L.A. Noire

There are few good things to say about LA Noire, but what little there is actually means very much.  LA Noire is, as you probably know, leader in the field of facial motion capturing.  They've managed to record facial animation in a way that surpasses the uncanny valley and for that LA Noire earns praise.  LA Noire began development in 2004 and, sadly, it feels like a first gen 360 title.  The sandbox world is strange and lacking.  There are no areas to visit.  There are barely any car physics.  Often times I've had my car launched into the air by small obstacles.  My car slams into wooden fences like they were brick and grinds across white picket fences like Tony Hawk.  When you get into a car chase (which is roughly 25% of the game) enemy vehicles slip and slide across the road like they were on ice.  Enemies often take bullets without flinching.  Your only options outside of the main missions are finding random hidden cars and locations and a total of 40 "street crime" missions, which all play out exactly the same.  Show up, perp flees on foot or car, and you chase him down.  Phelps is supposed to be a "good guy" and parts of the game reflect this, like pedestrians being mostly unkillable while behind the wheel.  By the end of the game my Phelps had racked up dozens of kills.   In the end the sandbox elements of LA Noire feel like either an afterthought or merely a checkbox on a feature list.  If I had to guess, either the sandbox elements were done very early in development or they were added in to appeal to "GTA" fans.  For as much work to have been expended on facial animation, the rest of the game is robotic and jerky.  Jumping in and out of cover is not graceful and Cole's arms move like machines on a pivot when picking up and examining objects.  Which leads me to... 
 
Interviewing suspects is fine and dandy.  Guessing the correct answer to suspect responses proves to be intense.  Evidence gathering, on the other hand, is insanely tedious.  What's worse, even though there are often times dozens of items to pick up and inspect, when Phelp's picks up a clue that isn't related to the crime, the game immediately tells you so.  Why even bother playing a sleuth if there's no chance of getting the wrong lead?  Evidence gathering itself consists mainly of walking around a room and rubbing Cole's crotch against the environment until the controller rumbles and you can press A.  To top it off, often times items won't trigger correctly until you twist and turn them in a proper manner, even if the evidence it blatantly obvious. 
 
Finally, the story is tragically bad in many aspects.  Despite LA Noire's core gameplay allowing you to often make a choice between perps and how to prosecute them, this is merely the illusion of choice as events during each overall arch's end game are predetermined from the outset so, in the end, your detective work means nothing.  At one point there's a twist involving Phelp's home life, but the first 3/4s of the game never even once reference Cole's personal issues.  Again, it's disappointing to do so much in game only to have something completely unexpected drop out of nowhere in order to keep the story moving along.  It's hard to develop an emotional attachment to a character when there is absolutely no character growth for a large portion of the game.  LA Noire simply does not focus on it at all.   There is a very interesting subplot involving a doctor and his student, and this plot eventually crosses with Phelps himself.  I found the characters in these short vignettes to be considerably more fleshed out and important than Phelps himself.   
 
Overall I'd say LA Noire is a pretty big disappointment.  The only thing it does remotely "new" is the facial animation and the interrogation process.  Everything else feels like a sandbox game from last decade and it's faults are glaringly obvious.    
 
With that said, Team Bondi did some amazing work with their facial animation.  They nailed it to such a degree that some minor celebrities are instantly recognizable and their personalities absolutely shine.  Ten Item's or Less' Carl and Heroes' Matt Parkman are featured.  
 
I'll keep an eye on Team Bondi.  They have the grounds to do something great.  LA Noire isn't it.