L.A. Noire Message Board older than one year ago

Chasing a fleeing, desperate man across a falling construction set, it dawns upon me:

"I've *crag*ed up."

Virtual heart racing from sprinting, I'm relentlessly tracking down a man that I've, up until this moment, deduced was guilty of a horrifying crime. He killed someone.

He didn't, though. And as I catch up to him, it's clear there are no more locations to visit, no more suspects to talk to, no more pieces of evidence to string along. The end of the road is in sight. While I (the player) know I've bungled the case, I know the suspect's innocent, and there were five questions that I shouldawouldacould answered better if I'd thought about the whole thing longer, my evidence points to him.

Someone has to take the fall, right?

Someone's got to pay, even if that someone isn't actually the right one, so the papers and the bosses and the neighborhood (does the list ever ever end?) are happy, and as the case draws to a close and I'm assigned my two-star rating, all I can feel is bitter disappointment. It's not the kind of controller chucking misery you get from screwing up a boss battle for the upteenth time, but a real "aw, shucks" realization that I've done a truly bad thing and it just felt wrong.

More games should let you fail. It's less rewarding to be right every time; it's not how life is.

In L.A. Noire, failures are still "succeses." The case is "solved." You might curse the sometimes frustrating adventure game logic driving the interrogations, but I can't help but thumbs up experiences where the fail state isn't just a game over screen. It's why seeing the "you got caught" message during the stealth sections feels so out of place. The rest of the game goes so explicitly out of its way to push players into gray areas, while the action remains black and white.

I twitch every time someone on my Twitter feed curses that they've been awarded less than five stars on a case in L.A. Noire and begin the case from scratch. Give failure a chance, ya'll.

Believe me, I understand the impulse--I have it, too. What's powerful is saying no to it and seeing how you respond. As gamers, we've been trained to achieve perfection, whether it's navigating a sea of bullets or collecting some hidden items. We don't like second place, especially if it's preventable. That's boring. Why should it always go your way? We're constantly asking developers to create more emotional gaming experiences, and though I can't say the same for you, but my personal failures burn more than my successes. They're what drive me to be better.

I'm reminded of the spit-take reaction to Aeris in Final Fantasy VII. I'm convinced the developers wouldn't kill her if they made the game today; they'd have made resurrecting her some achievement, otherwise it would tick too many people off. I want to get pissed off, feel sad, experience regret and engage deeper than the latest macho power fantasy (which I like, too!).

Want to play something moving? Try Jordan Magnuson's The Killer. I want that on a large scale.

There was a similar moment in Grand Theft Auto IV that I wrote about, too, in a post titled "My Conscience, And How ‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ Made Me Feel Regret." I talked about when you're asked to kill Playboy X or Dwayne. Letting Playboy X live presents a cooler gameplay path, with the possibility to grab a larger apartment, while Dwayne, recently released from prison and seeking redemption, offers me nothing as a player, besides toying with my virtual compassion.

I killed Dwayne. Here's how I reacted back in 2008:

If I could have done that moment over, reloaded a previous save, I might have. How tragic.

I want more moments like that, please. Don't you?

As I've been sternly interrogating and periodically shooting my way through L.A. Noire, I have often wondered when we might start seeing DLC content for the game pop up. For as long as those cases can be, some feel rather fleeting, almost begging you to prolong the investigation just a bit in the hopes of keeping the experience going. Plus, hey, I bought the PS3 version--I want my exclusive bonus case, dammit.

I, and other PS3 users will have to wait a bit longer to start downloading all willy-nilly, but for those who are playing the Xbox 360 version of L.A. Noire, Rockstar and Team Bondi today released the first two downloadable cases: "The Naked City." a Vice case, and the traffic case, "A Slip of the Tongue."

Both of these cases can be downloaded piecemeal for 320 Microsoft Bucks ($4), or you could opt to pay for the Rockstar Pass, which as of now goes for $10 (800 Microsoft Points), though will eventually go up to $12 in June. Buying the pass pre-orders all the scheduled downloadable content through mid-July, and will actually save you 50% in total purchase pricing, provided you plan to get them all.

Two more cases are scheduled to hit in June and July. "Nicholson Electroplating Disaster," which those who pre-ordered through Best Buy may already have, will hit on June 21st. "Reefer Madness," which is officially my new favorite case before I've even played it, drops on July 12th.

Additional content available today includes the "Broderick" and "Sharpshooter" suit/gun combos, for $1 and $2 respectively, the "Badge Pursuit" challenge (again, $2) and the Chicago Piano machine gun, which is a free unlock for the Rockstar community.

How many of you armchair gumshoes out there plan to grab all this stuff?

Several key developers at Rockstar Games--Sam Houser, Dan Houser, Leslie Benzies--have signed a new employee contracts with parent company Take-Two Interactive, keeping them firmly in place.

The news comes just as Take-Two has announced its fiscal 2011 results. Keeping the noted talent behind much of Take-Two's own bottom line is important, and something mentioned in many of Take-Two's own financial calls. The contracts were due to expire soon, though clearly that will not be happening.

Details of the agreement will never come out, but Take-Two says the new agreement comes on "substantially similar economic terms" to its previous contacts.

L.A. Noire, a collaboration between Rockstar Games and Team Bondi, was just released last week. Max Payne 3 is expected to the next release from Rockstar Games but is not listed on Take-Two's schedule. It is not uncommon for Take-Two to leave Rockstar Games productions off its schedule.

Since L.A. Noire was released earlier this week on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Rockstar Games has been filtering through reports of freezing, crashes and stories about overheating consoles. For a while, the company was theorizing the most recent PS3 firmware was to blame. That quickly changed yesterday.

There was no real theory floating for the issues plauging Xbox 360 owners, but Rockstar issued a statement today addressing it, pointing the finger at media folk like myself for inspiring mass hysteryia.

"With the launch of L.A. Noire a very small number of Xbox 360 console owners have reported issues with the game freezing or locking up while playing," said the company in a statement. "We posted some troubleshooting tips on our support site for these very few people, a common practice for any game publisher. Unfortunately this was erroneously picked up by some news outlets as a 'story,' reporting that L.A. Noire was causing issues to Xbox 360 consoles - which is categorically untrue."

I don't remember accusing the game--or Microsoft's hardware--of anything devious, only reporting what Rockstar itself was saying on its own support website. Regardless, people are running into problems, which should hopefully be addressed in a patch coming to both platforms sometime in the near future.

"As soon as we have more official information about the first patch and the timing for its deployment, we will post the information here," said a company spokesperson on Rockstar's support website.

Rockstar Games caused a hell of a stir yesterday when it theorized PlayStation 3's latest firmware update, version 3.61, was causing older iterations of the hardware to overheat and lock up L.A. Noire.

The company has just released a joint statement with Sony backing off that claim, however.

"We have received a very small number of customer support questions about PS3’s overheating or shutting down while playing L.A. Noire," reads the statement. "At this time, Rockstar Games and Sony can confirm that neither L.A. Noire or firmware update 3.61 are causing the PS3 hardware to overheat. We are both committed to working hard to find solutions to this and any issues that may arise."

A patch is currently in the works for both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of L.A. Noire, meant to address various complaints of technical issues. As of this writing, there is no timeframe for either patch.

Speaking personally, L.A. Noire locked up my PS3 a few times last night. I've had issues with my 60GB PS3 in the past, though, which I've been unable to correctly diagnose, despite cleaning for dust.