So it turns out one of the aspects of the game I can't stand (the driving) can be bypassed by simply holding down the Y button (triangle for those on a PS3). I must have had one serious brain lapse during my first play of this game, because the message Hold down Y to let your partner drive pops up on the screen every time you so much as wander near a vehicle. Shows how much attention I was paying. Or how stupid I am. Let's roll with the attention one. M'kay good!
With large chunks of driving between areas now bypassed, I'm able to just focus more on the stuff I do like: the slow investigative poking around. And boy does this game want you to poke around! The other 'annoyance' of this game (the shooting) unfortunately can't be bypassed. But I'm hoping a friend or a Twitter follower of mine will educate me that this can also be skipped by holding down the Right trigger. I live in that hope. Because the shooting sections in this game really are awful. Especially with me coming straight into this game not long after Mass effect 2, where the gun fighting was on absolute point.
L.A Noire's cases are an interesting bunch to say the least. The last case I closed was packed to the brim with so much corruption that by the end of it I just felt like I had been personally violated. The only thing Team Bondi left out was gay bestiality. This case featured drug use, underage rape, money laundering, domestic abuse, racism, invasion of privacy, fascism and discrimination. Yes. All within one mission. I shudder to think what's going to get snowballed into the next mission. Possibly death by snow balling itself? (Note: Do not Google this if you're faint hearted. Although if you're reading this and are playing through L.A Noire, then you may as well. It's definitely way down on the scale from underage panties with traces of semen and the vaginal bruising of a 15 year old girl). I'd pull my mind out of the gutter for a second, but L.A Noire has pinned it there. Blame the game, not the player.
L.A Noire does a really good job of throwing these things at you in a way which initially shocks you, but not in the classic cue reverse cymbals, drum roll, TA-DAH! HERE WE HAVE [insert f**ked up shit here]!! Feel shocked...NOW! Instead everything is fed to you in a way which essentially puts you directly in a detectives' shoes. Sure, everything you're uncovering is messed up. But it's part of your job. Just another day. I think this has always been Rockstar's strong point in their games. What would seemingly be really big dramatic moments in other games, aren't so dramatic in theirs - because they're part of the everyday lives of the characters you're respectively inhabiting. And I love this.
L.A Noire seems to be moving at quite a pace even though I'm barely out of the starting blocks of the game. Within only a handful of missions, Phelps has been promoted twice. I'd like to think my strong investigative abilities are what are having me climb up the ladder, but I've been f**king up in interrogations and accusing people wrongly left, right and center. So I'm certain Phelps is giving that neck action to superiors in dark corners of empty basement jail cells. I wish he wouldn't. Because I was not happy with the most recent promotion, which meant kicking my old partner to the curb. I loved Berkowsky! He was ny n***a. Best. Partner. EVAR! Now I have some fat old miserable git.
Speaking of wrongly accusing, L.A Noire plays heavily deducing whether a suspect is lying, telling the truth or being doubtful by monitoring their facial expressions. Sometimes this is pretty obvious. A suspects raises their voice "How dare you?!" spouts some self righteous drivel, and then is unable to look you in the eye and constantly looks around the room. Liar. But there are times when it's not so clear, and you end up taking a stab in the dark. Or a suspects reaction seems so obvious that you go for the obvious choice, only to find you chose wrong. You could say it's realistic. After all; telling whether somebody is lying is not always black and white. And some people are easier at faking a lie than others. But sometimes the answer isn't so obvious and you feel like you have to play a game of trial and error to get the right response and not mess up. And I find it unfair that in a game which makes such a point of you paying attention to what a character says and how a character physically reacts - that there are moments when none of this even matters, because you go on all of this and yet you still f**k up interrogations anyway. Perhaps this was Team Bondi's plan all long. Cases can be replayed once they're completed. You can still get through a case and nail a suspect to the floor even if an interrogation doesn't go perfectly. And you develop this need to want to get every question in an interrogation right and revisit a case to do just that. I've already gone back and re-done a couple myself.
So, with my new miserable partner in tow, and a new case I'd started in which a lady got beaten with a pole and left naked in the park with a bush bigger than the ones she was dumped beside - I'll be delving deeper into the seedy corruptions of L.A. God bless 1940's America.
With large chunks of driving between areas now bypassed, I'm able to just focus more on the stuff I do like: the slow investigative poking around. And boy does this game want you to poke around! The other 'annoyance' of this game (the shooting) unfortunately can't be bypassed. But I'm hoping a friend or a Twitter follower of mine will educate me that this can also be skipped by holding down the Right trigger. I live in that hope. Because the shooting sections in this game really are awful. Especially with me coming straight into this game not long after Mass effect 2, where the gun fighting was on absolute point.
L.A Noire's cases are an interesting bunch to say the least. The last case I closed was packed to the brim with so much corruption that by the end of it I just felt like I had been personally violated. The only thing Team Bondi left out was gay bestiality. This case featured drug use, underage rape, money laundering, domestic abuse, racism, invasion of privacy, fascism and discrimination. Yes. All within one mission. I shudder to think what's going to get snowballed into the next mission. Possibly death by snow balling itself? (Note: Do not Google this if you're faint hearted. Although if you're reading this and are playing through L.A Noire, then you may as well. It's definitely way down on the scale from underage panties with traces of semen and the vaginal bruising of a 15 year old girl). I'd pull my mind out of the gutter for a second, but L.A Noire has pinned it there. Blame the game, not the player.
L.A Noire does a really good job of throwing these things at you in a way which initially shocks you, but not in the classic cue reverse cymbals, drum roll, TA-DAH! HERE WE HAVE [insert f**ked up shit here]!! Feel shocked...NOW! Instead everything is fed to you in a way which essentially puts you directly in a detectives' shoes. Sure, everything you're uncovering is messed up. But it's part of your job. Just another day. I think this has always been Rockstar's strong point in their games. What would seemingly be really big dramatic moments in other games, aren't so dramatic in theirs - because they're part of the everyday lives of the characters you're respectively inhabiting. And I love this.
L.A Noire seems to be moving at quite a pace even though I'm barely out of the starting blocks of the game. Within only a handful of missions, Phelps has been promoted twice. I'd like to think my strong investigative abilities are what are having me climb up the ladder, but I've been f**king up in interrogations and accusing people wrongly left, right and center. So I'm certain Phelps is giving that neck action to superiors in dark corners of empty basement jail cells. I wish he wouldn't. Because I was not happy with the most recent promotion, which meant kicking my old partner to the curb. I loved Berkowsky! He was ny n***a. Best. Partner. EVAR! Now I have some fat old miserable git.
Speaking of wrongly accusing, L.A Noire plays heavily deducing whether a suspect is lying, telling the truth or being doubtful by monitoring their facial expressions. Sometimes this is pretty obvious. A suspects raises their voice "How dare you?!" spouts some self righteous drivel, and then is unable to look you in the eye and constantly looks around the room. Liar. But there are times when it's not so clear, and you end up taking a stab in the dark. Or a suspects reaction seems so obvious that you go for the obvious choice, only to find you chose wrong. You could say it's realistic. After all; telling whether somebody is lying is not always black and white. And some people are easier at faking a lie than others. But sometimes the answer isn't so obvious and you feel like you have to play a game of trial and error to get the right response and not mess up. And I find it unfair that in a game which makes such a point of you paying attention to what a character says and how a character physically reacts - that there are moments when none of this even matters, because you go on all of this and yet you still f**k up interrogations anyway. Perhaps this was Team Bondi's plan all long. Cases can be replayed once they're completed. You can still get through a case and nail a suspect to the floor even if an interrogation doesn't go perfectly. And you develop this need to want to get every question in an interrogation right and revisit a case to do just that. I've already gone back and re-done a couple myself.
So, with my new miserable partner in tow, and a new case I'd started in which a lady got beaten with a pole and left naked in the park with a bush bigger than the ones she was dumped beside - I'll be delving deeper into the seedy corruptions of L.A. God bless 1940's America.