@FilipHolm said:

The people who prefer fun and diverse gameplay before story didn't like it, which is completely understanable. I for one loved it, but I'm more of a story kind of guy.

@Slaker117 said:

@Blackout62

Because once again Rockstar shafted the player by killing off the likeable character and replacing him with some D-bag named Jack.

Cole was a likable character?

This. Kelso was a far more likable character than Cole. Man, I just hated him, what a dick

I felt it was fresh he wasn't an heroic archetype, kinda been there too many times, but a man dedicated to his duty but capable of making mistakes. But anyhoo, that's a matter of opinion anyway, all in all I think the game was great because it was hard not to form an opinion of someone.

@Catfish666 said:

@FilipHolm said:

The people who prefer fun and diverse gameplay before story didn't like it, which is completely understanable. I for one loved it, but I'm more of a story kind of guy.

@Slaker117 said:

@Blackout62

Because once again Rockstar shafted the player by killing off the likeable character and replacing him with some D-bag named Jack.

Cole was a likable character?

This. Kelso was a far more likable character than Cole. Man, I just hated him, what a dick

I felt it was fresh he wasn't an heroic archetype, kinda been there too many times, but a man dedicated to his duty but capable of making mistakes. But anyhoo, that's a matter of opinion anyway, all in all I think the game was great because it was hard not to form an opinion of someone.

Sure, it was great for the plot and story and so on, I wouldn't want him to be any other way. I just didn't like him as a "person" :p But it added to the experience so to speak

I haven't read the thread, so what I've said has probably already been posted but:
 
The homicide section of the game was freaking awful. Like one of the worst things I've experienced in a game. Almost every case was the exact same thing, you followed a trail of leads until you got to a "bingo look this guy has a stash of blood covered knives". It gave the impression that none of the questioning/evidence gathering really mattered, because as long as you could barely scrape by enough info to get to the next investigation area, the case would solve itself when you stumbled onto the collection of blood covered knives.
Then there's the whole gimmick where it turns out:

@FilipHolm said:

Sure, it was great for the plot and story and so on, I wouldn't want him to be any other way. I just didn't like him as a "person" :p But it added to the experience so to speak

Ah right, fair enough. I guess I'm with you there actually, wouldn't be my first choice to go have a beer with after work. Though I guess all the cops could be a bit self serious or damaged by duty. Bekowski maybe not.

I enjoyed the game a lot. I grew up with old PC adventure games and I loved the Police Quest series. I can see how people find this sort of genre dated as it basically is an interactive storybook but hell I still loved it.

The game was just too damn hard for me, and not in the enjoyable challenging way. I had no idea who was lying or anything and clues were in the strangest places. I haven't even finished the game because I became so frustrated with the acting.

FUCKING SPOILERS, MAN, WHAT THE FUCK!!!!

There's nothing avant-garde about LA Noire, it's a traditional adventure game in the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine.

The real reason why is that it's a heavy story game with a story that has serious plot holes that became overwhelming the farther you get away from it.

L.A. Noire is hated because people who shouldn't have bought it did, or they didn't know what they were buying, or something. It's great for what it is, if you can comprehend what that is.

I liked it alot so I don't really understand it either.

@JasonR86 said:

I look at LA Noire much the same way I look at Heavy Rain. While I was playing both games I had a lot of fun but as soon as I stopped the shine sort of wore off.

I find this to be a very on the nose comparison. Both games have pretty glaring faults the more distance you get from them.

Personally I took a break from LA Noire close to the end of disc 2 and reasonably enjoyed it, but coming back to it was immensly hard after the initial sheen was gone.

@Three0neFive said:

@Kombat said:

@Three0neFive said:

From people who didn't like the game, obviously. LA Noir was a cool tech demo, but a terrible videogame.

Speak for yourself.

Er... I am. It seems like you're the one who isn't, dismissing everyone's criticisms because you think you know their thought process better than they do. Is it so inconceivable that people just, you know, didn't find it fun? :S

I am not dismissing anyone's thought process. If you didn't like the game, fine. I just don't like it when people say that a game was terrible because that's so subjective. A better statement would be "it wasn't for me" or even "I thought it was a bad experience." Perhaps I should just learn to keep it to myself sometimes.

I primarily targeted my post at the hardcore gaming audience since other folks who bought the games and don't regularly visit forums or read Gamasutra aren't going to know or care how much of a piece of shit Brendan McNamara is.

I'm amazed a dull game like Portal 2 got GOTY nominations and this didn't.

Idiots. It comes from idiots.

Writers can't kill protagonists now? Thanks for setting all games back to pandering power fantasies, duders! Yes, LA Noire is flawed. It's problems (as mentioned, The Homicide Desk is the culprit here) come from a design paradox - in noir, it's traditional for the viewer to be at least one step ahead of the detective, which doesn't gel well with the idea of embodying one at the same time. But then, it's also the most ambitious thing I've ever played. Making story the focal point of gameplay backed by full-on acting, what game has even attempted that? Blurring the line between interactive and non-interactive fiction should be encouraged - we could have another century of games and movies or we could do away with traditional definitions and explore all the media's potential. Here we have the most potent medium of all and people still throw a hissy fit when they notice a flawed, human character that isn't just a simple badass archetype for them to embody.

Not to say you should like this game - it's tone and design gears it towards specific tastes. But saying it's outright bad without any redeeming qualities is just being dismissive (the production values for one are stellar). It was certainly the most aesthetically mature of all games that came out this year or almost any year for that matter, and for that alone it's my GOTY. Even though I could write up an essay on some of the design/fiction paradoxes (and there's that horrible deus ex machina), it still triumphs by virtue of being a genuine genre piece, with human characters and human scope. No robots, space marines, elves, laser beams or dragons here kids.

I will defend this game to the grave. 5 stars is still right.

And jesus, if enough people are puzzled as to why Cole would cheat on his wife, I'll spell it out for you okay? Here's a hint; subtext.

Good to see I'm not totally alone in loving this game. Sort of felt like that in recent months.

Certainly flawed, but without a doubt a memorable experience for me. Right there with Skyrim as my favourite game of this year.

I'm really curious as to the future of the series. Rockstar's made it pretty clear that they have zero interest in working with Brendan McNamara ever again, but they do own the IP, and the Take-Two CEO has said that they feel it's a "strong new franchise" for them. I bet with full control over development R* could make an amazing sequel.

it was a good game..was refreshing and new.. but the endling sucked alot

It is in no way a bad game, but people was overreacting about how amazing it was when it came out, and when you get a little distance from it, I think most people thought to themselves that it wasn't actually that great.

Personally I was very impressed with the game, but looking back now I can safely say that the game was way to "mechanical" for what it was trying to achieve and outside the interrogations (which usually were pretty easy because the game clearly played the idle animation for what of the three options was the correct) it held your hand all the way, always telling you where to go next.

It just didn't feel as much as a detective game when the game always told you what to do next.

@Hizang: http://www.giantbomb.com/la-noire/61-21500/was-anyone-else-massively-disappointed-by-la-noire/35-504520

To quote myself from that thread, "The level of true interactivity in this game is nothing short of shameful. To call this a "detective" game also sort of suggests that you'll actually be "solving" cases by figuring out who is guilty and who is innocent. For the vast majority of the game, nothing could be further from the truth. LA Noire is not a video game. It is a barely interactive series of cut-scenes that doesn't give a fuck about what you would do in a given situation."

Need to revisit my choices again to make sure but at the moment, LA Noire is taking No. 3 spot for my GOTY top 5.

I was rather excited about LA Noire when it was coming out. I would say it was one of the bigger disappointments of 2011 for me. The reason I didn't enjoy the game all that much is that as the cases continued it felt rather repetitive. I also found it hugely frustrating when you got an answer wrong and evidently caved into the pressure to reload saves in order to get perfect cases, cheap i know - but in the end it didn't help the experience as i saw things over and over - partly my fault on that one. I think my main issue with the game - was that it was just kind of dull to me. It didn't need to be an 'open world game' mainly due to the fact that there was next to nothing to do in the 'open world'. The world just felt like a husk in which you'd place a dead body at a location call it a crime scene and then have me drive around questioning people until i caught someone.

Homicide desk which was the longest desk in the game is terrible, abolutely cringe worthy. You don't actually solve a single case. Piles of repeating evidence gets ignored again and again. Phelps is a bumbling idiot the entire time. And at the end you are given a series of notes that lead you directly to the BD, neato! The last sequences of the game were handled poorly, the laughable flamethrower bit that was completely inconsistent with the tone of the rest of the game. It has nothing to do with Phelps death, but everything to do with how it was handled. Characters that lie to you for no logical reason over and over, even in situations where they are explicitly aware that you know the truth. (old lady sees you go up to the girls room, then proceeds to lie to you about the broken window in that room, what?)
Cool facial animations, tho.

All of the points I would make have been made multiple times in this thread all ready, so I'll just say it was the least enjoyable gaming experience I think I have ever had. And I'm not exaggerating either, I honestly think that.

HAI GUYS I JUS DON'T UNDERSTAND DA HATE. I CAN'T POSSIBLY COMPREHEND SOMEBODY'S FEELINGS ON TYHIS THAT AREN'T MY OWN R U DUM.

Tonally, the game was probably one of the best, if not the best game of the year. The world they created was incredibly believable I thought, and recreating a foregone era is a pretty tough thing to do in a video game.

@BBQBram said:

Idiots. It comes from idiots.

Writers can't kill protagonists now? Thanks for setting all games back to pandering power fantasies, duders! Yes, LA Noire is flawed. It's problems (as mentioned, The Homicide Desk is the culprit here) come from a design paradox - in noir, it's traditional for the viewer to be at least one step ahead of the detective, which doesn't gel well with the idea of embodying one at the same time. But then, it's also the most ambitious thing I've ever played. Making story the focal point of gameplay backed by full-on acting, what game has even attempted that? Blurring the line between interactive and non-interactive fiction should be encouraged - we could have another century of games and movies or we could do away with traditional definitions and explore all the media's potential. Here we have the most potent medium of all and people still throw a hissy fit when they notice a flawed, human character that isn't just a simple badass archetype for them to embody.

Not to say you should like this game - it's tone and design gears it towards specific tastes. But saying it's outright bad without any redeeming qualities is just being dismissive (the production values for one are stellar). It was certainly the most aesthetically mature of all games that came out this year or almost any year for that matter, and for that alone it's my GOTY. Even though I could write up an essay on some of the design/fiction paradoxes (and there's that horrible deus ex machina), it still triumphs by virtue of being a genuine genre piece, with human characters and human scope. No robots, space marines, elves, laser beams or dragons here kids.

I will defend this game to the grave. 5 stars is still right.

And jesus, if enough people are puzzled as to why Cole would cheat on his wife, I'll spell it out for you okay? Here's a hint; subtext.

Writers can kill the protagonist, They just need to actually write a story that makes me care for the, well, story and characters. The facial technology makes it ambitious, sitting down with another person and looking for tells is really cool. The click-adventure aspect of it gets tedious after the second desk, and the cases become increasingly boring. Badass archetypal, whatever. Cole was a character with a personality of a robot.

I liked the game a fair bit, but I must say. The ending is terrible, not because of the story elements (although they weren't great), but because of the gameplay. The whole game positions you to be a detective, to ask questions first and shoot later. So it ends with a fucking 40 minute shootout in a sewer, where you indiscriminately shoot hundreds of henchmen that come from nowhere. Why? this isn't GTA, and by GTA standards the section would be awful anyway.

@Kombat said:

@Three0neFive said:

@Kombat said:

@Three0neFive said:

From people who didn't like the game, obviously. LA Noir was a cool tech demo, but a terrible videogame.

Speak for yourself.

Er... I am. It seems like you're the one who isn't, dismissing everyone's criticisms because you think you know their thought process better than they do. Is it so inconceivable that people just, you know, didn't find it fun? :S

I am not dismissing anyone's thought process. If you didn't like the game, fine. I just don't like it when people say that a game was terrible because that's so subjective. A better statement would be "it wasn't for me" or even "I thought it was a bad experience." Perhaps I should just learn to keep it to myself sometimes.

I primarily targeted my post at the hardcore gaming audience since other folks who bought the games and don't regularly visit forums or read Gamasutra aren't going to know or care how much of a piece of shit Brendan McNamara is.

We are on a message board, opinions are implied.

@KarmaPoliceman: That also, totally out of left field.

• I found the gameplay pretty repetitive and the cases were uninteresting to me. I played the game for a few hours and didn't really feel like I've done any major progress, I could see no larger scope or overarching plot. On the other hand the moments where the characters started reminescing about the events from previous cases - particularly specific people - I had a very hard time remembering what the hell they were talking about.
• I didn't like how the facial recognition/interrogations were handled and played out. The characters' emotions felt so overblown that I failed many questionings because I was trying to analyze the details and ignored their whole facial expressions dismissing them on the grounds that they were completely unnatural.
• My questioning methods were often labeled as wrong either because Phelps said a thing that was very different from what I expected him to say or for no apparent reason at all.
• As is the case with most courtroom drama games, I was often punished because I had already figured out the outcome/solution of a case ahead of time and ignored the details that I didn't really need to solve the case.

People were expecting one thing then got another and those who did not like the other thing got upset. I had the same situation with Mafia 2. Not a Game of the Year title for sure but I didn't really get why people thought it sucked so much. Mostly everyone just trashed it because, much like LA Noire, there wasn't much to do in the open world. On the other hand you have reviews stating how games have tons of pointless, superfluous mini games.

I was expecting a casual adventure game with a rich story full of references to a period in history I have studied in Film history. I grew up with games like Police Quest and this game was exactly what I was anticipating through the marketing prior to its release. I thoroughly enjoyed LA Noire.

L.A. Noire sure is a strange game... It has very strong premises and looks shiny, but when the coat wears off it starts to look ugly...

I liked it in the beginning, then I was mortally bored during Murder Desk and finally pissed off at the end of Vice/Arson.

While the gameplay is bland and there is nothing to do except to travel from cutscene to cutscene, I'm ok with that (sort of), I can appreciate a really story heavy game. And I'm fairly certain that a lot of people would accept the game for that. The real problem is that even the story is pretty bad, the cases are badly designed (almost every case get solved when you find the unmissable ultimate piece of evidence in the last 5 minutes that renders the rest of the investigation just chitchat with witness and sightseeing in L.A.), the main characters are unbelievable and unsympathetic, the overall story is... Meh... Full of plotholes and deus ex machina.

Maybe I was just spoiled by Phownix Wright, L.A. Noire has a lot to learn from it (and in the Ace Attorney games the law is silly and everyone has a pun in their name!).

From real life experience I keep hearing a few statements about LA Noire.

The shooting sucks.

Not enough shooting.

The city sucks.

The cars suck.

The guns suck.

Which I can't argue against, really. I mean I thought the city was cool, just empty... but beyond that they're right. The core gameplay was pretty fun. The game was a little too long for the gameplay, though. It was starting to show its age after Homicide. They should have paced the story that was there, which was quite exceptional for a video game, better.

It is a great adventure game. People do not want a slow paced intelligent game. They just say they do and then complain about the pacing. It is a fantastic game but I think it appeals to a much narrower audience than the advertising led people to believe.

@The_Laughing_Man said:

My issue was from the first few missions it was fun..but slowly it became the same rinse and repeat with maybe a car chase or shoot out in it. It was more or less a big point and click adventure. The face streaming was cool but well..the other factors faltered at times.

this.

@Dany said:

@BBQBram said:

Idiots. It comes from idiots.

Writers can't kill protagonists now? Thanks for setting all games back to pandering power fantasies, duders! Yes, LA Noire is flawed. It's problems (as mentioned, The Homicide Desk is the culprit here) come from a design paradox - in noir, it's traditional for the viewer to be at least one step ahead of the detective, which doesn't gel well with the idea of embodying one at the same time. But then, it's also the most ambitious thing I've ever played. Making story the focal point of gameplay backed by full-on acting, what game has even attempted that? Blurring the line between interactive and non-interactive fiction should be encouraged - we could have another century of games and movies or we could do away with traditional definitions and explore all the media's potential. Here we have the most potent medium of all and people still throw a hissy fit when they notice a flawed, human character that isn't just a simple badass archetype for them to embody.

Not to say you should like this game - it's tone and design gears it towards specific tastes. But saying it's outright bad without any redeeming qualities is just being dismissive (the production values for one are stellar). It was certainly the most aesthetically mature of all games that came out this year or almost any year for that matter, and for that alone it's my GOTY. Even though I could write up an essay on some of the design/fiction paradoxes (and there's that horrible deus ex machina), it still triumphs by virtue of being a genuine genre piece, with human characters and human scope. No robots, space marines, elves, laser beams or dragons here kids.

I will defend this game to the grave. 5 stars is still right.

And jesus, if enough people are puzzled as to why Cole would cheat on his wife, I'll spell it out for you okay? Here's a hint; subtext.

Writers can kill the protagonist, They just need to actually write a story that makes me care for the, well, story and characters. The facial technology makes it ambitious, sitting down with another person and looking for tells is really cool. The click-adventure aspect of it gets tedious after the second desk, and the cases become increasingly boring. Badass archetypal, whatever. Cole was a character with a personality of a robot.

You do not know what makes good character do you? Cole is the most realized and fleshed out character with an actual arc in a videogame. It is also subtle. Which is to say well done as opposed to Kratos. That being said this style probably doesn't work as well for a game as having a shallower more brazen personality as it slowes down the pacing of the game and a lot of people have no fun with that. But seriously the guy has a fucking hell of a personality.

@TentPole said:

It is a great adventure game. People do not want a slow paced intelligent game. They just say they do and then complain about the pacing. It is a fantastic game but I think it appeals to a much narrower audience than the advertising led people to believe.

Well put.

What I'm still trying to figure out is how the GiantBomb staff could so completely reverse their position about the game. Adulation and excitement turned almost entirely into criticism about the game that borders on disparagement. Could it be possible that everyone has said all of the nice things that there were to say about L.A. Noire, and we must now pile on the invective until it's forgotten entirely?

The ending really soured this game for me, especially since I had to do the not very good last mission 3 times in a row when it kept hanging up right at the end.

@TentPole: Cole's subtlety of a character isn't interesting. He was boring and mundane, he wanted to wash away the war by proving himself as a detective but blarg blah urgh, no thank you sir.

The action in the game is forced, sometimes contrived. The open world is empty. The mission structure becomes boring. The game repeat the same bullshit trick in the arson desk as it did in the homicide desk by going after the wrong suspect for both cases. They set out to make a realistic game, only not to make a interesting game.

I don't get where the LOVE for LA Noire comes from.

To those saying that critics of the game weren't expecting a slow paced adventure game, or just are not intelligent enough to "get it": Raise your standards.

LA Noire's story IS POORLY WRITTEN. This may sound like a traditionally subjective criticism, but in the case of this game it isn't. The game makes you slog through hours and hours of tedium to reveal a main story that comes 100% off the rails. Anyone who played the game and experienced the projector reveal and DOESN'T agree that the story is bad, is a fool.

Because everything else in the game is in service of the story (there really are no gameplay mechanics to speak of that stand on their own), that alone makes the game a failure.

Brad's 5 star review was absurd and destroyed his credibility with me. The industry praise in general stunk of manipulation and favor trading.

If LA Noire comes out quietly on PC without the Rockstar marketing budget, it gets a 6/10 and is forgotten in a couple months.

• The plot lines of each individual case were really well done, and I loved the way that the Homicide case ended (The one that winded up in the church?) and the way the overall game ended.

The biggest flaw with LA Noire for me was that it isn't a game, so much as an elaborate book in video game form, in that absolutely nothing you do will have ANY consequence on the way the story unfolds. You're merely a page turner in a half-baked excuse for a crime story that ends up going no where.

All of the story beats just left me feeling disappointed. I'll try not to spoil anything but the end of homicide is never mentioned again, you never take down that "casting couch" thing, and nothing ever feels resolved when you're done. I honestly enjoyed the traffic desk the most. I liked the game but I just kept feeling burned the farther down I went.

I feel like L.A. Noire is a game you have to stick out. There's an incredible lull in the middle of the game; specifically, right after Homicide, before the main story begins to get explained. After a few cases of Vice, it sunk itself into me. Even with having the twist spoiled for me, I still thought it was nifty. The end is probably the only weird part. Not exactly disappointing, but it leaves you with a feeling that either whatever you've attempted has ultimately amounted to nothing (fair, but somewhat depressing), or there's supposed to be a sequel to wrap things up. There won't be a sequel. At least not one worth a damn. So ultimately, it turns out to be a kind of true-to-life, but sad tale with a message.

It might have nudged its way into my GOTY list if I had finished it last year, but only because of the low number of current games I finished.

I have nothing against the game, as it gives you the opportunity to skip the elements you don't care for (for me, that was the open-world aspect of it). It just didn't hold my attention enough for me to consider it one of my favorites. Maybe that's the fault of the DLC. I bought the season pass before having played a whole lot of it, and it added enough cases to the game to make it seem like it was dragging on too long.

That said, having finished it after all this time, I don't see the general sense of ire I've witnessed surrounding this game about a month after release. It has more than enough good in it.

And of course, who can speak ill of the facial mapping technology? It's not the answer to all of the trouble of bringing video game characters to life (these actors look like their real-life counterparts in a way that breaks the immersion to me, having seen them in various other roles in television), but it's still a great and necessary step forward.

it was a photo hunt game.

That fucking film that you find that details the entire plot is the biggest detractor for me. I still liked the game quite a bit, however.

I really liked it, I guess I'll play through it again to see if my opinion has changed at some point.

The fact that the gameplay is nearly non existent most of the time, and also the story completely collapsing on itself about three quarters of the way through.

You seem to be like me, Enjoying games based on story but not traditional gameplay.

Most people probably wouldn't like it for the slow pace, dramatic change in character, and mission repetition. I mean the best missions were the last homicide mission, Nicholson electroplating, and the other non traditional ones.