I'm not the biggest fan of the clunky player movement, but was used to it having come off of other Rockstar games (though it does get real annoying). The cases all feature clues that you can pick up and inspect, people you can yell at, and a whole buncha driving around (or fast travel via your trusty partner). The gameplay services the atmosphere and story they're going for. It's also the source of a bunch of the doubt meme, and a bunch of good gifs, such as: They were mocapped separately, and it shows. Some of the uncanny valley, for me, came from the big discrepancy in facial vs body animation. To a lot of people, this produced an sense of uncanny valley, and it definitely does to me as well, but there's something just really cool and immersive about accurately portraying faces like that. Every small movement, every blink, wince and tick, captured with way too many cameras. The facial tracking technology was one of the game's bigger selling points. They also fished out a bunch of actors from similar media (i.e. The dialogue is sharp and to the point (when you're not yelling at people out of the blue), and the cinematography really helps nail the vibe they're going for. I've just finished one of the DLC cases, and honestly really enjoyed the back-and-forth between Phelps and his partner. He fits right in with the rest of the characters, all of whom are acted very well (and you can tell because we recorded their every pore). You play as Cole Phelps (not the internet's favourite character), an "war-hero" turned detective in 1947 Los Angeles. It still manages to capture that feel really well. As someone who hasn't really watched any of the movies the game tips its hat to, I can't really form an opinion on it relative to those movies. The game even has a black-and-white mode (alas, not on par with Ghost of Tsushima's Kurosawa mode). It takes cues from film noir of the 40s and 50s and is riddled with collectibles and references to these movies. The game heavily relies on and believes in its atmosphere. I immediately fell in love with the game. I was itching for a narrative-driven game and found L.A. I stopped playing the game a few hours in.įlash forward to five(ish) years later. Imagine my surprise when you couldn't shoot a gun in the open world, or even run over pedestrians (how dare they!?). I originally got the game around release time, but bounced off because of my weird expectation of it being a GTA-like game. One of the games in the latter category was L.A.
With the PS store closing down soon, I decided to get back into the PS3 games I'd either put off finishing, or finished but not fully completed.