Are you playing it?
Why not? Haven’t you read the reviews?
I am playing it. I’m thinking about playing it right now. I can’t wait until the kids have gone to bed. Then I’ll sit on the sofa twitching until my wife lets me play it.
My night job on the Homocide desk is making me haggard in the mornings and needing strong coffee.
I’m sure next time I need a torch I’ll instinctively hold it like a detective (they get taught to hold a torch on the first day, then a torch and gun combo a week later.)
The guy I put in jail on Monday night shouldn’t be there, I know that. His kids an orphan and he’s probably going to get raped.
That’s my fault- it’s eating me up. But I haven’t got time to replay the mission and get him out- there’s other murders to solve, more lives to save.
Anyway, they’re not making another series of “Heroes” so he’s not got a job to get back to.
The thing about L.A. Noire that’s deadly is the pace of it. It’s really chilled out, relaxing and just comfortable to play.
Once you understand the layout of the whole thing it’s very easy to plod through it.
That means that you can, and will, play it all night.
The interrogations are the hardest bit, making them actually quite tense.
The car chases are good fun and only pop up now and again, but the best pursuits are done on foot (and usually rooftops).
Running after people is more fun than chasing them in a car- who knew?!
Now, I’m only about 20% into the game, so these are only my initial thoughts.
This is not a review.
There’s plenty of reviews out there, but hopefully all written by people who have played the whole game (at least once). I haven’t. I’m assuming it’s more of the same with a few surprises and a bit more complexity.
I’m looking forward to it.
Then there will be downloadable content. Whole new cases and killers to crack, with the same great performances but less of the over-arching storyline.
I”m looking forward to them too.
The whole thing kinda reminds me of “Shenmue” which was a classic. It’s because of the relaxed pace of the whole thing and the high production values. Plus the amount of time it sucks out of your life but you still feel it’s worth it.
The whole experience is like playing your way through an HBO boxset, which I imagine is exactly what they were aiming for.
It’s interesting to read the reviews too. I haven’t read them all, but all the really positive stuff seems to come from the mainstream press rather than specialist games magazines/ sites.
Guardian readers everywhere will be talking about it at dinner parties and Charlie Brooker will inevitably be drooling over it on TV soon. Hopefully he’ll wait until he’s finished it.
It’s great to see something so good be a mainstream success. It just goes to show that gamers are a cultured bunch after all.
It’s also a great PR success for Rock Star surely?
Yeah, GTA 5 was brilliant, but Rock Star were still much maligned by (ignorant) non-gamers for warping tiny minds.
Red Dead: Redemption was good, but it’s not on the mainstream radar.
I wouldn’t mind my kids playing L.A. Noire if they were a bit older. It’s not going to traumatize them or turn them violent.
The morality of it is all positive and there’s no fun to be had from killing prostitutes.
It’s got a bit of muff and some swearing, that’s pretty much it so far.
It has gritty characters- some are racist and most are mysogonists, but this isn’t glorified, it’s used as a device to show they are ignorant.
It’s the most PC game on a console.
I would appreciate it if Cole would join me for a drink at some point in the game though- I feel bad for him when I’m drinking whiskey and he’s not.
I’m hoping that the commercial success of L.A.Noire will spawn a wave of decent story-driven stuff. GTA infuenced a lot of publishers to create similar games in its wake and a lot of them were pretty good too.
Hopefully more and more proper actors will be popping up in digital form in console dramas.
If someone could make one that had a strong multiplayer deathmatch bolted on the publishers would be laughing.
Yes, obviously that’s a stupid idea. It’s probably still being discussed in a boardroom somewhere right now….
