Angry Robot

LA Noire

At this point, I buy one game a month. That I bought LA Noire this month indicates that I wanted to like it. A few hours in, I was really into it. But now, a few cases from the end, I have no desire to even finish it. What went wrong?

Now that is a mystery I can solve.

LA Noire has a great story. It draws on hard boiled crime fiction both old and new (it owes a particular debt to Ellroy’s Black Dahlia) as well as the filmic corollary film noir. There’s a rich back story having to do with WWII, a string of murders, civic corruption involving the police, and a hard-working yet flawed and unlikeable protagonist. The characters are well-drawn, if not exceptionally detailed. The remarkable motion capture technology, which renders facial expressions with a liveliness not yet seen in games, is to be commended.

On the surface this looks like Grand Theft Noir – free roaming, large city, lots of car travel. But in reality it’s not that sort of game. It’s got one central mechanic that really works: the crime scene investigation mode. It’s a cross between third person and point-and-click adventure game. It’s well-balanced, fun, and most importantly represents something this game is adding to the noir tradition. It’s a reason why this is a game and not a movie.

Unfortunately, the other central mechanic, the interrogation of suspects, is a disaster. I’m not sure exactly why this mode fails so badly. Maybe real human interaction cannot be simulated when one party has only three stock responses to everything. Perhaps the facial animation isn’t quite good enough to pin a mechanic upon. Maybe the acting or writing wasn’t consistent enough, maybe it was but needed a tutorial. Maybe the lack of challenge makes something uninteresting – it’s near impossible to fail this mode, perhaps a tacit admission that the mechanic doesn’t work.

But the game cannot survive a core mechanic not working. The interrogations become glorified cutscenes that take up half the game, the other gameplay modes can’t compensate and the whole thing starts feeling like repetitive drudgework.

I am definitely excited by what LA Noire represents. It’s an adult game in the “real characters, real storytelling” sense rather than the swear words and gore sense. I am excited by the technological advance of real facial animation. I hope for great future things. I just don’t want to play it any more.

Reaction to Game of Thrones S01E09

Warning! Big spoiler if you haven’t seen the episode.

What a show, man. Those of us who like genre fare but also great storytelling have this conundrum, where something moves from “good for fantasy / scifi / anime / whatever” to “just plain good”. I would say Game of Thrones passed that point about half way through the season, but really, it was there all along, but had to spend the first half putting pieces on the board and getting them into position.

Only now am I noticing that one of the main men on this show, David Benioff, wrote The 25th Hour. Okay he also wrote Troy and Wolverine, so there ya go.

E3 rundown

Here’s an encyclopedic, bitter and hilarious summary of all that E3 had to show this year. I am looking forward to Skyrim, Mass Effect 3, and Bastion. Yeah, I suppose the latest Jenova Chen game and probably Dark Souls (although I haven’t finished its predecessor, even though I liked it).

As for the hardware? I want very much to like the PS Vita, but after what I wrote here, you’ll understand if I’m not too optimistic about its chances. And the new Nintendo Wii U? Looks pretty great, I guess. I mean, it could be. I don’t know. They are so vague with the details that it’s hard to really know, doncha think? At least it’s a reasonably new idea. I know there are no new ideas, but that’s especially true of the video game industry.

The shit going down in Apple land seems a lot more interesting, and a lot of that wasn’t super-new (Lion’s features had already been promoted, and a lot of the iOS improvements are “inspired by” competing mobile OSes). iCloud seems to have an awful lot of small print, so I am waiting for it to get closer so we can resolve its details. But still. Cord-free syncing? I’d punch a Wii U in the face to get that TODAY.

Lucas Strikes Back

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Camera Talk

Man, look at this badboy. Sitting there all pretty-like. Causing drool and wallet problems.

No, I’m not buying one, but I’ll be working on a project with it, which is exciting. I feel a camera phase coming on, as presaged by the photos that have been cropping up here again, which is a side effect of me actually taking photos, after what seemed like a year-long break. What can I say, these things go in cycles.

I was tempted by a lens though, a lovely Olympus 12-60mm f2.8-4. I’ve been looking for a faster zoom, as my camera’s kit lens is nice but slow. This one is a beaut. Here’s a shot I took with it on my camera:

Would be nice to have something that wide (24mm equivalent) with a pretty blurry background like that.

The GH2 is out, which should tempt me to upgrade, but I’m more interested in new lenses, as the new body doesn’t seem crazy better.