Hello hello! You are moments away from reading a guest post about a game very dear and close to my heart. Or, is it necessarily a guest post? Perhaps it isn't. But, it IS my first post, and you can take that to the bank. The following picture is me.
I've lost track of when I was invited initially to contribute to this blog in the first place, but it sure wasn't recently. It was by my old pal Matt Muzzy, whom I go way back with, to the golden age of
YouTube when "Reubnick" was all that was on my mind, and "MattandCory" his, respectfully. Obviously, we've moved on a long way since then, and we have both branched in unique directions, trying very different new things. For example, this review blog. It's a world of different. And the reason for my delay is because I've been working on my first movie, and I've been quite distracted. Either way, however, I wasn't about to snub this blog. I've been busy, but this thing has been on my mind. The following picture is me with Matt Muzzy.
But, I'm sure nobody is interested in any of the dry, old-man-on-the-porch reminiscing I just subjected you to, however, and that's okay. You just have to learn that to deal with Reuben Glaser is to deal with long-winded tangents of no value or interest. But now, let's get to the real reason you are reading this: for the title. The title which happens to be "A Review Of
LA Noire."
To put the following in perspective, I have a real weakness for all things old-timey. There is no era of more interest to me than 1910-1940, specifically the 20's and the 40's. As a matter of fact, I have the treasury of F. Scott Fitgerald's short stories at my bedside right now, and I'm enjoying every minute of it. I mean, sure, the 30's are okay, but that's all just too dusty and yellowed for my tastes. Plus, some neat things happened in 1900-1910, but
Teddy Roosevelt was a massive neck-bulging, toothy, frothy prick, and I don't really like to talk or hear about that guy. As you can see, I like to sort of, at least as a reference, look at things in terms of presidents, though. The 20's were marked by the drunken caddishness and closet-sexcapades of our sleaziest president ever,
Warren Harding. He was a well-dressed, sharp jawed man with his sleeves rolled up, and he was also a man who played cards with a bunch of scuzzy criminals, drank alcohol at all times, and probably started to cry and have a melt-down every time he actually had to do real work, having sex with a secretary under his desk as his only coping mechanism. His wife also probably murdered him. I'll leave it up to you to google that, though. I think there's a book about it or something. But anyway, he seemed to define a very specific demographic of people alive at that time. The partiers, the flappers, the chauvinists, the type that would have been at one of Jay Gatsby's blowouts. As did
Calvin Coolidge, that decade's other president, although it was a very different type of person. He was a stern, citrus-lipped, tiny little republican weirdo with a horribly obnoxious voice. He didn't speak, play games, and he referred to every single meal of the day as "supper" for some reason. He was the law, the keeper of the rules, and he starkly contrasted the Warren Hardings. And, that was the 20's. Two archetypes, and some of the most interesting America has ever had.
Likewise, 20 years later, we wound up with
Harry Truman (my favorite president), who was a fiery little, fast-talking 4-eyes, but still one of the most badass Americans to ever live. He's one of my favorites, and I inaccurately picture every single person to have a "press" hat and smoke a cigar in the 40's to look and act like him. That's why the 40's are so glamorized to me. Lucky, lucky I am that LA Noire takes place DURING his presidency. You even hear him on the radio. Plus, I figured this out AFTER I got the game! I was immensely excited for it long before that!
In fact, I don't think I'd ever been this excited for a game. I privately went a little crazy for
Ghostbusters, Uncharted 2, Red Dead Redemption and Bioshock 2, but I think LA Noire trumped them. The thing with me is that just about nobody can tell I actually am a gamer, because I very rarely speak of it. I just always though interjecting conversation about video-games was annoying ever since people thought they needed to share every single way they killed Niko Bellic without there being any way to witness what they describe. But, the fact of the matter us that I do love video games, quite a bit. Due to money constants, though, I try to only really buy 1-2 a year and just absolutely immerse myself in it repeatedly. That's why I choose games to practically count down the days until their release. I bought both Red Dead Redemption,
Grand Theft Auto (I believe) and LA Noire on the first day, and that's a pattern I intend to continue. Notice those are all Rockstar games? I did. That's because I personally think Rockstar has gone on to prove they consistently release the best standard of games, at least in my opinion. They have never disappointed me, all the way back to Bully. I just expect to love every game they release, and I hope to never be proven wrong. LA Noire did not disappoint more than just a tiny bit, but that's probably just because I was SO excited for it. I still firmly believe it is a nearly flawless game...I just really, really loved GTA IV, and that's a hard act to follow.
Let me first get out any complaints. What I minded most about LA Noire is the extreme linearity. I know this reflects negatively on me, but I truly miss being able to mow people down all over the streets, shoot strangers in the head, or hit them with a car off a cliff. Try as hard as I did, I only managed to plow ONE man off of a freeway, and after he fell 45 feet, he instantly got up and walked away. Come on, man. I also dislike having such fragile vehicles. If you hit three poles, the trunk and car-hood fly off and you start on fire...but only on fire. The cars don't asplode. That is a real buzzkill. Then Rusty Galloway's Ed-Schultz-lookin'-ass will just yell at you and you go and take another car.
Another complaint about the linearity is that much into the game, during the Roy Earle days, you get a sense that the game has
Assassin's Creed Syndrome. I will go out on a limb and say I thought that was a very, very bad game. I never finished it. It bore to hell out of me. I just couldn't take it anymore, I had to put it down, which is a shame, because that thing sure wasn't cheap. LA Noire never, ever gets to that point, but you get a little tired of driving to a place, hearing those stupid chime noises a trillion times, Phelps claiming "I'm stumped," and that asshole guy with the camera being so rude to you. Actually, that doesn't bother me. But you should know the guy if you play the game. At the crime scenes, he's the fellow with the giant camera. Press the square around him. If you are like me, you will wish you could both plow people down, AND contaminate the crime scenes.
However, that's all the complaints I have, other than how Phelps looks like a pretentious little sissy when he runs down the stairs. I've got nothing else I didn't like. I actually could say I loved everything else. This is a genuinely excellent game, and you need to go into it for the story. That's what I did. That's the kind of game I like. It's been said before, but it's almost as much movie as it is game. It's considerably more hands-off than most, and you have to do a lot of watching and thinking and assuming. For as linear as it is, if you screw up one thing, you might have blown the whole case. The outcome might be completely different, and that really pretty lady named Candy might get shot or something. I personally am awful at telling when somebody is lying or not, and I'm sure that my poor decisions in the game have led to literal deaths by torture of innocent people with families. That's life, I guess. But I do think the interrogations are the best part of this whole thing. The shootouts are really fun, but too easy and too fast, and there aren't even bullet wounds like the ones in Red Dead, and as soon as you clip everybody off, it goes straight to the cinematic of the
John Malkovich looking guy stuffing them in the coroners van. But if nothing else, the interrogations should keep you going. For every tedious "follow that truck but don't get caught" mission Rockstar doesn't seem to understand nobody likes, there is a great interrogation that looks beautiful and shows you a whole new interesting character. I love characters above all in video games, and so far (I haven't finished it yet), LA Noire, in it's hunt for realism, seems to lack any real dynamic characters to remember. Rusty Galloway is a start, but he's kind of annoying, and then suddenly after a creepy mission where you as the player begin to feel a real bond and reliance and kinship and understanding of him just because he's with you, he doesn't really have your back, and in an awfully anticlimactic way, you stop seeing him. In my favorite games, three fictional characters have stuck out. Augustus Sinclair in Bioshock 2, is one of the best, least static, most interesting I've seen. There's a character in the book I wrote that I based off of him, that's how much of an impact he had. Then there is Victor Sullivan from the Uncharted series. I love that guy so much, probably just because playing those games is as accurate of a simulation as there will ever be as to how it would be to fight mercenaries with my dad. I am beyond excited that Uncharted 3 is going to have a lot of him in it. Then, mostly, Fluorian Kravich (Bernie Crane) from GTA IV is literally the funniest character I have ever seen in any medium, TV or movies or books or music or video games. He is just the most hilarious. I spend hours and hours on those missions in the game just so I can see and hear every possible out come and hear every single recording that Timothy J. Alex made that was put in the game. I don't think LA Noire has one of those yet, and I'm hoping I'm wrong.
I guess it almost sounds like I'm knocking the game, but I'm not. In a sea of perfection with Richard Nixon banners and
Benny Goodman tracks on the radio (he is one of my favorites) and other great driving tracks, those are merely the only things that stick out. It is beyond fun, and I will be depressed when I beat it. I do absolutely recommend it to anybody. It just simply isn't Rockstar's best, though. I can't speak from experience if it is one of Team Bondi's best, but I will say that it's one of the best video games in general, but not Rockstar's best. They have raised the bar so high, I think that just speaks for itself.
Hey! I'll see you all next time, I hope!
-Reuben
