L.A. Noire

In GTA, gameplay defines the story. In LA:N, story defines the gameplay.

R* has mentioned from the get-go that LA:N is NOT a sandbox game.

Reviews are opinions, and if you disagree with a review, that is perfectly fine. Some people prefer a tight story, some people prefer open gameplay.

Wrong. Reviews are arguments constructed by evidence and interpreted through the reviewers' tastes.

Learn the difference.
 
playing it on 360 and it has bad texture poping problems and one instances of heavy flickering on certain items
 
I bought LA:N knowing that it's not GTA and I'm enjoying the game. I like the focus of a linear story because in GTA I usually just roam around and trying different things and not doing the main plot at all. The flip side of a focused story is that its linearity doesn't really have a lot of replay value unless one wants to complete and collect everything.
 
Aren't reviews sort of worthless now that you can watch people stream games?

I don't have a console so I can't play it, but watching people stream this on justin.tv is pretty entertaining.
 
The game is fantastic for what it intends to be; It's not a GTA. It's not a Halo. Like a lot of people have said already, it's a Sam and Max style game with hands down the best facial animations I've seen in any game.

I'm into the homicide detective squad now, not nearly done with the game yet. My biggest complaint so far is the lack of sandbox-style play...I was hoping for more interaction with pedestrians and vehicles. As it is, you get in a car, you smash things up, it's almost impossible to kill pedestrians, and the cops don't do anything to you for doing it. In fact...cops don't do anything in the game at all. Lame!
 
I'm enjoying the game. Level 17 and mid Homicide section. It's fun for what it is. I grew up and live in LA so it's cool to see some of the known sites back in the day.

They seem to love to put the side crime missions as far from the main plot locations as possible so I always find myself deciding between driving like a madman to a far off location for some exp or just continuing the plot on the other side of town.

I haven't found a movie reel yet but haven't been looking either. I have around 30 of the cars found so far. It's cool to recognize some of the actors faces in the characters... I seem to be missing some que's during interrogations and I used to be a cop in the Army, lol... but I keep mixing up doubt and lie... I think it will be fun to retry the game shooting for 100% on questions.
 
I played a few hours in the free roam mode last night. Did all the street crime that I missed before, got all the landmarks and started in on the film reels. Was fun to take a break from solving cases.
 
I'm enjoying it so far. It really is a combination of old school PC adventure games, GTA, and a little bit of modern story-driven games like Heavy Rain.
Shooting is a little clumsy, but I have no issues with anything else.
Watching the people animate is still pretty amazing to see, even after playing for a while.
 
Lost interest. Sold it.

Heavy Rain did this concept a lot better.
 
I don't know how many hours in I am now, but at least the cases have some continuity at this point, which is a big improvement.

The ridiculousness of some of the interrogation choices is pissing me off. Was there some design choice to only allow you to interrogate someone once? If you find out something new, it's too late? Seems pretty lazy. The other thing is sometimes you will accuse someone of lying with great evidence, and then they are all "lol no" and what you were supposed to confront them with is worse evidence.

Me: "You're lying, asshole. You were there."
Them: "lol no, prove it."
Me: "They found your gun at the scene of the crime."
Them: "Your wild accusations are going no where."

If you sub in "some guy says he saw you," then they are all "lol you got me."
 
I do find it weird that there both "you're lying" & "you're hiding something" options when in most cases it's pure luck which is the correct choice. Often times the dialogue for them two is nearly identical as well. I understand that you're supposed to watch their manner, but it is a little lame to have so much riding on a 50/50 lucky choice.
 
I do find it weird that there both "you're lying" & "you're hiding something" options when in most cases it's pure luck which is the correct choice. Often times the dialogue for them two is nearly identical as well. I understand that you're supposed to watch their manner, but it is a little lame to have so much riding on a 50/50 lucky choice.

Supposedly, the difference between Doubt and Lie is that you can disprove a lie. The problem is what I said about--a gun at a scene might not disprove it, but someone saying they saw a guy will. Makes no sense.
 
It's not pure luck. When they are lying and you can PROVE they are lying, either by a witness or a piece of evidence that ties them there (their gun, etc). Doubt is used when you can tell they are lying, but have no evidence to prove they are doing so.

A gun won't prove anything UNLESS you can prove that gun is theirs (hence why you usually look at the model/serial #, then go to a local gun store to find out information on it or such), then you can tie it to that suspect.
 
I like both types of games, sand box and linear A-to-B... depends on the story and gameplay. I did assume LA Noire was more open ended, but didn't see any gameplay videos so I wasn't sure. Still, looks like a cool game I'd like to play it soon.
 
Reviews are opinions, and if you disagree with a review, that is perfectly fine. Some people prefer a tight story, some people prefer open gameplay.

Reviews are arguments constructed by evidence and interpreted through the reviewers' tastes.

Reviews contain both the reviewer's opinion of the game (like/dislike) and why they feel that way. It's perfectly fair to criticize a review if the reasoning doesn't match score.

"It's great", is not a review. It's only an opinion because it doesn't tell me why it is 'great'.

"It's great; I loved all the fedoras" is a bad review because it's not useful to me unless I have a strong opinion about fedoras. For all I know the reviewer just has a fedora fetish and that's the only reason they liked the game.

"It's great; the fedoras make this a real chore to play" is a worse review because the opinion, 'great', does not match the the argument, 'chore'.

For whomever gave the dictionary definition of 'opinion'
Review - a critical article or report, as in a periodical, on a book, play, recital, or the like; critique; evaluation.
 
It's not pure luck. When they are lying and you can PROVE they are lying, either by a witness or a piece of evidence that ties them there (their gun, etc). Doubt is used when you can tell they are lying, but have no evidence to prove they are doing so.

A gun won't prove anything UNLESS you can prove that gun is theirs (hence why you usually look at the model/serial #, then go to a local gun store to find out information on it or such), then you can tie it to that suspect.

Proves a hell of lot more than "some guy thinks he saw you there," which supposedly disproves the lie.
 
Guys, stick to the topic, which is L.A. Noire, not the "What is the definition of a review and the definition of opinion" thread.

I'm somewhat encouraged by what you guys are saying here about the actual game, it sounds worth picking up, probably not at full price, but $30-$40 sounds pretty reasonable. I will probably pick it up at that price point and give it a go.
 
I love it, but they completely screwed up the free roam mode. There's only 40 possible missions you can do in the "free roam," when they EASILY could have done randomly generated missions. Just have preset starting and ending points, choose one each randomly and start a chase. Would have had a lot more replay value if they did this.

Other than that, it's a great game.
 
I think Stiler's comments on the mechanics are right (proof vs. no proof) but unfortunately it doesn't really always work that way in-game. Half the time your "proof" is full of holes and based upon how the conversations play out, often times you end up referring to more solid evidence based on a whim.

The side missions seem to repeat a lot when you're in the normal "patrol the streets" mode. Hopefully getting those last few missions doesn't require hours and hours of waiting for the right dispatch (or worse, replaying the same missions over and over).

Minor nitpicks, though. I do like the game.
 
It all goes downhill when you leave homicide. The narrative...all of it.

IMHO at least. Glad I sold off mine and got most of my money back.

Tons of potential here. Great concept. Not great (IMO) execution. I think if they'd cooked on this thing and brought it out big in time for holidays it would be a different story and be something that people would be playing and talking about for a LONG time after that.

If they ever make a part 2, I bet it's going to be something special but for me this game just felt like a very fascinating near miss.
 
Tons of potential here. Great concept. Not great (IMO) execution. I think if they'd cooked on this thing and brought it out big in time for holidays it would be a different story and be something that people would be playing and talking about for a LONG time after that.

This game was in development for seven years, I don't think a few months would have changed anything. I personally am enjoying it though; I'm almost at the end.
 
I'm still enjoying the game. I've become a bit better at reading people but I still botch investigations/accusations now and then. It isn't my game of the year for 2011 but it's still fun.

I'm still with my second partner, so I'm not too far thru the game. I do like the side stuff, hidden cars, street crimes, bombing these 1940s boats off amazing jumps, etc.

I thought the game was going to be all wrapped up in this game but I have put probably 20 hours into Minecraft and about 5 or 6 into LA over the last week or so.
 
if you were waiting to play this game
you can get this game for $40 on amazon today
PLUS if you don't mind amazon credit you can also submit a "trade in" to amazon for $37.5 ( which trade in price is good for a week since submission of request)
gives you full weekend to play this game before you have to ship it out next tuesday
$2.5 for L.A Noire i'm down
 
It all goes downhill when you leave homicide. The narrative...all of it.

agree. I gave up after homicide and sold it to get my my money back. Fun for a while, then it's just repetitive.
 
As everyone else has said, it's fun for a while, but gets boring and repetitive very quickly
 
I sincerely hope Rockstar has something more compelling than this coming out before the year is done.
 
yea i agree with you guys...
not that fun after homicide..
o well at least i'm only spending $2.50 on this
 
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