The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

There’s been a trip in the way, and work, and well, I was waiting for all the DLC to come out and such, but I think it’s about time I talk about L.A. Noire. I’ll be doing it in two parts: tomorrow is spoiler day, so if you care about the story, I’ll be talking about it then. Today I’m just going to talk about the mechanics, as I tend to.

I just want to say that what I’ve heard about L.A. Noire has been shockingly mixed. There is a camp that thinks this is one of the best games to come out in a long time (and I am in that camp) and there are those who think it is complete and utter garbage. I will say that I understand the “garbage” side, but it really comes down to a difference in what you want from a game.
The people who don’t like L.A. Noire talk about how un-interactive it is. The story stays mostly the same no matter what you do, and all the actions sequences can be skipped in game, if you fail at them a few times, with absolutely no consequences. This bothers people. Games are about challenge, right? It’s about overcoming stuff like that. Without completing tasks like that, the game is meaningless.
I just really disagree. I play games on easy because I want to be what Battlefield: Bad Company 2 calls a “Content Tourist.” I just want to see what happens and what I can do. If I suck at a driving portion, I don’t want to to be stuck there, and I appreciate them giving me an out. (To be fair, I never took the out, and completed all the action sequences in the game, but I really appreciated the option.) L.A. Noire is also a game that can very easily appeal to people outside of the gaming space. Cara is very interested in it. My mom really got into it when I showed it to her. The fact that they’d be able to complete the game thanks to those skips is a very positive thing to me.

Really, though, I think the main reason people are down on this game is that they were expecting a GTA and got a Phoenix Wright. This game is extremely Phoenix Wright. Everything from gathering clues to interrogating witnesses is right out of Phoenix Wright’s playbook. Of course, the production values are much higher. The world is scarily realized. The characters use that face capture to look very realistic. The menus are contextual, using Cole’s hand moving around the world as a cursor. It’s not the silly anime world of Phoenix Wright, it’s a mostly real world, but the gameplay is the same.
That does create some of the same issues that Phoenix Wright has. For example, you may want to call someone on a lie, but the evidence you want to use is actually used on another statement, and you’re “ahead” of the game’s logic in your own thinking. To be fair, this happens way, way more often in Phoenix Wright than in L.A. Noire, but it’s still there. Beating every single Phoenix Wright game, as well as how the game continues on and gives you consequences for losing, instead of just making you go again until you get it right like Phoenix Wright, makes L.A. Noire cause me no issues, but someone who’s played GTA and not these sorts of games would be easily put off, and I can understand that. They tried to address this with how, when you pick the lie command, there’s a short conversation that makes it very clear what you’re trying to prove with the evidence. “You can’t prove that I knew the guy!” or “How do you know I was at the scene?” That’s good, but not always as helpful as they want.
Similarly, instead of tapping around for hotspots, you’re walking around at random listening for tones to search for clues. This has been described as “boring,” and it is, sort of. But the fun comes from actually finding the clues, and trying to figure out where they fit into the overall narrative. The first time you find some random things that Cole notes in his book, I always sit there and think “hmmm, how is this going to be relevant?” It’s interesting to me. If you don’t find that interesting, I guess that this is just not your game, and that’s fine.

The rest of the mechanics are fine, I guess. The shooting is kind of slippery and off from other third-person shooters, but the game never requires such pinpoint shooting as to make that a real problem. I am terrible at driving (and so fucking glad I could hand the wheel over to my partner most of the time) so I don’t know if the driving controls are awful, or I am. Probably a combination of both, leaning more towards me being awful. Intuition is a good idea, but mostly useless, in practice. I barely used it, and whenever I did, it felt like a waste.

In the end, though, L.A. Noire is a game about following a set story. If you aren’t into that, and don’t want to guide Cole along to see what happens, you will hate the game. Don’t even try it. When I started playing the game, I remarked that this is the highest-budget adventure game I’ve ever played, and that I loved it for it. I still do.