L.A. Noire Review

PROS

• Facial animation technology is quite simply, a revolution
• Interview mechanic is a completely new and unique experience
• Story is incredibly satisfying and wonderfully told
• Actors give incredible performances across the board

CONS

• Feedback during interviews detracts from experience

 

I’m not going to spend time trying to classify L.A. Noire for two reasons. The first being that there are quite frankly no other games like it, and to try and compare it to other games would detract from the fact that this game is a landmark in the industry.

In L.A. Noire you take the role of Cole Phelps a WWII veteran who decides to take up a badge and join the LAPD. An honest cop to the absolute extreme, Cole serves as the poster child for the otherwise corrupt nature of California’s finest. This curry’s Cole favor as he moves from desk to desk, working traffic, arson, vice, and the big one, homicide. Taking on different roles with the LAPD allows players to interact with real historical figures like mobsters Mickey Cohen and Johnny Stompanato, as well as events like the Black Dhalia murder.

Giving away any more tidbits revolving around L.A. Noire’s story would be doing a great disservice and taking away one of the best parts of the game. It’s easy to see however that L.A. Noire takes great care in recreating a time period that has been criminally underused in videogames so far. Drawing from contemporary and classic crime movies and books, L.A. Noire has a deep narrative and crafts a story which shines light on how misconstrued the American Dream back in the 1940’s truly was. GI’s who are unable to acclimate into society being masked by the postwar economic boom, pervasive drug and alcohol abuse by people wishing to escape the harsh reality of their life, and how the average American family isn’t as loving as appearances would lead people to believe. All of this is surrounded by a constant slew of violence that is brazenly overlooked and ignored by those of high authority.

L.A. Noire is unlike any other game (much less a Rockstar game) that has been released. Holding a strong narrative that almost never veers into the realm of ridiculousness, while still keeping interest levels high, thus providing a much welcome change of pace from the usual high octane over the top mentality of other games.

The storytelling of L.A. Noire is the true standout here, utilizing the traits by which classic noir tales are told. You’ll never find anyone who is being completely honest, the truth is revealed slowly over time, and the significance of factual information gets revealed in a casual manner. This is where L.A. Noire shines; by weaving the narrative and gameplay together in a seamless motion it creates a truly unique experience. The narrative and gameplay work off each other with the need to pay close attention to the story in order to perform the interactive detective work, which is then used to drive the narrative forward.

The main gameplay consists of two main parts, detective work and action pieces, the former will encapsulate the majority of the game. While acting as a detective you will investigate crime scenes, a fairly straightforward affair, controller rumbles and musical chimes will aid you in locating items of curiosity. These can range from a useless item such as a beer bottle, all the way to a condemning piece of evidence such as a death threat or murder weapon. Each piece of useful information is entered into your notebook -which you may reference at any time- and can open up new locations to visit or new people to interview.

The interviewing segments in L.A. Noire are unlike anything else in games to date. Many games with a conversation mechanic have the player drive the conversation through their own actions and attitudes, L.A. Noire does the opposite and utilizes characters reactions. You ask people questions -which are accessible in your notebook- that you have been constructed thanks to evidence you have found or conversations with other characters. Once you ask a question the interviewee will answer and you must respond to them as if they have told the truth, as if they’re keeping information from you, or you can catch them lying using evidence you have found to prove so.

Careful examination of facial movement will give further indication of ones truthfulness and listening to what they say and how they say it will affect how the interviews play out. This leads to some of the most intense and satisfying moments I’ve ever experienced in a videogame. The desire to gain the edge on the cocky, self possessed witnesses reached obsessive levels, and finally breaking them delivered a level of satisfaction that I hadn’t felt in a videogame before. One of the few flaws (a minor one at that) is that you will gain instant feedback during these interviews informing you of whether or not you handled a question properly, which detracts from the overall immersive experience.

Each of the cases in L.A. Noire takes a page from Heavy Rain, meaning that you’ll always make it to the conclusion of case but the path you take to get there will change depending on your decisions. Collect enough evidence and answer interview questions properly and you can find a new location, mess up that interview you’ll end up having to tail that person to your next objective. What results is a feeling of ownership over your cases, which acts as a great motivation to do the best you possibly can.

The action part of L.A. Noire will feel familiar to anyone who has played Red Dead Redemption or GTA IV, cover, aim assist, and reloading are all in check. What sets L.A. Noire apart from these other Rockstar games is how few of these sequences there are. This is part of what makes L.A. Noire work, these action pieces are directly motivated by the narrative, so when a gunfight or a car chase occur they gain the thrill and impact that they are meant to. None of these sequences are incredibly difficult and if failure is persistent you gain the option to skip that particular bit all together. Towards the end of the game, the action gains a narrative thrust that gives a great outlet to relieve the tension of all the twists and turns that the story takes.

Couple that with the brevity of the story (it clocks in around 20 hours) and you have what I truly think is Rockstar’s most satisfying game to date. The game is broken up into cases with small side missions in between which are delivered through the police radio in your car, these serve to prop up the narrative rather than detract from it.

All of this comes together due to the outstanding production quality, which draws the player into an engrossing story and a living-breathing world. The most impressive and most talked about aspect is the facial animation technology, it is nothing short of revolutionary as it turns every cutscene into believable situations, which allows for nuanced acting and visceral reactions on the part of the player. The significance of this technology cannot be understated, especially when you realize its use in the interview portions. Nervous tics, a sideways glance, interviewees will at times fly into a rage when you falsely accuse them, with such good acting backing those rage fits I genuinely felt bad at one point. No two characters act alike, sometimes the characters in L.A. Noire are sloppy and easy to read, others are very good at lying, and will fool you if you let them.

What is really impressive about this tech is how it doesn’t rest on its laurels. I quickly stopped paying attention to the technology on display and transitioned into a sense of normality. A factor of this is the top-notch acting, a cast of incredible talent with standouts Andrew Connolly, Michael McGrady, Adam Harrington, and Aaron Staton who plays detective Cole, they all work to create complex and deep performances that compliment the facial technology brilliantly.

Another wonderful piece of L.A. Noire is the city of Los Angeles itself. The city has been painstakingly recreated with 1940’s skin. Famous landmarks are available to find many of which still reside in the Los Angeles area, local Angelians could easily navigate the area on home knowledge alone. Fancy suits, classic cars, and old timey music all help set a tone that you want to spend time in. With absolutely no reason, I found myself wanting to act normal in this world, I would follow traffic laws, I almost never ran (why would a detective be running around spastically), I felt the need to exist in the world in a realistic fashion, something that has happened in no other game I’ve played.

It is worth noting, that the PS3 version of the game renders quicker and runs smoother than the Xbox 360 version, so if you have the option go with the PS3, if not the experience on the 360 is just as good. Team Bondi and Rockstar have crafted one of the most unique gaming experiences ever. One of the greatest stories in any game, a unique gameplay style, new and revolutionary technology, L.A. Noire now stands in the pantheon of greatest games ever made.

This review was done with retail copies of the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions.

Great Games You've Probably Never Heard Of -- Recettear

What happens when you cross a solid RPG experience with the fun (and the challenge) of running your own store?

Well... you get this game.

"Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale" is a lighthearted, comical RPG/market simulation game that was developed by EasyGameStation, and published by Carpe Fulgur for the PC. The original release date in Japan was in December of 2007, while we in the Western world didn't see the game until almost three years later -- in September of 2010.


The story of "Recettear" is a simple one: a young girl named Recette Lemongrass is approached by a member of Terme Finance to repay the debt left behind by her father, who's gone off to become an adventurer. The agent they send to collect the payments is Tear, a fairy who is amazingly stern, yet caring.

As can be inferred by the title, Recette's (and Tear's) idea to pay off her father's debt is to open an item shop in Pansee (the town in which the game takes place), which the young girl dubs Recettear -- a creative portmanteau of her and Tear's names.


So, how does Recette collect the items she needs to run said store? The game offers two main ways: You can either buy your stock from the local merchant's guild or market, or head to the adventurer's guild to hire someone, which is where the RPG element of the game comes into play.


While most of the game is spent behind the counter of Recettear, there are times where the brunette merchant and her finance-focused fairy friend must accompany their hired help into dungeons.

Dungeons in this game are all randomly generated, meaning that each trip through one of them will never use the same route twice. Before each trip, you can lend your adventurer equipment from your own stock, and give them healing items that they can use while fighting off the various creatures that will inevitably be roaming around.


Of course, there's more to Recettear than just shop-running and monster-slaying. There's humor of all sorts hidden in the game: from drunken thieves, to down-on-their-luck adventurers, to references of other little known games.

While it may not have super-high-definition graphics or anything of the sort, Recettear is a quality game that doesn't get as much praise as it deserves.

[For those interested in giving the title a shot, the demo is available for free through Steam. And, if you like it enough, the cost for the full game is an admittedly affordable $20.]

Hack This Game - Indie Game Review

Pros

• Interesting Idea
• 2 Gameplay Modes
• Menu Design

Cons

• When you're stuck, you're stuck
• When you get stuck, you will get frustrated/tired of the game very quickly
• Menus take time to appear

This game is a game which tries to simulate hacking into a simple puzzle game form.  It works, but not nearly quite as well as it could have.  The way the game does this is giving you a progressive set of puzzles which require answers of 5 letters "A, B, X, or Y", so the 4 Xbox controller buttons.  The game presents these puzzle in ways such as telling you which letters are right or wrong, or in a small game of hangman.  

The problem that arises from this, is that if you're stuck on a puzzle....well that's that.  Because the only gameplay is figuring out the puzzle, if you get stuck you can either figure it out....or quit the game.  So if you don't have a large attention span or are bad at puzzles (both of which apply to me) this game probably isn't for you.

The game does have a second mode which is hidden at the bottom of the menu (which I didn't even find until 10 minutes ago) which makes you push a sequence of buttons within the time given, it starts off slow but quickly speeds up until you're overwhelmed, it is a nice addition but doesn't save the game from its faults.  The game is running an...interesting marketing campaign which is whoever completes the game first gets their avatar on the box art.  I honestly do like the idea and think it is a good way to try and get people to complete the game.

The game does have a nice retro computer menu feel, but that's all you see, the same menu with some different text most of the time.  Though for the menu and puzzles the text loads one character at a time so at times it can get very annoying waiting for the whole menu to pop up (specifically in the instructions) and a way to skip it would have been much appreciated.  As far as audio goes, there are a few different clicks and a buzzer and correct sound, they could have atleast added some background music.

Overall it's a not so well executed concept with annoying menus and barely any gameplay, you can easily find some better puzzle games for your money, so I would advise you to skip this one.

Portal 2 Review

PROS

• Incredible Single Player and Co-op Campaigns
• Some of the Best Writing Ever in a Video Game
• Puzzles That Will Bend Your Mind but are Never Impossible
• Beautiful Design
• Top Notch Voice Acting

CONS

• Co-op Can Ruin Friendships
• The Game Ends

 

2007’s Portal was the surprise success of the year, packaged in with Valve’s “Orange Box.” Being an incredibly innovative and unique first person puzzle game, with fantastic writing and acting, it won more than a few Game of the Year awards from people. Now we find ourselves four years later, finally getting a sequel. And what a sequel it is.

Portal 2 once again places you in the orange jumpsuit of test subject named Chell, who wakes up in the Aperture Science facility once again, years after the events of the first game. In the original Portal players weaved their way through puzzle after puzzle, facing off against a sadistic AI GLaDOS, eventually escaping the facility. Portal 2 takes players on an even grander journey; with new environments and new tools to solve puzzles Portal 2 is truly a masterpiece.

The game starts off with Chell meeting a talkative little robot who goes by the name of Whetley (who is magnificently voiced by Stephen Merchant) who is quick to help aid your escape. Wheatley, is a great addition to the Portal cast and plays a very important role in the story. Oh and it wouldn’t be a Portal game without the return of everyone’s favorite sociopathic robot GLaDOS. The story will take you through more twists and turns, and help players uncover more about Aperture Science, its history, and those who helped shape it. The story is easily one of the biggest draws of this game, so I’ll do my best to avoid spoiling it throughout this review.

Portal 2’s dialogue is some of the best you’ll find in a videogame, to the point where the humorous dialogue delivered through the hysterical voice acting serves as an incentive for players to solve puzzles and proceed through the gamespace.

Every pixel in the game is there for a reason, and you’ll never find yourself having to finagle over ledges or feeling like you need to jump and glitch to make something work. Valve has done a brilliant job of making Portal 2 a linear experience without ever making it feel like a liner experience, you are led from area to area in such a way that you always end up where you need to but it seems as though you got there yourself, the game didn’t put you there.

Just like the first game the puzzles in Portal 2 are brilliantly designed, Portal 2 does a nice job of easing people into the mechanics that will be needed to solve more complex problems later on. The opening levels will have simple solutions simply shoot portals to cross a room, as you go on you’ll gain new tools which will be used to help you along. Boxes that can be used to relect lasers, redirectable light bridges, and gravity fields, and of course the gels. The gels are a huge addition to the game, there are three in total, each with its own unique properties and abilities, and each one can be maneuvered to stick to any surface. Blue gel will cause any surface to act like a trampoline bouncing you around to sometimes massive heights, orange gels will allow you to run at incredible speeds, and white gel will allow portals to be placed on previously unaccommodating surfaces. As you progress you’ll have to use, portals, gels, bridges, lasers, and gravity fields all in unison to solve some truly brain bashing puzzles. This can seem very overwhelming at first glance but once a puzzle is solved you’ll feel like the smartest person in the world. There was more than one occasion where I was simply over thinking a lot of the challenges that had been laid in front of me, so I simply had to step back and take a mental break (good tip).

In addition to a single player campaign that is already rather lengthy, Portal 2 comes equipped with its own separate co-op campaign. You wont just be retreading the single player game with two people, you have four new chapters with eight sets of puzzles for each one. One partner will take control of Atlas a short stocky robot, and the other will take control of P-body who looks like one of the games turrets with arms and legs stuck on him. Both players have a portal gun of their own meaning you now have puzzles that utilize four sets of portals.

Each co-op campaign you play is linked up with your partner, this means if you just hop into random games with people you’ll merely be doing the first few puzzles over and over again. Gestures are used to help communicate places to put portals and help time for synchronized lever pulls. Although in my experience voice chat serves all the functions much better and can at times be a necessity.

Portal 2 is an absolute joy of a game, it’s the best looking game Valve has put out just in terms of pure graphical power, every puzzle will give you pure joy to complete, an ingenious story, great dialogue and characters, and a robust co-op campaign, all elevate Portal 2 to the status of one of the greatest games that has ever been made. You absolutely can not afford to miss this one.

Homefront Review

PROS

• The first level and last levels are top notch
• There are moments that illicit true emotion
• The multiplayer is very good

CONS

• The campaign is incredibly short
• The story itself is lackluster
• One of the most heavily scripted games ever
• Cheap tactics such as infinitely spawning enemies

Homefront is the first outing from the new and improved THQ, with developer Kaos studios taking the reigns this was a game that was on many gamers “watch list.” And with good reason, with a new Call of Duty game coming out every year as well as a bunch of other cookie cutter shooters Homefront seemed to be a silver lining. A game that would deliver a powerful unique experience that the First Person Shooter genre has been craving. Unfortunately that’s not the case; by and large Homefront is a disappointment.

The game starts off strong. It actually tricked me into thinking that I was going to get that sought after experience. The game starts with a backstory setting up the current situation, in which North and South Korea make peace and become a super power who then invade the United States. As it opens your home is broken into by the KPA which is the name given to the opposition. They then drag you off put you on a bus and shuttle you off to what could only be your death. On this bus ride you witness some of the most shocking imagery ever put in a game. Witnessing the horrors that are being bestowed onto the innocents, seeing people beaten to death, seeing bodies being gathered, seeing a child no more than four or five years old watching his parents be murdered right in front of him, and then hearing his cries echo as you drive further away. These images gave me an emotional impact which few games do; all I could think about was stopping the horrors that had been presented.

However that effect quickly wears off and is replaced by basic Call of Duty type gameplay. Gone are the emotional twists and turns that gave me drive, instead we get waves of enemies that we must dispose of using a variety of weaponry. Which leads into what is perhaps the biggest problem of Homefront it is heavily scripted. Every event in the game will play out the exact same way regardless of what you do. There will always be X number of RPG guys that pop up on roofs that you must dispose of, you always have to take the same route to get to an objective. One major point of this is how you must follow your AI allies, you can only climb a ladder or jump down from a point after every teammate does it. Even if you are standing right next to said ladder or jump point they must go first. Of course all of this can cause the campaign to feel very repetitious, which, however is rectified by the campaign being blazingly short. I completed the single player on hard mode in about four and a half hours.

The characters are glaringly uninteresting, especially the protagonist who is one of those faceless, voiceless soldier who takes orders for no apparent reason whatsoever. Stealth levels are tossed in, but any actual skill needed is taken out since if you shoot or sneak when you’re told to there is absolutely no chance of failure.

The single player campaign of Homefront is vastly disappointing. The multiplayer on the other hand is another story. On face level many will call it a CoD clone, and for the most part that’s true, but there are many nuances that make the multiplayer worth your time. The maps are vast and impressive, plenty of cover and you can get just about anywhere you would want to. Game modes are the standard Capture the Flag, Team Deathmatch, and Skirmish (which is a playlist cycling the two previous modes). Much like Call of Duty you can customize your class pick from a range of weapons, and grenades as well as perks that will give you faster reload speed, better hip aim, etc. The big difference being the Battle Points, Battle Points act as your experience points which you’ll use to rank up and unlock new weapons and such. At the same time though they are used throughout matches to buy armor, airstrikes, drones, vehicles and the like. Think the Killstreak system from CoD only here everyone has a fair chance to get these cool things instead of it being limited to those who are able to amount large streaks of death.

Another nice feature of Homefront’s multiplayer is the Battle Commander mode. Battle Commander is an AI that picks out players who have been doing exceptionally well. Those who have a lot of kills, or keep racking up points and bonuses will have be marked and visible to all players and whoever wipes out said good player gets a nice point bonus themselves. It’s a small detail but can cause for some intense situations where witch hunt like searching can take place. Homefront’s multiplayer is top of the line and a nice replacement for those who want a break from CoD or Halo.

This is the first outing from the new and improved THQ, and it truly could’ve been something great. As it is, you get a game divided. Homefront has a subpar single player experience with moments of awesome sprinkled throughout, at the same time though you get a very solid multiplayer experience that is worth checking out if your looking for a new shooter to invest in.

This review was done on a retail copy of Homefront for the Xbox 360.