L.A. Noire Review

So back when L.A. Noire came out, I was a little reluctant on purchasing it for reasons I don't exactly know, all I know is that I really wanted to play it and I had just finished Grand Theft Auto IV, so it was a great time to make the transition from GTA to L.A. Noire. So heading down to GameStop the day it was released, I let the store manager talk me into buying it with the incentives of the free DLC since it was a pre-ordered game that wasn't going to be picked up.

Taking the game home, I put it in and really enjoyed what I was seeing; the game was very familiar yet very fresh and it was a nice followup to the Grand Theft Auto series. The game had my attention for a little while, but I had stopped playing rather quickly due to the fact that I was getting annoyed with getting the interrogations incorrect, so I put the game down and moved on to other projects.

Much like I do with all of the games that I buy and ignore for a while, I eventually get back to them and learn to appreciate them the way I should have the first way through.

L.A. Noire is a Crime Fiction video game that is set in Los Angeles in 1947, the game is based upon being a detective in the Los Angeles Police Department and the player is assumed to solve a range of cases throughout the game, each of which will promote his recognition throughout the city and the department which will permit him to receive a higher promotion each time. Players are expected to investigate crime scenes in which many clues are present and to use them to follow up on leads given to the player at certain times during the case. Interrogation of suspects is also required and the players success rate in these certain activities will impact how the cases and stories are revealed through the game and at the end of it.

The game starts you off as generic grunt cop, Cole Phelps, in downtown Los Angeles getting called in to investigate a crime scene of a recent shooting, using your character's natural intuition it is up to the player to find the clues necessary to make an arrest, and once done so the game truly gets under way. The game follows the player to increase in rank as certain cases are completed, allowing for the main story of Phelps' career to unfold.

The interrogation scenes are great for two reasons, it makes the user go back to the gaming roots of a mystery game and it allows Team Bundi to show off their fantastic facial animations with characters. Never before have I seen facial animations that were so much in depth, that delivered such a believable sense of realness that revolved around body language.

The controls seemed to flow pretty well, what annoyed me at first was the fact that I couldn't run without holding the R2 button, but this adds to the realism of the game due to the fact that players shouldn't exactly be running everywhere, but it can drag on a little walking that slow on occasions. Gunfights seem just as awkward as they did in Grand Theft Auto, and guns in general seem fairly limited, but since I am just a police officer not Niko Belic.

Los Angeles looks absolutely beautiful, it is a fantastic copy of the city in the 1950s and gives that real life charm that the city still contains. Driving through the streets of Los Angeles is extremely reminiscent of the real Los Angeles and makes me miss the city and has me wanting to make a weekend trip. Team Bundi really went out of their way to bring about the accuracy of the 1950's LA, even so much to give the Los Angeles Archives credit in the game during the credit scroll. Without the fantastic city for the player to wander in, the game definitely would have lost a lot of its character.

GTA 4 - The Ballad of Gay Tony

With The Ballad of Gay Tony completed, I have now completed the entire GTA 4 series.  With Gay Tony, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect based on the title, and I didn't do any research into the game before I played it.  When I started, I felt like the game took one step back and two steps forward.

I enjoyed the fact that this game expanded the city and interactions with the other characters, my favourite new part of the game were the inclusion of many new weapons to purchase.  I loved all of the new guns, in fact I didn't use any guns from the vanilla GTA or from any of the gun vendors; I loved the sticky bombs, they were much easier to use and much more dependable than those stupid pipe bombs, same with grenades.

I didn't enjoy some aspects which I loved a lot in The Lost and the Damned however, I only did one gang war and it wasn't even that fun, so I never did any of the others.  The Base Jumping was too hard to land as perfect as the game was expecting, so I gave up on those near immediately.  The other part about the game I disliked was that I couldn't get two achievements because I was expected to get my "Completed Percentage" up to 80% for each mission, then 100%.  Now it's not easy to get yourself past 30% with some of those, you' can be getting attacked by 50 dudes and they want 20 headshots, 70% accuracy, 10% damage to your car, and only taking 15% damage yourself; do they think we're Rambo here?

Most of the missions were also extremely predictable, when starting a mission you can automatically assume that you have to fly a helicopter at some point, and when in the helicopter you know that you are assumed to either chase someone, land it (lol fuckin impossible), or jump out of it with a parachute... good times.   The missions didn't even seem that unique, to me it just seemed like we were tying loose ends with the main GTA 4 story.

The game is still recommended, but I would suggest playing this one before you play The Lost and the Damned.  To me, that game was more enjoyable and it really made you love all of the characters you interacted with.  About the only new character I liked in The Ballad of Gay Tony was Yusef, the Saudi Arabian rich dude, he was funny as shit and always made the dialogue awesome when he was in a scene.

GTA 4 - The Lost and the Damned

I just finished the first DLC for Grand Theft Auto IV, The Lost and the Damned, and wow.... what a great game.  For years, we've had to deal with the same old GTA with the same shit different game, but this DLC here took a style of gang and really did a great job with it.  Biker gangs have always been pretty badass, and I loved the idea of being able to play as one in a Grand Theft Auto.

The gameplay, as you'd guess it the exact same as the original GTA4, but the subtle changes are what I really liked the best.  Such as if you lost your bike, you'd just call up one of your buddies and they'd bring you a new one, seems a lot more realistic than just grabbing the nearest car you see and speeding off.  Also if you didn't have enough ammo for a certain gun, just call up another buddy and your gang supplies them for you!  It seemed like it really revolved around the biker's brotherhood which I liked a lot, in traditional GTA games you just don't seem to have a connection to other NPCs, but this one did a great job with it.

Now time to play The Ballad of Gay Tony.

Grand Theft Auto IV Review

Grand Theft Auto IV

Completed.

Now that GTA4 is completed, I thought I'd little review on what I thought about the game.  Now I know that it's a bit old, but I was a bit slow to jump on the XBOX 360 bandwagon, so I'm a little behind on some of my gaming.

I've been playing GTA ever since the Playstation 2, but never having the console for myself it was hard for me to really play the game.  However, when I did some commercial and stage work for Sony they took care of me buy giving me a PSP and a half-dozen games along with a large sum of cash, so I ended up purchasing Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories, both of which were great games in my opinion.

I'm not going to go into the story of the game, if you've played it you know it all ready so I'll save my breath. When I first put in the game I felt a little disorientated due to the many changes they did to the game, driving was VERY strange at first but the uncomfortable feeling went away soon after a few hours of driving, but luckily the game added difficulty gradually so I wasn't expected to do any crazy driving until later in the game when car chases and racing were required.  The amount of guns were limited in my opinion, and I was sort of hoping for a better way to categorize them, it felt a little clunky to change weapons mid-battle.

Not even midway through the game I noticed the flaw that irritated me most, which was the radio.  It's really fun to listen to the radio sometimes, but when it comes to having to hear a conversation on-top of it, it is almost impossible.  Such as when you receive a phone call, it's impossible to turn off the radio while the cell phone is displayed, it would be great to have the ability to shut off the radio during a phone call but that isn't a possibility.  The other flaw about the radio I discovered was the fact that you have to turn it off by holding the D-Pad Left or Right for a few seconds.  Now I'm sure that it doesn't sound that bad at first, but when you're trying to chase someone down you want that shit off quick, so having to take your thumb off of the L-Stick which steers your vehicle to get rid of the radio, it is extremely annoying; not sure why they didn't use the Back Button for this function.

All in all, I really enjoyed the game, it was a fun experience and I really liked the ability to interact with friends and having the ability to control your relationships with people.  The characters in the game were great, even those I didn't think I'd like at first such as Dwayne or Packie, but GTA always has a way to make characters unique in their own ways to make them fun to be around.

I have yet to play the two DLCs in order to complete the entire game, but The Lost and the Damned is my next game to play.