Yesterday, I bought
L.A Noire: Complete Edition PC [download] from Amazon for $12.49, which matched Steam's deal yesterday. One less layer of DRM/client bullshit to deal w/ there w/ their version (Rockstar Social Club and GameShield), as opposed to Steam version (RSC, GameShield, and Steam). Worth noting, though - the Steam version also supports
Steam Achievements - if you're interested and in love w/ that sort of thing.
Anyways, my thoughts on this game...
I played for a good 6 hours w/ this yesterday. Hella-impressive game. The graphics do look pretty good, though the facial animations and lip-syncing are off-the-charts. No game does facial animations or lip-syncing as GOOD as this, so far - PERIOD.
The game - at least so far, some 6 hours in - feels like a Whole Season of a really good TV detective series. It feels like each chapter (episode) is a case of its own entirety. They'll mention old cases and other sorts of character development stuff while riding around in the car, so I think it's worth your while to just drive around yourself. There's lot of conversations, when riding around - so it's worth your time to NOT skip anything by letting your partner drive. Plus, you can run into side quests and find landmarks, if you just drive around.
In the game, there are newspapers you can find - that add-up to some on-going story. After each chapter (episode), there's another story-thread going on, that's adding up to another story, as well. I'm guessing these probably will all tie-in, eventually or later on - probably, into another case, I'd guess.
The side quests seem to provide the game w/ more action, for the most part. Whether shootouts, chasing someone down on foot, brawling fist fights, car chases, or a combo of these elements - these seem to provide the game w/ more action sequences, basically. For the action gamer - yeah, you might want to do these. Plus, these can improve your rank, point score, and net you some other benefits [extra outfits w/ extra percentage boosts in certain areas, more points to toss into Intuition, etc].
The main quests are where it's REALLY interesting. It does NOT seem there's a lot of shootouts here, just mostly police-work. VERY nice chance of pace. Is it me, or does this feel like a good majority of the old-school adventure games? A lot of the game involves sequences where you're investigating a crime scene. Feels like the rebirth of the good old pixel-hunt or look around the area and hope to stumble upon something you can pick-up for later usage. For those using a gamepad here, which is probably how you should be playing, when near something you can examine/inspect, the controller rumbles to let you know you're near something you can pick-up. Pretty much, controller seems to be how I'm playing this game the most - for driving; brawling; and walking around. Basically, I only switch to the KB/mouse for shootouts, which doesn't seem to be often at all.
There's A LOT of dialogue. Not a bad thing, though - since the voice-acting and facial animations are fantastic; while the dialogue is also pretty good, too. Basically, based on what evidence you find or information you find, you can throw certain questions at witnesses, suspects, and any other people that you are investigating. The game's looking for certain answers...and you have to pick what it feels is the "right" one. You have options of Truth, Lie, and Doubt - Truth for if you think they're telling the truth; Doubt if you don't buy w/ what they're saying, but have no proof of it; and Lie for if you know they are telling a flat-out lie and you do have some hard-evidence proof of such. Gain enough points from playing and doing anything "right" in the game, you can use points on Intuition to "Remove A Question" [take-back] or "Poll The Community" for their answer in percentages, when investigating a person; or you can use it to "Find More Clues" easily at a Crime-Scene or Location you're checking out, which will point them out at the mini-map.
On my PC (i7 950, 1 GB GeForce GTX 560 Ti, 8 GB of RAM, Win 7) game has experienced NO sort of performance slow-downs, problems, or anything. 1920x1080 w/ everything maxed-out. Smooth as can be on this PC. Got everything chalked up on the NVidia CC, as well.
Simply put - this game's really good and I really do like it, so far. Must go play more.
