L.A. Noire – Endgame

I’ve occasionally mused to a friend that I’d love to see a GTA style game done in the city where L.A. Noire takes place.  I’m afraid that Rockstar have heard me and misunderstood what I wanted: I wanted a new game that was “GTA like”, I didn’t want L.A. Noire to suddenly turn into GTA: Los Angeles.

I was looking forward to the ending, to see how they’d handle it from both a story point of view, and perhaps a set piece point of view.  I was expecting, perhaps, some court scenes where people were brought down with the interrogation techniques used so far; or where Cole (and perhaps Jack) had to give the right answers under questioning, and present evidence appropriately.

What I didn’t expect was a whole sequence of shoot-outs, large car-chases and more shoot-outs.  The ending wraps things up reasonably well, and has a couple of poignant moments, but it was a totally different atmosphere to the rest of the game.

I really get the feeling that Rockstar/Team Bondi are still feeling their way with this new facial capture technology, and the game possibilities.  They’ve hit a lot of right notes, but still haven’t got it properly together yet. I suspect part of the issue is the amount of data they need to store.  3 disks worth, for less than 30 missions (or cases), makes it obvious they’d never be able to make a game with the scope of (say) GTA IV at the current level of their technology.

While I complain about the number of cases, I can honestly say I’ve got my money’s worth.  I’ve put a lot of hours into L.A. Noire, and I’m looking forward to the DownLoadable Content (DLC) cases to see what that introduces.

I may even play the game through again.

About Lisa

A Geeky Gamergrrl who obsesses about the strangest things.
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