Company
- Just about to head out from work, but I have enough time to post this link to some new L.A Noire screenshots. Will be posting a proper news item later!
Check it out at Gameinformer!
- Just about to head out from work, but I have enough time to post this link to some new L.A Noire screenshots. Will be posting a proper news item later!
Check it out at Gameinformer!
Looking nice!
Looking nice!
cool
Good to view some images. Looking forward to some reviews.
BE CAREFUL I'M A LYING TROLL
Tube arms, venetian shadows on wall not cast on character, horrible deformation on arms in 2nd shot... Yes I'm being picky. But after 7 years of production you'd think they'd at least try to be impressive in their first round of screenshots.
Looks almost on par with GTA4 visually - which these days isn't really that amazing. Maybe the gameplay will be more interesting.
Yeah, without trying to soudn
Yeah, without trying to soudn too negative I too was underwhelmed by the graphics... there seem to be some fairly... basic aesthetic issues.
It porbably won't matter though. If the game is good then the game is good. But this isn't awe inspiring for a blockbuster next gen console game.
I think Mafia 2 is going to
I think Mafia 2 is going to win out to be honest. It looks better visually, the studio has more experience, and I haven't heard any horror stories about its development/management/leads.
LA Noire has the facial animation going for it - and I can say from first hand experience that it is a standout feature - but the rest of the game falls into the trap of isolated features being duct-taped together rather than being designed as a singular, tight, cohesive experience. Feature-creep, miscommunication and an insane staff turnover has done a lot of damage to LA Noire. But I'm pretty confident Rockstar's marketing budget can shift a few units before the metacritic score comes out. Although having said that - apparently they didn't bother to filter out the dull screenshots.
PS - Yes, because my comments are not blind praise then I too am a liar and a troll.
I kinda agree. I'd heard
I kinda agree. I'd heard about Mafia from various sources, and even though it got a lower metacritic score than other similar titles, I picked it up. It has it's flaws, but I'd have to say that it had the best mix of third-person shooter and sandbox adventure than all of the last gen. I'm really looking forward to Mafia 2, and hope it's as good story-wise, if not better.
You can't really put the two titles -- Mafia 2 and LA Noire -- directly into the same basket however. Personally, I think that even with the "based-on-real-cases" crime detective story, that LA Noire runs the risk of coming off too arthouse. If you've ever seen a flick called Chinatown -- Jack Nicholas -- you'd know its a great flick but one that is a bit more cerebral than say: LA Confidential. I've only ever been able to sit through Chinatown once, and, probably wont ever watch it again. LA Confidential, I've seen countless times.
That said, Chinatown is an often quoted / mentioned film -- just not sure how well it did in the box office is all.
Some other things, is that though the facial animation (interrogation) system sounds good, I do wonder if this is just choose your own adventure with a real-time equivalent of full-motion video -- looks good, but, can't say it's actually all that "interactive." Still, if the hype is strong, people will see more in it than really exists -- kinda like Bioshock... ;).
I also think that a strong area is that they are re-creating -- or at least they claim -- late 1940s LA. Is it enough on its own or with the detective interrogation system, to drive gameplay... possibly, depends on the GTA aspect of the remainder of the gameplay and how compelling the story is to drive it all.
As for the graphics, you can nit-pick all you want but it looks good enough to me. No game is perfect, and what will or wont sell this game is the facial animation system -- if the hype is to be believed, then this could be a big deal, like Avatar's 3D technology is to filmmakers. However, I do wonder if your average gamer will be able to use the detective system effectively -- it asks more of them than just pushing a button to continue on with the cutscene.
Take away what you will from my post ;).
Chinatown was an excellent film
The performance by Jack Nicholas was particularly noteworthy because it was book ended by PGA Championship victories in 1973 and 75, with Masters and US victories also coming around that time.
Late night last night.
Late night last night. Obviously, I meant: Jack Nicholson. No need to post a useless comment, anyone with half a brain can figure out who I meant ;).
Actually
The venetian blind shadows are casting on the character.
There was a slight amount of
There was a slight amount of venetian shadows on the character but it wasn't as pronounced as the shadows on the wall. Also in the shot with the police storming the house, the building itself looks really well lit, it has some nice ambient in the shadowed areas. But look at the ambient lighting on the characters which are in the same area, it's basically dark black.
So maybe a few lighting tweaks. Also seems to be lacking any depth of field in some of those shots which I expect are from cut scenes.
I would really like to see this game in motion though.
LAN wont be compaired to Mafia.
It'll be weighed up against the likes of Heavy Rain or Alan Wake for gameplay or tech versus dev time and budget.
Yeah, the GTA "sandbox"
Yeah, the GTA "sandbox" third-person shooter component does seem to be an afterthought; a way to appeal to a more broader spectrum of gamers -- I'm sure that both Heavy Rain and Alan Wake are great titles, but, there is probably a reason why those developers DIDN'T sped as much in way of budget on these titles... the projected sales don't support it.
I'm a bit miffed that Team Bondi seem to think that the only way they can create great action gameplay, is to have Rockstar dictate it to them -- not the exact wording from the Gameinformer article, but, is how I kinda took it. I mean, isn't there the talent here in oz that would have jumped at the chance to finally have a studio use their expertise in that way on a big-budget Rockstar published title?! All the negativity said aside, I for one would love to have that kind of credit on my resume.
Anyway, it doesn'y look as bad as it has been made out to be by some. I would however like to see some actual gameplay vids next -- screenshots can only (claim) to say so much ;).
Unfortunately the only way LA
Unfortunately the only way LA Noire got made is by having the design dictated to them. Brendan McNamara (the CEO) has generally terrible ideas that are thrown indiscriminately into the mix and Alex Carlyle (the lead designer) has no idea how to actually design or document - he was just a junior at Team Soho who tagged along. It's true that Rockstar operate by "seagul management" (fly in, make a lot of noise, shit on everything, then fly out) but to be fair to them LA Noire would be in even more disarray if they didn't.
Having played LA Noire extensively in the past I can say that the "sandbox" part of the game is there by name only. Something like GTA allows you to actually "play" (in the ludological sense of the word) in the city - whereas LA Noire feels extremely barren in comparrison, sidequests aside. This perhaps owes to the interesting conundrum of playing a cop who can't just go on crime sprees with his partner right beside him. And to be fair to Team Bondi - I'm not sure how I'd handle that either. Probably by removing the open world (ala Max Payne) and also thereby shortening development by about four years.
"This perhaps owes to the
"This perhaps owes to the interesting conundrum of playing a cop who can't just go on crime sprees with his partner right beside him."
I can think of at least two solutions to that and still keep the "detective" nature of the game. Anyway, I think it all largely depends upon what you think "sandbox" actually means. I think if you look up wikipedia, it says something along the lines of nonlinearity -- which missions you can chose to go on and when. Though I think this can play a large part, I think sandbox (at least to me) really means how you can use the environment (a nonlinear space) to create solutions to the problem at hand. Bad sandbox seems scripted and contrived -- explodable tanks in corner of room -- good sandbox allows the player to come up with novel solutions -- player finds cart in one room, picks up tank in other, puts tank in cart and then pushes it down ram to another room with crims, shoots it when it gets close to make it go boom. Good sandbox, will offer the player choices in how they can overcome an obstacle, or at least, create of the illusion of choice -- which is more along the lines of what actually happens in the game world.
There is also the "living-world" aspect to sandbox. I think one of the best things about GTA games, like San Andreas, is being able to travel about a living world. Sure it's not as "diverse" or really as interactive as it could be or implies to be, but still, it's a powerful thing to be able to journey through that kind of detailed world, even if you can't go on a crime spree. It may not be appealing to all, but, I think there is a high degree of novelty to being able to visit late 1940s LA. Will this make up for gameplay if lacking? Depends on who you are; but, I'm sure there will be people who will buy this game just for that sole reason.
"Unfortunately the only way LA Noire got made is by having the design dictated to them."
They must of had a few rounds of trying to fill that "mythical" Senior Designer role. I'm sure that generated all sorts of ideas for them if they struggled to come up with their own. Large studios, quite often have you sign a legal document to "protect" them in that way, in case they've come up with a "similar" idea of their own.
Though, I'm sure they'd never do that ;).