Nicholaas wrote:
strangederby wrote:

Finally finished and really loved the ending and the post credits cut scene.

Did anyone else

Spoiler:

Burst through the the fire and insurance bosses bedroom door...

...and get a really really horrible surprise :-(

Remind me, what happens?

Spoiler:

13 year old girl in his bed