Extra Punctuation: L.A. Noire Is a Bad Adventure Game

[Snatch Bandergrip]

Since L.A. Noire has come out, I've learned about a whole bunch of old adventure/mystery games I'm dying to check out, such as the Ace Attorney series, primarily from this forum. A big thanks to all.

That said, I submit an oldie but a goodie for consideration: Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. You question witnesses, follow clues to the next destination, gather details on the suspect to procure a warrant. Simple and fun.

CS also handled time pressure well. You have a week to solve cases (a fairly forgiving window of time), and every action takes a few hours. Early correct answers were rewarded with saved time; wrong answers were punished with lost time.

L.A. Noire is indeed imperfect. The open world environment is wasted; investigations are archaically point-and-clicky; interrogations are either overly easy or frustratingly unintuitive; the action is clunky like all Rockstar games. But if it encourages other games to follow in its footsteps, improve upon its flaws, and bring adventure/mystery/puzzle games - games that challenge you on a cerebral level rather than visceral - back into the mainstream, I'll be a happy boy.

 

[Jacksaw Jack]

Shhhush, Yahtzee, keep your good ideas secret. Lest the corporate trolls overhear, steal the concept and twist it into some foul mockery of the original.

BTW, I'm waiting for you to rip Red Faction: Armageddon a new rectal cavity. I enjoyed the game, but for some reason listening to you tear games I like apart is very entertaining. You should get a raise.

 

[MaxwellEdison]

"I think Rockstar, for all their fine qualities, badly need to understand that not every game should have a sandbox. Not ones that don't really add anything, and especially not ridiculously huge ones that you're penalized for driving recklessly around. Mafia 2 also take note."
This, this, a THOUSAND times this.
I love sandbox games. I adore exploring, building my understanding of the world, not feeling restricted, as well as dicking about.
When a sandbox is not only boring, but basically lashes out at you when you dare make a decision that it doesn't want you to make, it is a failure, and should not be a sandbox. A sandbox is not an excuse to make a pretty town and put some shops you can visit in it. A sandbox is what its name implies. Something you can mess around in.

 

[bombadilillo]

For the record, I'm enjoying L.A. Noire, but the linearity is really off-putting, and at times it can be downright frustrating. Overall though I like the game, so don't call me a 'hater' because I think there are some things it could have done better.

Yes, my partner always drivers because its become a chore, so the game might as well not even be a sandbox.

 

[Sinclair Solutions]

Why are we dogging LA Noire? Want attention much?

A lot of people are for some reason. I think it got so hyped up as a revolutionary game that people aren't impressed by it. The developers never really wanted that attention. They wanted people to recognize the effort they were putting in with the facial motion capture, but that's pretty much it. They just wanted to make a good game, and I think they did a pretty good job. Maybe we should stop hyping up games to unrealistic standards.

 

[The Cake Is Annoying]

A game like you're talking about would have been easier to sell decades ago, when Zork levels of graphics were still a pitch that could be sold. And yeah, by Zork level of graphics I mean "blue screen of death".

LA Noire and the use of a brilliant new approach to graphics/another-fucking-gimmick-thats-as-exciting-as-prince-of-persia's-rotoscoping-grrrr (you decide!) meant that any attempt at an enormous amount of depth through dialogue choices would create a fuckton of spoken unique dialogue, stat of the art lipsync porn and an exploded budget for what could wind up being a shorter game.

On the other hand, if it dated-but-stylised graphics (JSRF sort of cell shading to hide low polycounts and motion capture) and only written text with almost nothing spoken the project could be done since the bulk of the money would pay the writers.

Sadly it'd still be a fuck ton of work and hard to co-ordinate so many writers and test each of the game forks. Plus since it doesn't have space marine with a hormone imbalance it'd be slated by internet mouthbreathers as gay and possibly banned in Australia if the sex scenes don't give accurate and acceptably large bra sizes...

ALSO: No Discworld Noir versus LA Noire comparison?

 

[Luthir Fontaine]

[

No offense Yahtzee but nothing well ever make you happy, so why bother

Yeah, this is true. I genuinely don't understand him sometimes. There's about 3 games out there that he seems to like, and what's funny is that Silent Hill 2 is one of them. I'm sorry, but SH2 has a shitload of gameplay problems. It's incredibly easy to rip apart that game, but hey, it's a matter of opinions, I guess.

I agree though funny and makes you think at times he doesnt really stand for anything just against everything with 3 expections

Portal
Sands of time
Silent hill 2

good games in thier own merit (didnt care for silent hill or sands but that was me) but most of the time he just complains about one thing after another...

also

TF2 (kinda)
half life

hes just verry picky is all.

To picky...I would rather deal with a fan boy...at least they have like something and put stock in it..hes just like pissin on everything hahah

 

[Wither]

A sequel to Phoenix Wright, Miles Edgeworth, actually implements the clue combining system that Yahtzee outlines. It's called Logic in the game, and combining facts from your observations guides you and helps you to construct arguments.
EDIT: Bloody ninjas. But yeah, check it out. It makes the debating way less frustrating than PW, and Edgeworth is a lot more suave than Phoenix

 

[nitrium oxide]

Your adventure game sounds an awful lot like the early 80's Infocom text adventure titled, appropriately, Deadline. So no, you didn't think of it first! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadline_(video_game)

 

[WeAreJimbo]

I like the sound of that bunny rabbit shotgun game. Do you have a publisher for that?

 

[AlohaJo]

I'm rather surprised for some reason that Yahtzee has played Phoenix Wright...

They're fun games with a rather good story. I'm more surprised that there's people out there who haven't played them...

 

[Zetsubou^-^]

your game idea sounds like phoenix wright except less linear and more time constrictive...

i approve. make it so.

 

[thenewprince]

This is as ridiculous as talking about books not having original ideas. I really am growing tired of these older man children preaching about a lack of innovation. The men (and yes its mainly men) bitching about games the most are the ones who aren't creating them. I know they idea may be that you're never too old for games, but I'm starting to feel like a line should be drawn for people like Yahtzee. His consistent trolling about games is targeting towards an age group that aren't aging well. I would rather focus my attention in the younger crowds. The kids that are the age were we started playing games. Why not engage and challenge them and get a working demographic going?

I think I'll write about that instead of reading another fanboy rant from a 40 year old about the next Zelda.

 

[Razorback0z]

"My hope is that L.A. Noire's example will lead to a resurgence of games driven by exploration, inventory and dialogue puzzles with more creative plots and refinement of the mechanics. Making the cases a bit more organic and a bit less linear with more appropriate opportunities for failure might be a good start."

This really is the crux of the matter for my money.

I really enjoyed LA Noire and its mainly for the reasons of it being a return to a somewhat more thinking style of game and it does indeed provide a little hope for some better examples going forward.

I wont say you have been too hard on it because thats your style and I generally agree with everything you write.

I would however say that almost all games represent evolution not revolution. Sure now and again we get revolution, Deus Ex, Dune 2, GTA and the like. But more often than not games creep forward a little at a time and thats what LA Noire has done and it has crept in a very promising direction.

 

[kordo]

Well Yahtzee gets paid to shit on good games so whatever. But yes - LA Noire owes a fuck of a lot to LA Confidential.

 

[Char-Nobyl]

Eh, I think Yahtzee's being a bit unreasonable with the comparisons to 'LA Confidential.' 'Noire' is a 1940s detective/police story, and there are quite a few factors about that setting that simply don't get changed in even a particularly original story.

Yes, the main character was wearing a fedora. That's kinda given. It was about as common among detectives (and even the general populace) as helmets were in the Army. And yes, lots of people smoke. That's also given, considering this was in the same decade as a war where we distributed cigarettes among our armed forces as freely as we did food and water.

The Maltese Falcon and Chinatown were both noir films about a private investigator (who's also a former cop) who becomes embroiled in a situation much more dire than he's initially led to believe, and they end with the status quo restored in the most tragic of ways. They have some traits in common, certainly, but I'd never consider them interchangeable.

And similarly, if you're going to criticize similarities between works within the same genre, it's important to distinguish between what's an unoriginal feature and what's just a staple of the genre. I wouldn't encourage a WWII movie about the Western front to replace the Wehrmacht with the Zulu for the sake of 'originality,' nor would I expect something from genuine film noir (and that's not a 'No True Scotsman' argument) to give its protagonist a beret and an opium pipe.

 

[Char-Nobyl]

This is as ridiculous as talking about books not having original ideas. I really am growing tired of these older man children preaching about a lack of innovation. The men (and yes its mainly men) bitching about games the most are the ones who aren't creating them.

Erm...well, yeah. That's how pretty much all criticism works. For one thing, there are a lot more consumers of goods than there are producers, but more importantly, why does it matter whether or not the critics are game designers themselves? Roger Ebert is one of the most well-regarded film critics on Earth, and he's not a director.

And, on an ironic note, Yahtzee is a game designer, albeit on a pretty small scale, somewhat putting a hole through your complaint.

I know they idea may be that you're never too old for games, but I'm starting to feel like a line should be drawn for people like Yahtzee.

Gotta love that 'Fox News' mindset: video games are nothing but children's toys. I mean, it involves a controller! How many mature, adult hobbies involve a controller? Who cares if a game has a moving orchestral score, stunning visuals, and an exciting story? Apparently, including an interactive (read: fun) element automatically renders those features moot.

His consistent trolling about games is targeting towards an age group that aren't aging well. I would rather focus my attention in the younger crowds. The kids that are the age were we started playing games. Why not engage and challenge them and get a working demographic going?

Simple enough: because if you spit in the faces of your established customers and then rely on a business model that requires them to buy your products for their children...you can see how that could go wrong.

I think I'll write about that instead of reading another fanboy rant from a 40 year old about the next Zelda.

You know that he's not even thirty, right? Or do you just perceive everyone who's out of their college years to be 'somewhere around 40'?

 

[Razorback0z]

I know they idea may be that you're never too old for games, but I'm starting to feel like a line should be drawn for people like Yahtzee.

"Gotta love that 'Fox News' mindset: video games are nothing but children's toys. I mean, it involves a controller! How many mature, adult hobbies involve a controller? Who cares if a game has a moving orchestral score, stunning visuals, and an exciting story? Apparently, including an interactive (read: fun) element automatically renders those features moot.."

Couldnt agree more Char Nobyl!

Not to mention, has he ever seen a Yahtzee review before? He even cans the games he likes, its called a "reviewing style".

If you take everything literally newbprince... Then I think your a really intelligent person who fully thinks through what you post and carefully researches your topics.

*cough*