Before anyone calls me a troll or says "What's the point?", I just want to say I don't presume to change anyone's opinion of the game, or tell you that you're wrong or an idiot for liking the game. These are just some personal frustrations I've had with the game, and I'm simply putting them out there as discussion points to see if anyone agrees, and to see other people's thoughts on the game. 

Again, I understand what you're trying to do with the plot, but it's not very fun running around to different locations for two hours just to arrest a guy I know didn't commit the crime.

Too Easy
The game often feels more like an interactive movie than a game. Investigating a crime scene is merely a matter of patience, walking around the area until the controller buzzes and then pressing 'A". Yes, you can turn off the cues, but then you'd just have to walk around constantly pressing 'A" since there are a large number of objects that may or may not be interactive. Moreover, once you do pick something up, the game tells you whether it's important or not. With these two things combined, you can never feel clever or feel like a detective because you are drawing no inferences yourself.

You never actually do any detective work yourself, you simply guide Phelps through his. A good detective game should be about drawing inferences and deducing things yourself, but you're not doing that. The closest you can come is to pick the evidence that counters a specific lie, but again this is ungratifying because the game has already essentially pointed you to the evidence and told you the significance - it really just feels like a mini-game of connect the dots.

Lack of Choice
This fits into the idea of the game being a very guided experience. You never have the option of roughing a suspect up or maybe pushing the suspect in an interrogation. Something as simple as a Bluff option where you claim to have a witness or something would at least allow you to feel some personal control over the course that an interview takes. The Truth, Doubt, and Lie system is pretty cut and dry as it stands.

Things as small as street crimes not being able to be replayed would at least make the world feel more your own. That criminal got away because I screwed up. Instead, the game just loads you back and lets you do it over again until its inevitable conclusion. The most choice I've seen thus far in the game is choosing to charge suspect A or B, which seems like a fake choice given that one of them had a bloody wrench and shirt in his apartment. Who could get that wrong?

Dead City
This is a narrative driven game, and perhaps having less side activities is more realistic, but I can't help but feel like there is some sort of lost potential in the city itself. More so than other open-world games like GTA or RDR, the streets and alleyways really just feel like filler between the game's story locales. Hell, the game doesn't even let you park and walk up to the door; you can be going 80 mph past the storefront and it will snap to a cutscene. It all just adds up to make the city feel inconsequential and lifeless.

Confusing Story
Maybe this is just me (I don't think so, I'm usually the one who follows a thick plot), but I would sometimes lose the thread in the middle of an interview or when going from place to place. Often, I would find myself driving to a location or going to speak to someone just because they were in my notebook. I don't play every case in one sitting, so I can easily forget how one person is related to the case, or where I got their name from. The information in the notebook is often very incomplete, and I don't want to read through pages and pages of the log to get a refresher. A game with this much information needs a more elegant and complete method of of tracking everything.

By the time I was going after the Werewolf, my partner was referring to people who I simply did not remember. The ring belonged to who? The lady in the park? Naked? Killed by a wrench? OK, the first, second, third or fourth one?

Unexpected Dialog
Sometimes during an interview, when I select one of the three options, Phelps says something that I completely was not expecting, or what I had in mind. Instead of thinking like a detective, you're left trying to figure out what the script-writer might have had in mind at the time he wrote the dialog. The same could be said for some pieces of evidence - - maybe the dialog matches the evidence to the lie, or maybe it doesn't.

Story Funnels
One of the most obnoxious things in a game is when it pretends to offer a choice, or an open way to approach a situation, and then suddenly and without warning funnels you into something unexpected. In one of the early cases, I being silly, thought it would be a good idea to arrest the murderer before the accidental hit-and-run driver. Apparently, the game didn't agree, and I got to finish the case being informed "it was too bad I let the driver get away." I believe this happened a couple other times as well. Those are "put the controller down" moments.

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I don't mean to say that everything in this game is bad -- not by a longshot. The city and characters that Team Bondi has crafted are incredibly detailed, and the technology is second to none. I think the facial animations are really a transformative technology in the industry, and I can't wait to see a character as charismatic and likeable as Nathan Drake animated in such a compelling manner.

However, when a game as polished and potential-filled as L.A. Noire stumbles in some area, it just makes it that much more noticeable and frustrating. I respect Team Bondi for taking a bold step in a new direction with a new technology, but ultimately I think the game is better as a proof of technology and academic study than as an actual game. It feels almost like Assassin's Creed, where they pioneered a new style of gameplay and created a solid framework, but it won't be until the sequel that they really flesh it out and make a much more compelling gameplay experience.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the game thus far. I don't think I'm going to finish the game, so I just wanted to get some of my thoughts out now.