For almost 3/4 of its length it's actually very good. Sure, telling when someone is lying and when someone is not is fairly easy, but you have to have to figure out which evidence to use to call them out on their bullshit, and sometimes that can be tricky.

A very entertaining game until near the end when it suddenly decides to be a linear set of interconnected stories whose outcome is unrelated to your detective abilities and that ends in a big (and shitty) action sequence.

It's an entertaining game, but it suffers badly from being very linear. It gives you the illusion of being able to "investigate" but you're not really making any substantive decisions. I was especially frustrated with the murder cases which were very much without any sort of choice in how you pursue the case.

It's a letdown. Picture GTA, then remove all the stuff that made GTA fun, and replace it with all the worst parts of Heavy Rain. There's a few Call of Duty twists in there, too.

The first couple levels are pretty fun and initially the crime-sleuthing mechanics look like they'll be awesome, but it starts getting tedious very quickly, and once you've gone through a mission the replay value is pretty much zilch. The freeroam is even worse, there's absolutely nothing to do... unless your idea of fun is taking a slow Sunday drive around a half-built city where nobody can get shot or run over.

There is one part where the dude from Mad Men can tell an underage rape victim she asked for it, if you're into that sort of thing.

I think the "fastest car in the game" in the related videos at the end sums it up. This is Grandpa, watching the Godfather when Grandma's asleep, GTA is Dad, watching porn when Mom's asleep, and Saints Row is the kid selling the Adderall on the playground.

Oh you actually can run down pedestrians according to one video, but it's extremely difficult (they kind of just slide off the car even if they're pinned up against a wall.) I know the game's supposed to be a lot more story-driven than GTA, but when you're working that engine, why not leave that as an option, where you're more like Harvey Keitel in Bad Detective?

Just as an FYI to everyone, that new Sherlock Holmes game, Crimes and Punishments, actually sort of touches on a lot of things that LA Noire tried to do but without trying to come off like it's not just an old-fashioned adventure game. I recommend it, personally, as it's a fairly entertaining game in this vein, but without the boring travel stuff (moving around is just a menu basically) and you're actually allowed some latitude in cases to make different choices and even wrong decisions.

It's basically Night Trap with better actors, right?

ps bravo on linking microexpressions.

That actually looks cool. I only caught one episode of the new Sherlock and I fucking hated it! Unless there's an episode where Sherlock waits around for his stupid iPhone to charge it's the same thing as CSI. Arthur Conan Doyle would be spinning around in wherever he's buried now.

IZ - yes, you can run down pedestrians, but it's really tricky to do and requires equal parts patience and luck. It's been awhile since I played the game, but IIRC your best bet is to either crash into breakable environmental objects, like telephone poles or trash cans, and try "hurling" them at pedestrians (this seems to screw up their evasive AI for a couple seconds), or else you can try to maneuver a crowd of people so that they get cornered against a building, then just keep driving at and reversing back over them as quickly as possible.

It is indeed a story-driven game, and it's a textbook example of the chief problem with story-driven games: how designers can ruin an otherwise interesting game by making *their need to tell a story* get in the way of *your ability to actually play around and have fun*.

I'd say it's less Nighttrap, and more Final Fantasy meets Driver meets a D&D game where your DM wears a fedora and penalizes you heavily for trying to deviate from the stuff he's got scripted.

You'd think they'd have already known that in 2011. Shenmue gave you that option eleven years earlier. You could find out who killed your dad or just spend the entire time busting a nut on Hang-On, which at that time was the only good emulated version of that game.

i remember a part when you pick a seemingly mild question and your fella berates the suspect for being jewish. It was impossible to guess what the fuck they would say based on the description you were given.

The thing that made me quit the game, personally, was how clumsily the homicide cases were handled.
MILD SPOILER

You're supposed to be tracking a serial career during the homicide cases and it's possible to actually deduce the killer from the suspects and evidence given to you in the early parts of the story, but you can't actually do anything about it. INstead, you have to go through the cases one by one arresting the wrong people constantly until the very end where you're finally allowed to go after the right killer. That didn't really sit right with me for the type of game it was trying to be.

serial career?? serial killer

The game mechanics changed at the last minute. Originally you were supposed to be able to be empathetic or aggressive. This was changed to "truth" or "doubt", resulting in sometimes very weird and unpredictable reactions.

That said, the game grew on me over time. Also, not even on the new gen consoles do facial animations look so good. Why doesn't anyone use this technology?

I don't recall getting a lot of perps arrested as I ended up killing more of them in the line of duty. It got to the point I was just tired of seeing the lead character having to go back to the car to radio in a body wagon every time.

"empathetic" or "aggressive" would have made much more sense.

Still, the day we get more AAA games styled after 1950s film noir that place their main emphasis on exploration, investigation and dialogue, I might judge this game more harshly. As it is, I am more than capable of ignoring some of its most blatant flaws because fuck was it a refreshing game.

hehe

http://youtubedoubler.com/dVIY

That is what I immediately thought of.