Review Time: L.A. Noire in the Crosshairs

Welcome to the second installment of Review Time.  In the last review, I covered World of Warcraft Cataclysm.  Now the first beneficiary of my break from Azeroth comes into the limelight: L.A. Noire.

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Initially announced in 2004, the initial project from Team Bondi (under the Rockstar Games umbrella) took seven years to finally hit the market and it did so with a ton of marketing and fanfare.  Groundbreaking technology for video game graphics plus a unique story and setting concept put this project on track as a "Game of the Year" contender for 2011.

However, anybody who sincerely believes this is anywhere close to the Game of the Year is overlooking some serious flaws and drawbacks.  Revolutionary in some regards, yes.  But also so many inexcusable errors for a game in development for a whopping seven years.

For the small handful of readers who may not know or may have forgotten the ad campaign about this game from a year ago, L.A. Noire is a crime drama game set in a film noir style that fits the game's 1940's setting.  The main character is Cole Phelps, a war hero who has come back from the war to become a detective in the L.A.P.D.  As with many of the popular detective or crime investigation shows on television in the past decade, the story is fraught with crime, moral issues, sexuality, and twists.

However, it is that story which ends up being one of the biggest weaknesses of the game.  The game is set in an episodic style with a series of cases that take roughly an hour to 90 minutes to solve, with flashbacks from Cole's previous life in the war mixed in between every mission to reveal story details that become relevant to the main storyline.  It becomes clear in these flashbacks that Cole Phelps is a war hero in name only, as his Silver Star was awarded for being stunned into shock and hiding in a foxhole to survive the Battle of Okinawa.

Many of the soldiers in Cole's unit end up being minor players in the main story, and the distaste most of them have for Cole is clear.  This story gains a lot of traction in the first half or 2/3 of the game, leading a player to expect a good payoff.  Cole becomes a rising star in the L.A.P.D. after successfully solving a few cases as the Patrol Desk and the Traffic Desk.  The game hits a high point at the Homicide Desk where five murders lead to five innocent men being put to jail before the real culprit is tracked down in a mission that feels a lot like the movie Die Hard With A Vengeance.  Although puzzling out the locations to go next was relatively annoying with no help from the game, playing around with the map finally leads to the abandoned church catacombs where the murderer is put to justice.



Then the personalities of the war flashbacks begin to show up more in the main storyline as former Marines are being killed off by the mob to slow an Army Surplus morphine influx into the local drug trade.  Phelps is uncovering the Army Surplus plot and putting away mob members successfully on the Vice Desk before being undermined by his corrupt partner Roy Earle.  Earle, who apparently introduced Phelps to local German jazz singer Elsa Lichtmann on a Burglary Desk that got cut from the final game during development, reveals that Cole is having an extramarital affair with Elsa, leading to his public reputation being tarnished and a demotion to the Arson Desk.

The Arson Desk ends up being a perfect place for Cole Phelps to sniff out the arson/corruption of a home building association that is in cahoots with Earle and other corrupt L.A.P.D. officials, as well as scamming insurance companies for major payoffs.  But in this process, the story takes some terrible turns that make the development seem far more rushed than it was.

First, the entire Elsa storyline comes out of nowhere and falls flat.  Without the previous introduction of Elsa by Roy Earle made clear in the final game, it becomes difficult to understand why Cole becomes attached to this strange German singer.  Furthermore, the supposedly emotional confrontation between Cole and his wife is completely rendered meaningless by not even really revealing that he even had a wife and kids before the affair.  What could have been a good twist just turns into a head-scratcher with little effect.

Second, the main story then jumps the shark for most of the remainder by having the player play as Jack Kelso, an insurance man who led Phelps during the war and gets convinced by Phelps to help him out.  Although Phelps is limited in what he can do by the circumstances, that is a weak excuse for essentially changing the protagonist at the critical juncture of the game.  If anybody has read the Mission Earth series of books by L. Ron Hubbard, you will understand what a horrible mistake this type of writing is.  Changing main character protagonists is a risky business, and Phelps to Kelso is not justified by how the story plays out.

Third, the story ends with an unsatisfactory thud.  An arsonist who was partially driven crazy by Phelps's actions in Okinawa (who ordered him to burn out Japanese soldiers in a cave, that turned out to be a hospital for Japanese civilians) ends up being the final boss and Kelso takes him out to save Elsa.  As rain makes water rise in the sewers where Kelso and Phelps take out the arsonist, Phelps helps Elsa and Kelso to safety while sacrificing himself.  Other than Kelso, none of the major players in the Marine story survive and the corrupt cops win the day as Phelps dies with his information.  I'm OK with an unhappy ending for the protagonist, but the weakly written conclusion to these combining storylines is a huge disappointment after investing 20+ hours in the game.

 

Another weakness is the game play itself, which is repetitive and terribly slow at points.  Too many suspects run and force chase scenes that get old after about the third one.  Car chases are annoying because it is too easy to get stuck on obstacles, and foot chases usually end in a cheesy fighting system that is underused and boring (press X a lot...).  And then there's investigating crime scenes, which is a special slice of hell.  You basically walk around an area seemingly endlessly picking up useless items and the occasional relevant evidence for way too long at most crime scenes.  This is just filler basically, as the detective work is truly putting together the evidence and working interrogations.

Of the game play elements, interrogations are by far the most effective part of the game.  Thanks in large part to the Motion Sense technology that used 32 cameras to present the most realistic actor face captures ever used in a video game, interrogations really provide a chance to look a suspect or witness in the eye and determine their credibility.  I have learned that either I did not see the pattern the developers expected me to see, or I'm just really bad at reading people.  That was OK though, as I enjoyed the challenge and attempting to read behind the lifelike facial expressions.

The world in which the game is set is a true representation of L.A. in the late 1940's.  The developers allegedly spent nearly two years simply researching to make the setting accurate, and the details show nicely.  That being said, the world is way too large by a factor of two or three for a game of this scope.  The drives back and forth for miles across the city between destinations turn out to be nothing but annoying filler, and it happens too much.  Although you can set the partner to autodrive to get to the next destination nearly instantaneously, this does not excuse the poor design choice that led the world to be oversized.  It is hard to ever get a solid grip on the L.A. world thanks to how big it is.

So even though the setting is beautifully rendered using state-of-the-art technology, the sandbox fails to give cohesiveness like other game worlds.  Perhaps the goal of lifelike Los Angeles was driven by the same desire of open-world type gaming that offers a ton of little filler missions whenever you hop in a car.  On the whole, the filler rmissions I completed were not worth the time wasted on them, as they did not advance the story or give more detail in much of a meaningful manner.

One interesting tidbit is that the game can be played in black and white, which makes the game feel even more like a noir film.  I preferred the colored version of the world, but the black and white version was sharp for what it was. 

The small bits of action are limited to the awful repetitive chase scenes described above, a handful of shootouts, and the cheesy hand fighting scenes.  The shootouts are fairly easy for those like me who are not FPS afficianados, but they are so satisfying because they happen so infrequently.  The highlight of the action probably comes in the Church Catacombs at the end of the Murder desk, as only good cover and shoot skills will take down the serial killer.



So on the whole, a game that took seven years to develop clearly spent too much time playing with the background and facial rendering technologies and research on making an oversized realistic representation of Los Angeles.  There is simply not much actual game play here, and the game play that is in L.A. Noire is dreadfully repetitive and slow.  The story jumps the shark and falls completely flat after a great build-up, leaving players no real motivation to play DLC or to hope for a sequel.

These are inexplicable errors for a game in development this long.  You cannot deny the prettiness and groundbreaking nature of the visuals in the game, but you also cannot deny the absolute lack of satisfying and varied game play.  Development time and money were not spent wisely on this project, and that is highly unfortunate.  What could have been a game changer instead becomes just another mediocre video game.

Let's hope that if the series continues, the next installment adds more game play and a better story.

Grade: C-

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I also note that the complete lack of desire to ever play L.A. Noire again led me to do something I had never done: trade games back in to GameStop.  Combining L.A. Noire, Portal 2, a double trade-in value weekend, my pro membership (10% more trade-in, 10% off used games), and my annual buy two get one free coupon, I ended up picking up Batman Arkham City, Skyrim, and Mass Effect 3 ofr about 23 bucks apiece.  Not bad, not bad at all.

But now my game queue is backed up to high hell.  Here's the current list, in rough order of my priority: Mass Effect 2, Dark Souls, Starcraft 2 campaign, Skyrim, Batman AC, Crusader Kings, Mass Effect 3, Zelda Twilight Princess, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Super Mario Galaxy 2.

Holy smokes...I'm the opposite of Todd at No High Scores.  Too many games to play!

Adventures in Legacy: Format Introduction and GP Indianapolis 2012

Ever since quitting competitive magic when I got married and busy with law school in 2007, I have only attended a couple of tournaments a year.  Just enough to scratch the itch that remains when you play and love a game for 12 years.  I finally decided in 2010 that I did not really want to continue playing limited formats only, and a Grand Prix in the Legacy format was coming to Columbus. 

So I did a little research into the format at the time and invested in my first real Legacy staple: Lion's Eye Diamond.  I built Goblin Charbelcher to give the format a run and learned another storm deck inside and out.  I have been a huge fan of storm and similar combo decks, and they probably hold my heart even more than the elf tribe and that little deck called Trinity Green.

At the time of Grand Prix Columbus, Survival decks and Aluren decks were the hot trend and blue decks were struggling.  In other words, a great time to be on the quickest combo deck in the format, even if it has a huge glass jaw in its vulnerability to Force of Will.  For the first time in my long magic playing experience, I had a couple real dual lands (which was admittedly, a mistake as you only need 1) and a good feel about a format that looked dead years before.

I certainly do not remember the exact match ups I faced, but I started 0-1 and 2-2 before ripping off five straight wins against the likes of Zoo, Enchantress, and Elves Combo.  My deck was just faster than other combo decks and only lost when it shot itself in the foot.  My poor start killed my tiebreakers, but my first real taste of Legacy gave me something I'd never experienced before: Day 2 of a Grand Prix.  And despite starting 0-2 on Day 2, I stuck it out and won four matches in a row to close the Grand Prix and manage a 35th place finish and cashed out despite my terrible tiebreakers (I was tied for 18th place with the worst tiebreakers of the bunch).

Just like that, a love affair with Legacy was born.  This is a format I can enjoy watching and keeping track of throughout the year at Star City events while planning my 1-2 events a year or so.  Although Modern has my group of friends excited in 2012 and rightfully so as a fixed extended, Legacy is far more interesting to me.

Between that first Grand Prix and this past weekend, I attended a pair of Star City events in Cincinnati.  In those events I upgraded to Ad Nauseam Tendrils thanks to the ability to borrow Underground Seas from Dave Bruce.  ANT does not have nearly the glass jaw as Belcher but has just as much fun in it, as you are still counting to a high number with storm.  The first SCGO was right after Mental Misstep was printed, and that card was just beginning to warp a format leaning blue heavy at that moment already.

I finished that event 5-3, which was pretty good fighting through effectively 8 copies of Force of Will (to my deck, it might as well have been).  The second SCGO came a few months later in February 2012, and I managed to talk Mike and Mike and Joey to come down for that event.  Joey audibled to drafting at the last minute, but Burton played Pox and Villa played Burn.  Despite the removal of Mental Misstep from the format, blue is still heavily played enough to make Belcher a highly risky choice at best.  I had built Elves and wanted to run that, but stuck with Tendrils because I knew it better.  The results were not good, as the deck just had a very bad day.  I squeaked out a .500 record somehow (including one of my best played matches of magic ever against Affinity, where I stormed off for 7 one turn and kept an Ill Gotten Gains back to storm for 5 the next turn when I needed to get to 12 total) and called it a day.

So with four weeks to prepare for Grand Prix Indy, I kept working with the Elves deck.  Basically, I thought the format set up well for fair decks (UW Stoneforge, Maverick, and RUG Delver) which had made up about 35-40% of the format in the previous month.  Although Elves is like drawing dead in poker when it plays against other combo decks, it is built to dominate the "fair" decks at the top of the format.  I decided to roll the dice and play an elf deck for really the first time since my Trinity successes in 2004 and 2005.  And man, did it feel good.

So the stage was set: hope to avoid combo decks and make Day 2, where the field would be littered with players on the top 3 decks in the format.  Unfortunately, that did not happen.  Here's the recap:

Round 1 vs. Sneak and Show: Game 1, he is on the play and comes out slow with a couple Islands and ponder, brainstorm.  I actually had him on Tendrils and tried to set up for a turn 3 win.  On turn 3 he played Show and Tell and Emrakul, while I awkwardly had a hand full of Chords and GSZ's which meant the heavy creature deck had no action on a Show and Tell (how lucky).  I could not get there on turn 3.  Game 2 he went off for a Progenitus on turn 2 and then Firespouted me on turn 3, wrecking any hope I had of a comeback.  I could not win on turn 3 through that.  Not a great matchup for me and his deck performed ideally. (0-1)

Round 2 vs. Reanimator: Lucky me, a second straight deck running Show and Tell.  On the play, he laid a turn two Jin-Gitaxis and I was not able to put enough pressure on the board on turn 2 to overcome his advantage with drawing seven cards a turn.  I mulliganed once to try and find a Leyline of the Void but missed and just went for it.  That did not end well, as I faced a turn 2 Elesh Norn and a turn 3 Iona.  There's no out for that in Elves, no matter how you build it. Sigh. (0-2)

Round 3 vs. RUG Delver: This guy had triple sleeved his deck.  Triple sleeved...which means it looked like Battle of Wits despite only having 60 cards in it.  Ridiculous!  Game 1 he put some board pressure on with Tarmogoyf and Delver of Secrets, but I managed to combo out through his limited countermagic on the turn before he was lethal.  In game two, I again fought through his countermagic to partially combo off and finished that turn with a Choke that locked the game down.  A fair deck goes down in flames and hope is still alive. (1-2)

Round 4 vs. Goblins: When I see turn 1 Mountain, Goblin Lackey, I know I am in for a race.  I laid out Nettle Sentinel and put the big elf on defense as I tried to assemble the combo pieces quickly.  However, my deck came out incredibly slowly and was unusually decimated by a Gempalm Incinerator when I fell slightly behind on creature count.  In game 2, I began comboing off in turn 3 and despite playing Regal Force, I completely whiffed on my draws.  I had seen nothing but Mountains and Wastelands to this point and wanted to overwhelm my opponent while I had the advantage, so I went ahead and put most of my hand on the board.  My opponent then goes: fetchland, B/R dual land, Perish.

Well played, goblins player. Well played.  I cannot beat that.  I lost a few long disappointing turns later to a deck I probably should beat.  (1-3)

Thought about dropping for side events at this point but decided to keep playing to enjoy my entry fee rather than risk more money on a draft or a commander game that might not last long, since the girls were at an Indianapolis museum and would not pick me up until the evening.  Might as well see if I can get on the winning side of the ledger, as I told myself I'd be disappointed with anything worse than a 6-3 finish on the day considering how well positioned Elves was for the format.

Round 5 vs. Burn: This matchup is all about winning the die roll, as the deck is just about as quick as the Elf deck.  Game 1 I won the die roll and managed to stick a Mirror Entity on turn 3 with 4 mana available to protect it should that become necessary.  It was not necessary and I swung for 33 on turn 4 to win.  Game 2 my opponent went first and crushed me before I could combo out.  Game 3 the first turn was back to me and I put about 6 elves on the table on turn 3, including Ezuri.  I also had five mana available so when my opponent tried to kill Ezuri the next turn, I did the Overrun effect and forced him to use another burn spell.  I still ground out the victory because he was inexperienced and played a second Pyrostatic Pillar when he was behind on board position and equal in life total.  I swung over with the team and made it impossible for him to win without killing himself via Pillar, which he did. (2-3)

Round 6 vs. UW Stoneforge: Another fair deck I wanted to face, yay! These two games went a lot like the RUG Delver games, except that this player had slightly more countermagic and slightly less early threats.  By the time he played Jace on turn 4 of game 1, I had lethal staring at him and even bouncing Ezuri was not going to stop that.  In game 2 he played a stoneforge mystic on turn 3, which opened the door for me to force through a Choke after having my Glimpse of Nature countered on the following turn.  Despite having the Wrath of God in hand, his tapped out Tundras made him an easy target to pick off from there. (3-3)

Round 7 vs. LED Dredge: Despite coming out a bit slow in game 1, the Dredge deck has a huge advantage here and he finally crushed me on his fourth turn.  I boarded in my six hate cards and managed to pull a Leyline for game 2.  That was enough when going first to allow me to win quickly while he stumbled to find an answer.  In game 3 I mulliganed a great hand because I had a sneaking suspicion I needed Leyline on the draw to have any chance.  A double mulligan later and I had one, and I followed that up with a second one after I comboed out Birchlore Rangers and some other elves on turn 5.  As it turns out, my opponent had the enchantment kill for one of the Leylines, but the second one made the game academic. (4-3)

Round 8 vs. High Tide Combo: I went into round 8 knowing this was likely my last round, as the girls were picking me up and Pastimes ran way too slow for us to manage even 8 rounds in 10 and a half hours.  Unfortunately, I ran into my worst nightmare in a quicker combo deck.  He wrecked me both games and had the Candelabra tech, so his deck was high quality.  I could see myself playing High Tide someday because it is a lot like Tendrils...deck manipulation to find the pieces and countermagic (instead of discard) to protect the combo.  Anyway, not much to speak of here as I was one turn away from comboing each time he went off.  Par for the course.  (4-4)

Despite the terrible finish, I really would stick by this deck choice if I had the choice to make again.  If the format stay pretty much the same, I still think Elves is one of the best options because it has such good game against the top decks in the format with their limited countermagic and their limited mass creature kill.

And in the end, I did enjoy playing the little elves again.  Unfortunately my old nemesis Goblins was there to absolutely wreck my day, just like back in 2001 when Tom Wood wrecked me with Goblins against Elves in the finals of the MML league.  So I have no idea when the next Adventure in Legacy will be, but that's OK because I've had a couple mediocre events in quick succession and have scratched the itch for now.  I'm now going to eventually turn my attention to brewing for Modern with the boys, and then also to playing with the Commander decks, which you can still pick up at your local Target, Wal-Mart, and Meijer.  Epic finds this late after release, but I'll take it.

Giving In: I pulled a Mister Binky in the Campaign

I rebooted Starcraft 2 this past weekend for the first time in quite a while thanks to the in laws coming over and invading the house for Kira's first birthday party. Of course someone brought stomach flu to the party which has wrecked the remainder of the week since then, but I think they last person to get the flu (me) is finally getting close to healthy again.

I quickly recalled why I gave it a break, as I was stuck on this mission "Welcome to the Jungle" where you have to go grab 7 fragments from wells guarded by protoss forces before they knock 7 of the 13 available offline. I had tried this mission something like 8 times on Hard difficulty and just was not making any progress. I knew that I had to quickly assemble an immediate strike force to grab a couple of the fragments farthest away from my home base before the protoss built up enough to blow me away on that side of the board. Yet it always seemed like I would get stuck on 4 or 5 fragments.

So then two things changed. I listened to the first episode of "n00b Tuesday" on Day9 video podcasts and bumped the difficulty on the campaign down to Normal. While I understand the point my friend and Starcraft mentor Tom is making when he says the best way to learn the game properly is on a high difficulty level, I also want to enjoy my experience in the campaign rather than get frustrated. I'm still incredibly intimidated by all the different units available in multiplayer or matches versus the A.I., so the campaign will have to train me on new units and tricks one mission at a time. And following the advice of a game reviewer I respect (Mister Binky from the Gameshark and No High Scores crew), I decided to hell with it I will play this on normal.

It turns out the the first Day9 podcast for beginners focused on one primary point, always be building an SCV or a comparable unit. That way you always know you are pushing the limits of your economy and not wasting too much money on other unnecessary developments. You take care of your macro, everything else works out usually. The other thing I learned was to stop being lazy and queueing up a lot of units, which makes perfect sense the second someone says it to you.

Using these two factors (lessened difficulty and a better focus on my macro), Welcome to the Jungle dropped on the first try. It did not come easily, though, as I stalled with six fragments and a decimated army (and partially decimated base). But I recovered and had strategized properly, leaving the closest fragment for last and eventually put together the force to complete the mission.

Built up with confidence, I then jumped into the next two missions and blew them both out of the water. One was a mission called The Dig, in which you obtain another artifact by using a laser drill to blow through defending protoss forces and a temple. I had no idea siege tanks could bunker down and lock down a base, but this mission taught me how good that unit can actually be. This mission was probably easy enough for me to complete on a higher difficulty, but I enjoyed it with the low stress and actually being able to go grab protoss research points.

The next mission I tackled was The Great Train Robbery, which used the Diamondback to assault trains and guard forces while avoiding a massive kill squad of Marauders. Again, I only had a little difficulty knocking down one train, but I had enough Diamondbacks to finish the job. This was a nifty mission for multitasking and paying close attention to your surroundings. I don't know if the Diamondback has any use in multiplayer (or why it would), but the mission was still well designed.

And now that I'm ten missions into the campaign, I can see why the reviews of the campaign were so sparkling. The campaign does a brilliant job of varying mission objectives while introducing a new trick or twist and a new unit each time to keep things fresh. So now I've got a ton of options including protoss missions available, and I'm happy to be enjoying the campaign on normal. Once I get to training challenges and more Day9 podcasts, I'll worry about becoming a better multiplayer player. If I can put up a respectable effort against someone like Tom, that would be cool. It's like someone at their first pro tour knocking off Kai Budde or Jon Finkel at the top of their game.

Speaking of, another Legacy Open in my town next weekend, and I've got three old friends from my magic playing days joining me. Love that format and have thoroughly enjoyed my 2+ years playing it a couple times a year.