Well, its been a month and a bit since Portal 2 came out, so I was ready to be wowed again by the second game to drop on my most anticipated list for 2011. Firstly I forgive Rockstar for releasing the game in Australia two days after the US even though it was developed in Sydney, cos I’m just a nice guy, but as I sit here listening to the free Portal 2 soundtrack, it’s kinda apparent that LA Noire didn’t have much of an impact on me. It might be because I’m too dumb, I thought the game was well made, but nothing special. In this article I will go through the negatives I experienced in the game, if people think I’m hating on it then don’t, I’m just going through what I found was wrong. Correct me on it if you want, write your own fanboy article if you want, be my guest.

Before I properly start, this article will judge the game for game’s sake and not on the fact that Rockstar published it or Team Bondi developed it or SCEA originally funded it before Rockstar bought it. That’s just arbitrary, the game is what is actually important about LA Noire.

I played LA Noire on PS3. It took me 24 hrs of game time to get through the main story, play all the Street Crime side missions and achieve 45% trophies (unfortunately including trophies from DLC missions which I can’t get on PSN yet due to the Store still being down).

First up, if you haven’t bought the game and are worried that the game wont look like the screenshots and the trailers, then fear not because it looks just as pretty… Alright that should be enough being nice, time to go nasty.

This game will be great as a present if you know anyone who wants to spend most of the game failing. Even by the end of the game I’d be dished out with 2 stars out of 6 because I failed most interrogation questions. I even knew what I wanted to do in the questions, but picking ‘Lie’ instead of ‘Doubt’ because I misunderstood evidence. I think that happened wayyy too much for me to take it as an error on my part.

It was unclear whether some evidence would be relevant because they don’t note all the details of the pieces of evidence in Phelps’ journal. For example you will find a list of names and Phelps will note it in his journal in a very basic form so when the time comes to interrogate the suspects, it’s difficult which person the list would be relevant to or if it would be relevant to the case at all.

And speaking of names, Team Bondi assumed that my memory was immaculate. I have trouble remembering names in real life, so it doesn’t help that each case in LA Noire requires you to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the suspects names, then after the case is over you have to forget them and remember a whole other set of names in the next case. Then they go and make references to previous cases (like during specific Street Crime side-missions) expecting you to remember who people they are out of a collection of at least 50 names and faces from past cases. I just ended up letting it skim over my head as there was no way in the world that seeing a former suspect for 5 seconds was adequate time to remember what he was accused for and which case(s) he was in.

They used ‘revolutionary’ facial capture technology (which everyone would know by now) and assumed that you’d be able to remember faces better that way. I don’t want to sit here and say that it was game that sold entirely on a gimmick alone but, aside from the excellent use of shadows/shadowplay, the facial capture technology was the most impressive part of the game. Plus, I personally don’t think it was a technology properly utilized in the game. To be honest I remember different faces in Final Fantasy 7 for the PS1 better than I can remember and distinguish faces in LA Noire. This probably could have been solved easily by just adding in more close ups of character’s faces which not only familiarize yourself with the character but also enable you to better emotionally relate to them. I suppose they could be excused by saying that their facial models weren’t detailed enough for shots that went any closer than shoulder-to-head, but I’m pretty sure they could have done it.

The hidden vehicles all look awesome and are fast but they aren’t practical because they don’t have a siren or a dispatch radio which, in a game that doesn’t encourage free-roam except for an impossible list of useless collectible film reels, means you wont spend more than a minute enjoying a fancy fast car before ditching it for the stock standard police vehicle. On the topic of sirens, in LA Noire they are pretty much useless if you’re trying to get anywhere fast because 1) traffic stopped at traffic lights will not pull over for you to pass them 2) Moving traffic wont move to the side until the last minute, especially if you are driving fast 3) If you are on the outside lane the moving traffic will still pull over to the side of the road, resulting in them crashing into you 4) cars coming across intersections wont stop or move out of the way also resulting in them crashing into you. In a game that judges you for vehicle damage among other things, that’s a long list of unrealistic elements within the game’s traffic mechanic which shouldn’t have been too hard to get right.

LA Noire claims to be made up of 90% historically accurate buildings. It’s great to see that they are also 90% historically accurately racist toward African Americans and sexist toward women, props to you LA Noire.

Flashbacks seemed like spoilers that dull the main storyline in an attempt to make the game shorter to fit on discs for consoles. They don’t really reveal anything important about the story and just serve as breaks between cases.

Every element in this game that they used just seemed to immerse me less and less emotionally in the story. The game went downhill in the Vice cases after a plot point which stumped me and many other players as to why it happened and what actually happened. For a game that explained everything to the dot, it definitely marked the rest of my experience of the game. I suggest playing the game on repeat during the Homicide missions, which I think is where the game really shined and should have climaxed. Some criticized Portal 2 for being too short, but in my opinion it is the opposite for LA Noire. It will be interesting to see if Rockstar will disown the game as a publisher after the DLC cycle like Bethesda will most probably do with Brink.

Let me know in the comments if you found the same issues as I did, if you think I’m wrong, if I saved you 60 bucks or if this article made you like the game even more because you wanted to decide what you thought about it yourself. Like I said, LA Noire was a decent game, I finished it and the side missions, but I’m just listing the holes I found in the otherwise smooth road. I didn’t mention anything about the graphics or the shooting mechanics because they were good… well the cover system was a little sticky… but the half of the game before you hit Vice was really darn good.

More of my reviews/ideas/thoughts/bizarre at twitter.com/warmanator

I'm your Huckleberry...

One of the titles I was most looking forward to seeing at PAX was Rockstar’s upcoming Red Dead sequel, Red Dead Redemption.  Thankfully, the GHR crew was able to get some face time and hands on with the game.  The Red Dead booth was a popular one all weekend, despite not having any real PAX swag to give away.  Every time I walked by, there was a line. When our 7PM Friday appointment rolled around, we were all eager see what the GTA folks had done.

Problem was, the show floor closed at 7PM.  We were able to get back in and get to the booth for a brief presentation before the PAX enforcers booted us.  Full_Tilt and I went back first thing Saturday during the media hour to get some play time in.  Boy was it worth it.

The game looks really good.  Still using the Rockstar proprietary RAGE engine – graphically it looks better than GTA4, which impressed me.  Obviously with Redemption we’re talking desert cactus, horses and ghost towns compared to Liberty City – but it all looked great.  Playing on a 360, I saw no problems with draw distance or pop-ins.

As far as scale, we’re told that Redemption is bigger than GTA San Andreas.  Yes, let me say that again – bigger than San Andreas.  For those of you that haven’t played it, GTA:SA is one of the biggest games Rockstar has ever made.  You could hop in a plane and it would still take you a while to fly across the map.  Redemption consists of three main areas, each one progressively unlocking as you progress through the main story line.  We also asked about multiplayer, and while Rockstar couldn’t give details, they did confirm that there was multiplayer, and they’re excited about it.  Look for more news next week.

When I finally got my hands on the controller the first thing I asked was how do I get my horse.  Up on the D-pad, and my trusty steed came galloping along.  The horse controls well, no complaints.  Tapping A, just as in GTA4, causes the horse to run.  Mashing A too much will get the horse upset with you and you will be thrown off, so beware.  Just as in GTA, the radar in the lower left showed a letter which represented a contact/mission start point.  I started to follow the path set by the map waypoint marker when I came across a bandit who had stolen someone’s horse and buggy.  Me being the nice guy I am, decided to kill said bandit.  I sped up next to the driver, and clicked in on the right stick to enter dead-eye mode.  Dead-eye is from Red Dead Revolver, the first game in this series, and carries over to Red Dead Redemption.  It is basically “bullet time” – where everything goes into slow motion, and you can carefully pick your targets.  Either shoot a bunch of guys in a row, or one guy a bunch of times in a row, whatever floats your boat.  So I proceed to paint a red x on the bandit (and one accidentally on the horse), and pull the trigger.  Bam bam, back to real time, bandit down, horse slightly perturbed at me (but walking).  I hop on the buggy and return to lady in distress who it was stolen from.  These non scripted events are designed to happen anywhere and everywhere throughout the game.  I got the impression that there is a lot to do.  There could be a train passing by begging to be robbed, or you could stop and shoot at birds, opening a hunting sequence.  Your character can hunt the various wildlife of Red Dead, skin the animals and sell for money.

The Rockstar dev we talked to wanted to convey that Redemption is not simply “GTA4 with cowboy hats”.  One of the things that seem to set it aside from GTA is the character development.  The promos we saw emphasized how you can control your character’s decisions.  Be a bad guy, and make more money, but people are afraid of you.  Choose the nicer path and get accolades from townsfolk.  Reminded me of Fable.  Rockstar is known for it’s interesting and well developed characters, so I’m anxious to see how this aspect of the game plays out.

I handed the controller over to Tilt, and after some awkward fumbling around trying to get on the horse (Tilt has a history with horses in media, ask me some other time) – he was off to the mission marker.  At this point the game really did remind me of GTA4.  Get to the waypoint, talk to guy, watch cutscene, start killing.  The mission was to help a grave robber get his treasure back.  The radar showed red dots for the bad guys, and you methodically worked your way from cover point to cover point, shooting baddies.  The weapons we saw were your standard, pistol, rifle, and shotgun, but it appeared there are more options.  The demo we were playing had unlimited dead-eye mode, which made the mission rather easy.  Tilt and I took turns killing bandits and making it to the treasure to help out our skeevy grave robber friend.

I may be a bit biased, GTA4 is the reason I bought my 360 in the first place, but I am really looking forward to Red Dead Redemption.  May 18th, Redemption is coming for you…

Like Borderlands, The Saboteur is a game I’ve had on my radar for a long time.  Not the typical WWII shooter, The Saboteur has you play Sean Devlin, who has somehow been wronged by a Nazi general.  As Devlin, you set out sabotaging Nazi occupied Europe by joining the French Resistance in order to get back at those pesky Nazis.  The thing that interests me most about this game is the art style.  When you are in a Nazi occupied area, the art style is a black and white film noir (think Sin City) with the occasional yellow (and red ) accents.

From the videos I’ve seen, the gameplay seems to be a cross between Splinter Cell, Assasins Creed, and Call of Duty (or pick any WWII shooter).  There is some stealth to the game, but all of your standard era guns are in there as well, so you’ll have more than piano wire to help you out.  Also of note is Devlin’s ability to climb structures, although I doubt he does the Triple Lindy from the top of buildings like Altair to get down.  Due out December 8th.

I pretty much only play Gears multiplayer in private matches (because I’m bad – not ‘Michael Jackson’ bad, either), so I don’t use the public matchmaking service. I’m reading it’s SLOW. For some people, REALLY slow. Like take your dog for a walk and come back to your 360 and still not have a match slow.

I don’t get it. They released a patch last week, yet problems still persist. How many 360 games have been released with working multiplayer code? Lots I would think. All this from a First Party published game. For shame, Microsoft!

Great news, the cover story Game Informer is Gears of War 2 and we have some new details from the game thanks to a member of the NeoGaF Forums.