L.A. Noire

[Kweepa]

Is anyone playing L.A. Noire?
It looks kind of adventurey... any thoughts?
Also, they seem to have ripped off By The Numbers' interview system

[LimpingFish]

From what I've seen of it, it seems very adventurey.

It's weird, though...I have zero interest in playing it. I don't know why, exactly, but it just...maybe it's the setting, or something.

[Igor Hardy]

From what I've seen of it, it seems very adventurey.

It's weird, though...I have zero interest in playing it. I don't know why, exactly, but it just...maybe it's the setting, or something.

Hmm... I saw one trailer of it some time ago and I'm not interested at looking at L.A. Noire the second time either. But I can't say that I found that footage "adventurey". More like movie like. But maybe that's just because of my personal prejudices - suspecting that the better a game looks, the less interesting and interactive it is. It still might be a decent action game though.

[Khris]

I was about to wine how us PC gamers would have to wait months for the release when I found out that it is going to be released TOMORROW

[Grundislav]

I've been looking forward to this game for a long time, picked it up yesterday and have been playing it steadily since.  It is fairly adventure-y, with a nice balance of action tossed in.

The main cases cater to the adventure fans, as the bulk of those involve investigating crime scenes, looking for clues and evidence, interviewing suspects, etc.  Then there's the side quests aka street crimes which usually involve shooting bad guys or chasing people, geared more towards the action fans.

The ambiance is great, and you really feel like you're in 1947 LA, especially since the map is HUGE (seriously, is this the biggest in-game map in a Rockstar title to date?  It certainly feels that way)  My only minor nitpick is with the radio.  It kind of comes on at random times so you can't opt to listen to it exclusively or change the station, but whatever.  The game's score is fantastic too.  It really feels like you're playing through an old noir film.

The motionscan tech is pretty impressive, and I'm curious to see if it will be used in future games.  Also, I like that it's not always clearly obvious who is lying, adding more of a challenge to interrogations.

[ddq]

I was about to wine how us PC gamers would have to wait months for the release when I found out that it is going to be released TOMORROW

WAIT WHAT
Er... I hadn't heard of this and can't find any sources confirming. If it were true, I'd be a very happy panda.

[Khris]

I found this: http://www.vgreleases.com/PC/ReleaseDate-416969.aspx
Looking at the source though:

Sadly, the only release dates that have been officially announced were from US / Europe on May 17 / May 20 landing at PS3 and Xbox 360 without any confirmation if it’ll be available on PC as well.

Anyway, if you will based the tradition of Rockstar Games, it appears they usually reveal a PC type of version 2-3 months after its release on the console. So theoretically speaking, you can expect L.A Noire to hit your computers on August of this year.

[LimpingFish]

Hmm... I saw one trailer of it some time ago and I'm not interested at looking at it the second time either. But I can't say that I found that footage "adventurey". More like movie like. But maybe that's just because of my personal prejudices - suspecting that the better a game looks, the less interesting and interactive it is. It still might be a decent action game though.

Oh, I agree that the trailers play up the action aspect (and the Rockstar brand).

But judging from the Quick Look over on Giant Bomb, it seems the much of the core gameplay (at least for the initial part) is made up of investigation and conversation rather than ventilating goons. Gunplay, for the most part, seems to be strictly limited to designated areas. Most of the time you'll be interrogating suspects in a way that seems to echo Phoenix Wright, but on a deeper level.

Still doesn't make me want to play it.

EDIT: Grundislav beat me to it.

[Igor Hardy]

Hmm... I saw one trailer of it some time ago and I'm not interested at looking at it the second time either. But I can't say that I found that footage "adventurey". More like movie like. But maybe that's just because of my personal prejudices - suspecting that the better a game looks, the less interesting and interactive it is. It still might be a decent action game though.

Oh, I agree that the trailers play up the action aspect (and the Rockstar brand).

But judging from the Quick Look over on Giant Bomb, it seems the much of the core gameplay (at least for the initial part) is made up of investigation and conversation rather than ventilating goons. Gunplay, for the most part, seems to be strictly limited to designated areas. Most of the time you'll be interrogating suspects in a way that seems to echo Phoenix Wright, but on a deeper level.

Still doesn't make me want to play it.

EDIT: Grundislav beat me to it.

Hey, those GiantBomb videos seem interesting actually. I wonder if the game would run on my PC.

[Hudders]

I was about to wine how us PC gamers would have to wait months for the release when I found out that it is going to be released TOMORROW

This is Rockstar we're talking about, they've pretty much given up on the PC.

[Kweepa]

The GiantBomb videos convinced me to pick this up.
$50 on PS3 from Fry's.

[Khris]

This is Rockstar we're talking about, they've pretty much given up on the PC.

My guess is they might have contracts with Microsoft and Sony to push console sales by delaying the PC version.
Red Dead Redemption didn't make it to the PC yet, but all GTA4 stuff did.

[Dave Gilbert]

My feelings about LA Noire can basically be summed up by: "Someone at Rockstar found a list of everything Dave likes and made a game out of them."  It's lovely so far.

[Atelier]

LA Noire looks sweet. But if anybody's getting it for Xbox or PS3 there have been some issues reported (being release day) where it overheats and shuts down your console. While I'm here Dead Island looks pretty promising too.

[Snarky]

Yeah, looks very interesting. I haven't actually played any of the Rockstar games, but this is hitting a lot of buttons for me. But it won't be out on PC? Mmmm... I think I'll just get Portal 2, then.

BTW, my French-speaking roommate informs me that, yes, "noire" is correct French (and not just something Rockstar made up so they could trademark the title), being the feminine form of the adjective noir. Which I guess implies that LA is feminine (makes sense, since la cité is). Or that the title refers to an implicit dark woman from LA, maybe.

Actually, my roommate mumbled some nonsense about "noire" meaning "kind of dark, but not completely black" (once he even remembered that that wasn't how you usually spell "noir"), and I looked up the correct explanation in a dictionary. French people are pretty damn illiterate in their own language.

[Kweepa]

But if anybody's getting it for Xbox or PS3 there have been some issues reported (being release day) where it overheats and shuts down your console.

Those people just need to ventilate their console properly.
The job of the programmers is to get CPU/GPU utilization as high as possible. If some people's console overheat, they have done their job. Hooray!

[Eggie]

Watched my girlfriend play a bit of it yesterday and I was surprised by how pure an adventure game it is in parts (think the Norman Jayden segments in Heavy Rain without the stupid fucking magic sunglasses), I think it's biggest triumph is in it's dialogue system which it makes an exciting part of the gameplay rather than an intermission. However I don't find the characters as memorable as the ones in Red Dead Redemption or the dialogue as well written (in fact I found it pretty 'herp derp, guess which movie I watched before writing this") and the actors do some awful facial mugging which looks pretty silly stuck on the (obviously separately recorded) stiff, awkward, motion captured bodies.

In terms of the driving, shooting, chasing elements I can't really comment since I was basically watching it as a movie. Hannah seemed to enjoy it, I liked the out-of-nowhere bit of platform gaming on the movie set level.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Rockstar has long since gave the middle finger to the pc crowd, but realistically they'd be utter morons not to release a game like this for the PC.  It's like a traditional action-adventure game and PC gamers will totally mob this release, virtually guaranteeing it will outsell the consoles.  I'm still extremely annoyed that they couldn't be bothered to port red dead redemption to the pc after months and months of conjecture and false promises.

Personally, I hope companies like Rockstar who piss on their roots (gta 1 was a pc exclusive, before they were rockstar all they made were pc/amiga shit) lose loads of money for it.  And with GTA 4, it arrived on the pc a total mess like they couldn't be bothered to port it properly and it took them like 6 months worth of patches to make it decent.  They've become a pretty disgraceful developer as far as the pc goes.

[Hudders]

gta 1 was a pc exclusive, before they were rockstar all they made were pc/amiga shit

GTA1 was released on the PlayStation, (although it was ported from the PC version by another developer IIRC).

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

From wikipedia:

The original Grand Theft Auto was developed in DOS, and then later ported to Microsoft Windows (using SciTech MGL), Sony PlayStation (developed by Visual Sciences using their "ViSOS" framework[1]), and Game Boy Color.

It was originally released for pc in oct. '97 with a ps1 release in dec., so while it wasn't as exclusive as I thought it was not developed and released 'later' by another group, it was flagshipped on the pc and Visual Sciences handled the ps1 port.  GTA 2 saw a similar release structure.  But let's not forget their birth on computers like the Amiga and IBM pc with classics like  Lemmings and Hired Guns which were eventually released for both. 

By the time Bully came out I was actually surprised they were even going to release that for the PC, and it turned out to be even better than the console versions.  Rockstar just makes up tired excuses (when they can be bothered to say anything at all) for not spreading the love around to the computer market that made their success possible in the first place.