Sunday 3 July 2011

L.A. Noire; a first impressions review from a not very serious gamer

First off, thanks for all the positive comments regarding curry, I shall endeavour to share the final recipe and results with you next Saturday!

I spent a good portion of yesterday afternoon (when I wasn't looking for curry recipe's lol) playing L.A. Noire. I've not spent half as much time on it as Mister Ben has, and in a way it's to my detriment...many of the story lines I'm passing through I already know from overhearing it as he played it out, and as such it's felt like a bit of a slog as I scamper to catch up somewhat into the part where I decided to take a bath/do some knitting and was too engrossed to pay much attention to the tv so that there'd be new stuff.

I know it's probably not at all in best practise to review something I haven't finished yet but now I'm finally playing it off of my own steam it doesn't seem like a bad place to tell of my first impressions.

I'm not a huge gamer, and when I do play anything that doesn't involve lording it over pretendy peoples lives like a pixel overlord (or overlady?) or building businesses or cities, it's usually the kind where I can run up to dragons and promptly bop them over the head with a sword. I can't shoot for toffee, and often end up dead and twitching on the ground before I've even had the chance to level up. I don't like shooty games because I can't do them. In fact I believe my brother heard me swear for the first time in his life (at least to my knowlege!) the first and only time we played Left for Dead together. I'm just not good at such games.

So L.A. Noire appealed to me. I understood of course there would be some action...I may not like out and out shoot-em-up's but come on, a cop game without guns? That would be too much, even for me. But the overall theme was more sedate, its big selling point being that it involves questioning eyewitnesses and using your intuition to read their facial expressions to tell whether or not they are being entirely honest with you.

When I first read this, I was intrigued. What I imagined was a game with a scope similar to that of Mass Effect or Dragon Age, with a story line which, depending on your correct or incorrect interpretation of the evidence and interviews, could go various different paths. It seemed a logical conclusion, in my head. If a detective in real life fails to get all the evidence, a suspect walks free, and there are possible consequences. I imagined a great show down at the end where everyone was in on a great conspiracy in which you have to do battle against each and every one of the suspects you failed to prosecute succesfully.

Well, obviously I'm not at the end yet! However, the reality of the games storyline is far from what I imagined.

Don't get all the evidence? Misinterpret your witnesses body language? That's ok, because your boss sends you back in to interrogate them until you get a confession. At the end, the only real consequence is your score, with cases given up to five star ratings.

If you are a points and achievements collector then this is all very well, but in reality it makes the whole game very linear, when the possibilities of this new technology of which it boasts mean it could be so much more interesting.

Of course, other Rock Star games have pretty linear storylines too, so I shouldn't really have expected anything else, but the monotony is broken up somewhat in games like GTA and Red Dead Redemption by the open world. So far there isn't very much of that in L.A. Noire, though I understand that once the main storyline is complete there's more chance to drive around LA and "collect" any small side cases that you've yet to complete. But it's not quite the same as being able to pull up to town and randomly engage with a passer by who mayhap has a mission for you.

Perhaps because of this very linear game play, which I'll admit is probably a fault only because of my own personal taste in gaming (which, as explained before, isn't exactly wide in its range or sophisticated at all) what L.A. Noire provides, essentially, is a series of crime episodes, as if played out as a series on TV, in which you are basically the driver. You will not loose, however frustrating having to go back to re interview your suspects may ultimately be, but you may well not experience the entire story if you do not, for example, pick up all of the clues.

I can't deny I'm a little dissapointed. It isn't what I expected, but perhaps I should have read up on it more or read more reviews. Aside from my own niggles and annoyances, the storyline itself isn't bad at all, and I am chomping at the bit to see more of that. Perhaps by the end of it all I'll feel a little less frustrated and will have enjoyed taking part in the story.

But even if I do want to go back and pick up more achievements by the time I've finished, I can't see that I'll get any joy at all from replaying it.
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1 comment:

  1. It sounds somewhat like the Phoenix Wright series. If you have a DS, I should lend them to you. They are great fun.

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