someone on here suggested those cats eye view of japan videos before bed. i’ve been watching 3 of those a night, 15 minutes total, and i think that’s what i’ll do here too
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I want to mention even though I complained a lot here that the game is still pretty awesome and there should be more games like it
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I really needed to head Tim’s positivity about switch 2 and donkey Kong banana blaster for me to give a rats ass about any of that stuff. It’s been healing.
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i had a lot of fun with the video. it seems any real sort of analysis in it is more inferred than anything which isnt great as an ‘essay’, but it was still an enjoyable watch. and i know he loves to release them all as one large video, but i do feel that doing them as smaller chunks would help with issues that people have with the length of them (even if all parts are released at once). i dont particularly mind, but yeah
the format of breaking it down as the characters life was pretty cool but does get tedious at points (where i think the inferred analysis is meant to be) but by keeping up the ‘bit’ (i cant think of the right word atm) the whole time, i think it works well. i like some of how other work better, but this is a different piece. its aiming for something different and i think its done well, i liked it, and its a big swing. and hey, it only needs two of those for me to think its cool, hitting all three is cool
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Tim didn’t end up reviewing much, but the things he mentions do kind of speak for themselves. I guess here’s my review based on playing the game when it came out and now watching this:
Wow, I remembered L.A. Noire’s story leaving a bad taste in my mouth but I had forgotten just how bad it was. It has every trope in the genre played straight, the clues are almost unmissable and the facial expressions uncannily exaggerated, so the detective part is completely trivial, and the driving and shooting are by-the-books, clunky filler. It’s cool that they went to such lengths to recreate that world, but it’s astonishing how little of interest they managed to do with it. And last act’s twists are so eye-rollingly bad, one after another…
What really irks me is the absolute self-seriousness. The narration in noir stuff is almost always cool, ironic, self-deprecating and darkly funny. It’s part of how it earns the attention and care of the audience. It’s what differentiates noir from true crime or even horror. There is truth in there, but it’s being presented in a more dramatic, stylish, palatable format that allows one to believe in or at least appreciate poetic justice while still pondering the dark parts of the human psyche. That’s the unwritten promise of noir, and what the staples of the genre excel at. There’s nothing of that here. It has the look and the sound of noir, but the tone is wrong. Phelps is endlessly confident, gung-ho, monotonal, expressionless and hollow. That choice alone makes the game feel less like a clever sleuthing romp and more like injecting straight copaganda.
It is a shame, because the bones of it have infinite potential. In the years since, many indie games used the object-inspection parts of this game to great effect, and there’s been tons of takes on the genre, but none with the kind of budget that L.A. Noire had. But alas, it bankrupted the studio. Not that their planned sequel, “WhOre oF ThE ORiEnT”, sounded much better…
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I liked hearing this because it was always accurate. I had fun up there and I know I looked like I was having fun up there
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Also the video was fun
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I haven’t been looking at this thread, so I’m late to it and also whatever issues may have arisen seem to have died down, but just going to remind everyone that both now and going forward (as one assumes there will be more videos) this is not a place to air personal grievances about tim and keep it to discussion of the videos themselves. I realize it’s difficult to extract sometimes but do your best. I’m saying this as a human but also as a mod. So let’s everybody keep each other in check on that including the next time a video rolls around.
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I started watching the video when it came out and started thinking is this it?
I then watched the whole thing and that pretty much was it.
I really liked it.
- serious part -
I think the show don’t tell format worked well, you could probably cut it down but I thought it was nice to go through the full story again. I had previously watched a playthrough years ago so I remembered most of the first cases.
I thought the cutting between game footage, real newspapers, and video was awesome. It reminded me of a anamanaguchi music video which mixes in GTA footage with NYC videography.
I gotta say I really enjoyed Tim discussing all the hats. I think I could listen to him discuss the minutiae of clothes for hours.
Looking forward to the next one
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