Both games are well worth your money, assuming you're into that genre in the first place. Let's get a little more in-depth with LA Noire--I'll talk more about Frozen Synapse in an upcoming post.
Speaking of the music and visuals, the audio in the game is by and large fantastic. Cars, guns, and objects sound like they should, and the background mood music and audio cues during scenes fits wonderfully. Extra special mention goes to the voice actors, who did a fantastic job. This is helped further by the facial motion-capture technology the game uses, which leads to some of the best--if not the outright best--lip-syncing in any game. Characters' faces move and look like real people, which helps the immersion even more. As far as the rest of the graphics go, however, they're rather hit-or-miss. Mostly the graphics are pretty average for today's games, but every now and then things just look wrong. Tire tracks and footprints often stick OUT of the ground instead of being depressed into it, which can be off-putting. Even so, the graphics overall don't detract from the quality of the gameplay, so it's not a major issue.
On to the gameplay itself, LA Noire does some pretty interesting things, particularly with the investigation and interview/interrogation scenes, which are of course the meat of the detective work. During investigations, the aforementioned audio is a very important factor. Piano cues tell you when you're standing near something that can be investigated further, though not everything you can look at will be a clue to the case. Also, once you've discovered all clues in a scene, the music will stop to let you know you're done. For those who want a truer detective experience, these can be turned off, though this may ramp up the difficulty of the investigations significantly. During interviews/interrogations, you have to use the facial motions, tone of voice, and other subtle cues given to you by the other person to determine whether they're lying or not. True to real life, some people are much better liars than others.
In both of these types of scenes, you can use 'Intuition Points' that you earn as you progress through the game to help out when you get stuck. During investigations, they reveal all clues to you on the minimap--this generally is not very useful if you've got the audio cues on, so you're better off saving your points. Intuition is very useful in interviews, however, although the way it works has already(correctly) been compared to the lifelines from the TV game show 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire'. You can either eliminate one of the wrong options from your normal choices of Truth, Doubt, and Lie(like using a 50/50), or poll the community and see what percentage of players picked each answer(like asking the audience). There are two other caveats to using an Intuition point, however--first, before you spend it, you can see what percentage of players got the question correct AFTER spending a point. Second, if you choose 'Lie', you have to back up your accusation with proof from among your collected evidence--if you've spend an Intuition point, when the list of evidence comes up, any evidence that won't work is crossed off. Some interrogations are very tough, and judicious use of Intuition points can really save you in those cases.
This is especially important because again, just like real life, it is very possible in many cases to charge the wrong person with the crime. While this will cause you to get a very poor rating, the game will continue regardless. It's a very nice nod to realism and it's nice to see a game that has the plot continue even if you 'fail'--that kind of game is very rare these days(though it does still make you re-do crucial action scenes if you screw them up). In most games, your character apparently has to have godlike perfection or the world falls apart. Depending on the game, it can really hurt the verisimilitude. Of course, all this realism can often lead to things being arbitrarily cut off if you didn't go to the right place at the right time--which can really piss off a completionist player.
Other scenes include car and foot chases, brawls, and gunfights, which are fairly standard for these types of things in the gaming industry, with the exception that the cars really don't handle well enough for some of the chase scenes. The bad guys will often turn down narrow alleyways, and unless you're a hell of a lot more precise than I am, it's nigh impossible to follow them without crashing into something. Of course, sometimes it doesn't really matter, as the game often lets enemies get really far ahead without saying that you've lost them. Other times, they can be ten feet ahead of you and around a corner, and the game thinks you've lost them--apparently sometimes it forgets you're not a cop in a GTA game who forgets the mass-murdering criminal the instant he's out of line-of-sight.
Overall, LA Noire is not without its flaws, but none of them really detract enough from the game to counterbalance its good points. If you're into film noir, intrigue, and action, this is an excellent game to pick up. It's a well-told story with some very interesting bits in a decent-looking package.
No comments:
Post a Comment