I finished L.A. Noire tonight and I have to say that the game lived up to my enormous expectations for it. It was such a rich and fully realized vision, the tone was perfected and all of the detail added so much depth to everything. It's one of those rare games where the story completely sucked me in and the cut scenes became just as engaging to me as the shootouts and the car chases. I really dug that each desk had it's own tone to it. Homicide was definitely the highlight for me, it had a really dark and gritty Fincher-esque tone to it that I adored. Things got a little repetitive as the game went on, particularly in the form of the interrogations, but for a game that was three discs long they did a surprisingly great job of keeping it fresh and exciting all the way through. I loved how everything came together in the end. It got so exciting seeing all of the pieces with the flashbacks and the newspaper backstory start to fall into place as the story went on.
The actors were all great too, probably the best acting I've seen in a game, it helped a lot in making it feel like I was playing through an actual film or television show. My one big complaint was having to play as Jack Kelso in the end. I understood how it worked within the context of the story, but I thought it was pretty ridiculous to have us play 95% of the game as Cole Phelps and then abruptly switch us over to Kelso for that last 5%. For something like this that is so cinematic and realized, I got very attached to Phelps and it drew me out of the experience a lot having to switch to a completely different person for that last stretch. Phelp's final scene was really heartbreaking.
The actors were all great too, probably the best acting I've seen in a game, it helped a lot in making it feel like I was playing through an actual film or television show. My one big complaint was having to play as Jack Kelso in the end. I understood how it worked within the context of the story, but I thought it was pretty ridiculous to have us play 95% of the game as Cole Phelps and then abruptly switch us over to Kelso for that last 5%. For something like this that is so cinematic and realized, I got very attached to Phelps and it drew me out of the experience a lot having to switch to a completely different person for that last stretch. Phelp's final scene was really heartbreaking.