L.A. Noire - by EvaUnit02
SubJeff on 6/7/2011 at 22:46
They'd have to get the atmosphere just right. It was in the original game. Man was it right. If you liked Blade Runner it was great. Nails though. Absolutely nails. One refreshing thing was I believe they brought in part of the missing storyline chunk from the book.
dexterward on 7/7/2011 at 12:43
True, that adventure outing had atmosphere by bucketloads. Also amazing graphics and the premise of non - linear gameplay with multiple endings. Shame it was also buggy - something unacceptable in adventure genre (sheer frustration: is it me being dumb or the game?) and gameplay itself wasn`t so hot either.
Still...an epic release from Westwood (four CDs man!)...that was also sort of this great company`s swansong - shortly after EA bought them out & subsequently ran into the ground.
I`d love to see a more noir take on the theme - as in, based on "hardboiled", fatalistic novels. Usually from the bad guys point of view...check out Marc Behm, Chester Himes or David Goodis for less obvious examples. On the other hand, it would be rather tricky to turn these into videogame...maybe they could revoke the old cynical shamus persona - Phillipp Marlowe would do
just fine.
(Huh. Now everything has become clear. Marlowe = Garret)
Dresden on 7/7/2011 at 13:45
Yeah I've played that a couple times. It doesn't hold up too well by today's standards, but the interrogations and the 3D photo enhancer computer are still ace.
gunsmoke on 8/7/2011 at 07:00
I actually have Blade Runner installed on this laptop patiently waiting for me to find some time to play it. It has been years since I spent time with it, but I don't remember any notable bugs. That sucks. I hope to avoid them this time, my frustration level is next to nil these days.
Thirith on 8/7/2011 at 07:09
Concerning Blade Runner: I remember that game as containing very little actual game - even less so than your average adventure. Am I simply misremembering it?
Dresden on 8/7/2011 at 07:50
Yes.
demagogue on 8/7/2011 at 16:16
Quote Posted by gunsmoke
but I don't remember any notable bugs. That sucks. I hope to avoid them this time, my frustration level is next to nil these days.
We're derailing this thread but what the hell. They weren't what you'd call system bugs; it's not like things happen that aren't supposed to. It was more like continuity quirks IMO, a lot of which was just the nature of the gameplay and design -- It's not divided into missions so events from a case you looked at days ago can suddenly get into play again unexpectedly when you unwittingly talk to someone involved in it. Each area loads up separately and each NPC has a dialog tree that "remembers" where it stopped and what to say next, so when you leave an area and come back days later it's like it takes over as if you never left, which has weird moments. There's a randomizer for a lot of areas so events randomly trigger when you enter them based on what's happened before, so sometimes you'll see an important NPC and sometimes you won't, or they'll act differently. It's interesting for replay value and a good idea on paper, but it's sort of awkward in implementation... too sensitive to the area-transitions and too much like a random trigger than a continuous flow of the plot. These are weird continuity quirks inherent in the design.
My thinking was these are exactly the kinds of quirks that the GTA-like R* formula (that Noire uses) handle relatively well: Divided into sensible missions; a more seamless world and NPCs in that world (if you follow an NPC, you'll literally be following him rather than him re-spawning for every area); events trigger sensibly for the most part within the boundaries of the mission, etc. You don't have to know what's going on at every moment, but you know it has to do with *this* case and is either evidence or a red herring, or maybe background info for the larger story. But fewer blatant continuity quirks. It lets the BladeRunner game design do what I think they intended it to, but were limited by the adventure game engine & paradigm they were using.
gunsmoke on 28/9/2011 at 15:48
Coming to PC (Steam too) in November! 8th and 11th (depending on what part of the world you live in).
Specs announced:
Operating System: Windows 7 / Windows Vista Service Pack 1 / Windows XP Service Pack 3 / OnLive for PC or Mac;
· Processor: Intel Dual Core 2.2GHz to Quad Core 3.2GHz / AMD Dual Core 2.4Ghz to Quad Core 3.2Ghz;
· RAM: 2GB to 8GB;
· Hard drive space: 16GB;
· Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT 512MB to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1536MB / Radeon HD 3000 512MB to Radeon HD 6850 1024MB.
