L.A. Noire review

The years after World War II, many lives were damaged. The economy, in most places, was nothing, but devastation. In this time of crisis, many looked to Los Angeles and saw Hollywood as a place for relief. An “American Dream” filled with fame and glamour, having everything you ever desired. Unfortunately, this was only in the minds of citizens. The fact was, most of the streets lied; filming industries focusing their sexual jollies toward unexpected naive women, large amounts of troops trying to readjust their lives leaving what was horrendous in the war all behind. When you come to Los Angeles, you will find out quite quickly of the corrupted of police and government. L.A. is only an illusion of happiness. To some, it’s their fantasy.

The first thing you’re going to notice in the game is the works of MotionScan. I’m quite amazed how the detailed facial capturing looks in this game. Recognizing some of the actors in the game made me over thrilled. It was amazingly easy to recognize Greg Grunberg during a case. Not only was MotionScan awesome with facial capturing, the physical movements of each actor/actresses are they’re actual movements being captured with a mocap suit They even have a Black/White filter, which makes the game look astonishing. This was by far one of the greatest features of the game. Without this, I don’t know how this game could be ever created. Now, enough of me drooling over this creation, let’s talk more about the game shall we.

In L.A. Noire you’re mainly playing the role of Cole Phelps. Cole Phelps is a World War II veteran. Serving two years of the war in the navy as a lieutenant, Lt. Phelps was awarded one of Navy’s highest honors, the Silver Star. Honoring and serving his country, Cole decided to become part of the Los Angeles Police Department, thus allowing Cole to serve his country furthermore. Famous for his Silver Star, he became quite a character towards the L.A.P.D. No matter where you look, someone will always mention his Silver Star.

Starting out as a puny police officer, you’ll be working your way up to Ad Vice. After doing so many cases, you’ll get promoted. Sometimes, you get demoted, but that’s just part of the storyline. Each time you get promoted to a higher authority, you get much more difficult cases.

Each case starts out as if you’re watching a classic detective movie. Most of these cases are based on actual events. The Black Dahlia case, famously, is one few known cases you get to investigate. To solve the cases, you have to go to the crime scene and look around for clues. Clues can be anything from a cigarette butt, to a water valve. Finding the clues is one of the fun parts, holding an object doesn’t give you a clue right away. You have to manipulate and object until you get in the right position. If you found something irrelevant to the crime scene, your character will say something. I’m not saying you’re going to end up like the Hardy Boys, but by golly is it fun searching for the clues. Some clues are hard to find, some of them aren't

During the game, you will also see a bundle of flashbacks of Cole’s time in the Navy. These flashbacks are in the story, because they will somehow relate to other events in the game. The flashbacks are confusing at first, but if you keep your own notes and memory, you’ll find it will be a great way to comprehend the storyline.

While working your way up ladder of justice, you’ll also be able to gain an experience level. Each level of rank, you’re rewarded with most of a time, an unlockable suit that will have a perk or two. Sometimes you’ll receive a new weapon. To rank up your experience level, you’ll have to learn how to read faces during interviews. Even though the MotionScan they used for the game is incredible, reading faces are one of the most difficult parts of the game. You’ll have three different options when you’re interviewing a person of interest. First, is “Truth.” Truth simply means the person is telling the truth. Then there’s the infamous “Doubt.” Doubting a suspect means you know the person is lying, but you don’t have any evidence to back it up with. If you do have evidence, and can prove the person did something of values, then you could use the “Lie” option. You’ll notice Cole Phelps loves to start off calm then gets louder and LOUDER!

Not only does ranking up help you get unlockables, it also helps you your cases. If you have online, each level you rank, you’ll be rewarded intuition points. Intuition points help you out by “finding all clues” in a crime scene, removes an answer in an interrogation. You can even ask Rockstar’s Social Club to see what percentage of each choice are.

Now, let’s talk about the controls in the game. The controls are quite simple. Driving around feels like GTA IV. Shooting in the game feels like you’re playing Red Dead Redemption. Rockstar is doing something new, they’re clearly pointing out this game isn’t supposed to be anywhere near what GTA IV or RDR was. I applaud Rockstar for their new approach. Even though they did a great job, there are still some flaws to the game.

One the flaws I found in the game, was searching for clues. The clues are a little difficult to find. Most of the time, you’re walking around the crime scene waiting for your controller to vibrate. There were also occasional glitches. Someone pointed out the glitch with Cole Phelps’s hat glitch, running up walls and sometimes falling down for no reason were a few glitches I found. Free roaming and side cases I count as a flaw, because they aren’t necessary in my opinion. I was quite happy playing over 20 hours of the game’s main storyline. Some may find that too short, I find it quite right. Don’t want to overkill a game with a long ass story now would you?

Even with the occasional flaws of the game, this is by far one best games I’ve ever seen from Rockstar. Rockstar’s new approach maybe a little bold, but man you got to love it. Again, their MotionScan is incredibly well done. Being able to actually interrogate people was so realistic. Luckily, Rockstar gave L.A. Noire an amazing cast. This game deserve its A-

+Motionscan is awesome
+Classical mystery theme game
+Interrogation is fun
+/- Finding clues
+/-Freeroam/Sidemissions
-Occasional glitches

*grading scale is based on GameRevolution.com's classic grading scale.

Bulletstorm Review

Say it, and then spray it!

You have badass weapons, now use them. Kill them with skill and make sure that the bloodlust travel through each and every vein! Yes sir!

In Bulletstorm, you are Grayson Hunt, an alcoholic space pirate with a bounty and thirst to avenge his team that was betrayed by General Serrano. Grayson is a massively buff man that looks like Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, and a voice that you would think to be Marcus Fenix. Sorry, John DiMaggio didn’t do his voice. Weirdly, Steven Blum who did the voice of Wolverine in animated series is Hunt. Along your side to kill this son of the b*tch, is Ishi Sato. Sato is your only friend left of Dead Echo, who had to become cyborg after crash landing and saving him on an unknown planet. The alliance between you two is not that great, and it’s even worst when Sato can’t control his A.I. side. Even if you two aren’t close pals, avenging your team’s lives and getting Serrano back is your main objective. Serrano is on this planet somewhere, and he’s not going away empty handed.

While investigating and searching the planet for Serrano, you’re going to be encountering a bunch of hostiles, hostiles that sure love bullets. You’re going to come across, extremely-mutated mutants, man-eating plants, and even this giant monster that you might think it resembles Godzilla. All these ugly looking creatures need to die one way or another. To kill these hideous looking things, you get decisions to make. Do you want to blow them into bits? If you want to, go ahead but I don’t think that takes much skill. “Skill points” is what we’re trying to get. The more creative you kill something. The more you get skill points. These points help you out in the long-run by giving you more weapons to choose from. So instead of just blowing something up, be creative and try out one of my favorites called, “mercy” Mercy is when you shoot someone right in the balls and shoot their heads off while they’re crying in agony. Brutal it is, and so hilarious.

How about the environment of this game? This game looks like one giant Jacinto from the Gears of War series. The “green glowing radiation” that you will stumble upon looks exactly like the immulsion from the Gears of War series. The art is so similar to Epic’s other games, it’s just a little sad.

I don’t even know how to explain the plot. The story is so basic. Everything is predictable in my opinion. A few twist every now and then, but you might be able to predict it better than what I did. What I liked about it, was the cheesy adult humor they throw into it. Cursing like sailors and the unique ways kill something had me rolling on the floor laughing my ass off. Yes, I enjoyed the humor in it, but the story was short and repetitive. Like Gears of Wars, they ended the game with a cliff-hanger, and a surprise at the end of the credits.

The online multi-playing should be changed to online co-op. There’s anarchy mode which is basically survival mode. You get to fight off waves and try to survive. Teamwork is much needed since you have to get a decent enough score in order to move on. One downfall is playing teaming up with little kids that mommies and daddies will buy for the rotten little brats…err I mean for the nice sons and daughters. And there’s Echoes mode, if you want to compete with friends in something in this game. You can try this mode out and experience different parts of the campaign once again. Whether you like that sort of competition is up to you.

The multi-playing isn’t that great. The campaign is pretty solid, but it’s repetitive. Adult humor and the unique violent ways to kill in this game is what really made Bulletstorm. The majority of the people who are buying this game, will probably be those who want the Gears of War 3 Beta. That is why I’m going to give this game a “B”

+ Adult language
+ Shooting the balls
+ Cool ways to kill someone
+/- You can tell it’s an Unreal Engine
+/- Gears of War 3 Beta (Xbox 360 only)
- Gets Repetitive
- Lacks multi-playing
- Short story

*grading scale is based on GameRevolution.com's classic grading scale.