I've learned two things about myself while playing L.A. Noire.
1. I'm so OCD that I have to get the best scenario in a game - no matter how many times it requires me to restart a checkpoint or mission.
2. I'm a very bad detective.
So I restarted the game from the beginning because I lost my save file thinking it would be a breeze to make up the cases I had previously completed. How foolish I was... Here I am 14 hours later and still not even to the halfway point. Mind you I've only done 3 sidecases and most of the driving was done by my partner. Yet I'm still on the homicide desk and it doesn't look like I'll finish it anytime soon. So where did all that time go? Well, to put it bluntly - my compulsiveness. I'm just not capable of finishing a case without getting all of the questions right. At one point I literally found myself restarting the same investigation 7 or 8 times because I couldn't get one of the questions right.
Being a human, I choose not to admit it's my fault, but instead I'll blame the game. Some of the logic used in the cases can get very... fuzzy. This is especially apparent when it comes to lies. When you select "Lie" you have to back it up with evidence using the clues. Normally it's obvious which one to use, but sometimes it's so vague and there's so many answers that could work that it just becomes a process of trial and elimination until you stumble upon the right one. Herein lies my frustration.
Therefore in the interest of time and my receding hairline, I've decided to commit a great taboo. I've started using a guide while playing the game. In all the decades I've spent as a gamer, this is the first time I've had to resort to such drastic measures (naturally I don't count using an outside Pokedex for the pokemon games) during my first playthrough of a game. On one hand I hate myself for it, but on the other I really don't want to spend 3 hours repeating the same investigation over and over and over and over again because I picked "Doubt" instead of "Lie."
I can only hope that ultimately this doesn't reduce the impact of the story too much when I finally finish the damn thing.
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