Unfinishable
God, hype can be fatal.
Sixty dollars, I spent on this game, or an entire day's weeping in a bathroom stall at the Law firm where I do paralegal work. It is simply unnecessary that L.A. Noire be so middling, but so it is. An expensive gimmick for everybody involved. Echoes of Jurassic Park: Trespasser- only this time, to its credit, the gimmick works, which is to say that the faces look good.
I did not finish L.A. Noire, but I stuck with L.A. Noire, far beyond the point where I was having any fun, and I become dully aware that I am only ever so-mechanically engaged.
I don't care what anyone says- this is not a game of depth or variety, with points for critical thinking and moral action. It features breathtaking facial animation plastered to a simplistic and sometimes maddeningly irrational interrogation system. It features formulaic and all-too-sparse gunplay and Studebaker chases. It features a meticulously rendered Los Angeles with no incentive for exploration and no opportunity for interaction. It features a story that is at best thinly apparent and fails to culminate. This game is so average, I'm more offended than if it were just BAD. Here it lacks the sense of grandiose failure that can sometimes make things, you know, interesting.
I am offended, actually, that so little thought was put into making this game immersive. How am I to make sense of its critical acclaim? The game is simply not entertaining. I suppose it is functional enough to carry you through its needless length.
This is where I admit that I quit after the homicide desk. Or maybe it was a case from the end of the homicide desk. All I know is, I refused to be bored any longer. I saw what I was doing and I wondered why- why am I still picking up lipsticks? Why am I running around waiting for a vibration? Why does every case unfold the same way? Why is Phelps barking something totally unrelated to the response I chose in an interrogation? The video game community has picked up on these things, but seems to present them as merely funny or forgivable instead of debilitating.
I could not finish this game, because it was not even thoughtful enough to be short.
