Remember to be a conscientious driver in Mafia II

It’s a nice afternoon. The sky is blue and clear of clouds, the radio is rocking a head-bopping tune of ol’, and Empire Bay is doing its post-WWII thing. Vito Scalleta and his best friend Joey Barbaro are out for a relaxing drive through the suburbs. Well, relaxing for them. In truth, they are heading to a house, and when they get there, they find a man outside watering his grass with a hose, looking all non-threatening. As quiet as can be, the two of them sneak up behind the man, toss out a cliche saying like, “Blah-blah-blah sends his regards!” and then shoot the life out of him.

The dynamic duo speeds away from the pursuing cops, and as they do, Vito runs a red light–at 70 or 80 mph, mind you. Joe, in all seriousness, berates him for this: “Did you not see that light was red?”

Sadly, Vito doesn’t come back with, “Did you not see we just obliterated a man’s body with bullets and now need to get away so we don’t get locked up or shot to death ourselves by the blue meanies and don’t really have time to obey traffic laws?” Instead, Joe’s line hung in the air, awkward and out-of-place, a piece of dialogue added to the game to instill realism, but working completely against that when context is not considered.

Also, this is going to be my last post about Mafia II. I swears it.

Open-world games thrive on minutiae. From idle chatter to signs in store windows to people carrying umbrellas when it starts to rain, it’s the little things that make the big thing whole. This is probably unfair, but I’m going to compare Mafia II to L.A. Noire, mostly because I view the games as quite similar, but far from each other’s levels. For most of the time, you go on missions with a partner in Mafia II, meaning you always have someone to talk to in the car. Conversely, someone’s always there to comment about your lackluster driving skills. This was the same way things went down in L.A. Noire, but when Cole Phelps would get yelled at for running a red light or hitting another car, it was never because it was Cole being an idiot. It had to do with reminding us that Cole was a man of the law and should set good standards for those watching from the sidewalks; it was there to remind us that we were occasionally driving someone else’s car, and he didn’t like to see it get dinged and danged up. It made sense there and then.

In Mafia II, you are a horrible human being. You kill for money, and that is all you see before your Italian face each and every new day you wake up. And so it just sounds bizarre to hear fellow murderers getting all up at arms over misconduct on the road. Especially during missions where you are trying to chase down another car. Of course you are going to run red lights then. That’s how you chase something, Joe. You can’t do both, commit murder and be a safe driver. This was just one of the more jarring moments in the game, coupled with the fact that the law will shoot first and ask questions later. Imagine a world where if you ran a red light you were popped in the face at close range by a trio of officers. Seems understandable, right?

Okay, that’s it for Mafia II. I’m out.

Cole Phelps is L.A.’s public menace #1

Causing a ruckus in open-world games like Grand Theft Auto III or Red Faction: Guerrilla was always  fun, but short-lived. You can only go so long destroying things and being a jerk before somebody takes notice. Heck, creeping over the speed limit in Mafia/Mafia II is enough to get the sirens singing, and then the law’s on your tail, switching your biggest concern from running down mailboxes and street-lamps to running from the cops. Usually, that scenario ends with a horrific crash and reload, wherein you lose some money and respawn at the local hospital or police station. Ah, the price one pays for spoliation.

Well, since L.A. Noire‘s Cole Phelps is the law, he can do whatever he wants, nice or not, as evident below:

Public Menace (30G): Rack up $47,000 in penalties during a single story case.

The thorn in this Achievement’s side is that there’s no way to openly track how much damage in penalties one is amassing during a case. You only get these statistics at the end of a case, but I assumed that totaling a lot of cars and driving on the sidewalk for long stretches of time would be the best way to racking up fines. After an hour of this mayhem, I went ahead and finished up the case–“The Black Caesar” for the curious, which was a bad choice as it’s a pretty lengthy affair–and waited eagerly for the statistics screen to pop up. I was confident I had done enough damages, and I was right. Way too right. Ended up going overboard: $68,000 in car penalties alone, with another $8,000 or so for messing up the sidewalks so badly.

But man, crashing cars in L.A. Noire is fun…and funny, especially when you hear the things citizens say to Cole’s constant obsession with ramming them head on. “These people!” is probably my favorite of the bunch. Another nice aspect to being reckless in the 1940s is that the cars don’t blow up and Cole doesn’t go flying through the windshield with every crash. Guess that tech hasn’t been invented yet.

Now that Cole and I’ve gotten this out of our system, we can go back to being goody two shoes, in hopes of replaying all the cases and earning five-star ratings. Well, not all of them. I did great on some, but others I totally funked up, accusing the wrong dudes of crimes they didn’t commit. My bad. Also curious about some of the DLC cases; Tara was certainly excited to learn that there were more cases yet to play, but I just don’t know if they are worth the space credits or not. We’ll see how bored I get after finishing up Deus Ex: Human Revolution and waiting for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to land…

Games Completed in 2011, #28 – L.A. Noire

I don’t think I’ll ever forget my L.A. Noire experience. It’s up there with Limbo and the featureless boy’s early jaunt through the forest, with Fallout 3 and leaving Vault 101 for the first time, with finishing a level in Super Mario Bros. by clinging to a flag pole and drifting down, fireworks praising your accomplishments. This crazy creation from Rockstar and Team Bondi is a mix of genres and games and most definitely not another skin for Grand Theft Auto IV fanatics to wear. It’s also unlike anything I’ve ever played, and it’s “motion scan” facial animation work has ruined everything that’s come before it–and possibly everything else after it. Deus Ex: Human Revolution may be all shiny and futurized, but it’s impossible not to cringe during cutscenes where characters are talking to each other.

You play as Cole Phelps, a detective trying to do what’s right, as well as avoiding the horrors of his past, namely his time spent at the battle of Okinawa during World War II. It’s the late 1940s, and Los Angeles is yours for the scouring; as the city begins to thrive with post-war opportunities and jazz and all things that encompass film noire, so does crime. Scoundrels and scum really earn their nicknames in L.A. Noire, committing horrific crimes, most of them against women, and it’s up to Detective Phelps to piece together what happened from clues, inspecting the crime scene, and interviewing key witnesses or suspects.

It’s a point-and-click adventure with astounding production values. As you search a crime scene, a deep, whomping bassline plays, letting you know you’ve not yet found everything. As you drive around the city–or let your partner take the wheel–you’ll go over the case’s details while listening to remixed versions of tunes by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan, Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra, Dinah Washington, Louis Jordan, Gene Krupa, and Billie Holiday. By far, the music is the strongest factor for immersing one’s self in a period lost to time and technology. Nobody writes songs like these anymore.

It’s a game that demands you pay attention. To play detective. Sure, the musical sound clues make it a little easy for finding actual clues at a crime scene, but it’s up to you, you playing Cole, to determine what’s actually important, where to go to first, what questions to ask witnesses, when to get tough and accusatory, when to lock up the guilty. There’s even one mission during the Homicide desk where you’ll be traversing all across L.A. based on cryptic poetry, having to use your eyes and knowledge of the city to get you where you need to go. Genuinely rewarding, by the completion of it.

Unfortunately, L.A. Noire is quite disappointing come the end. The developers pull a Metal Gear Solid 2, and you’re suddenly no longer playing as Cole Phelps. Sure, there’s a story reason for it, but it felt a bit like a betrayal, as well as clearly foreshadowed what was to unfold. And what unfolded was trite, a death not needed, not justified. Cole bites it saving Elsa, the woman he cheated on his wife with, which didn’t make him a terrible man, only all the more human. Then there’s a funeral scene with some cryptic accusations tossed at minor characters. After that and credits, strangely, you can hop back into the game to look for newspapers, golden film reels, cars, locations, and missed unassigned street missions–as Cole. Yeah, it’s a videogame all right.

That said, it’s a fantastic one, and I encourage all to experience, even if, like me, you really hate the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Most of the time you can’t even take your gun out of its holster, and L.A. citizens are pros at hopping out of the way of reckless drivers. And you can skip all the action sequences if they are too tough or not your thing; it’s a story game, where the story overshadows the game, and the game exists only to strengthen the story. There really is nothing quite like it.

Changing discs and stopping crimes in L.A. Noire

Last night, as I progressed towards reaching the highest law rank and stopping all street crime cases in L.A. Noire, I found myself constantly changing game discs and wondering if I had somehow slipped through a tear in the universe and traveled back to the days of massively epic RPGs on the original PlayStation. Nope. I checked my computer. It was 2011, it was the age of industry, and I was playing a game on the Xbox 360. I didn’t count, but I’d venture a guess that I got up from my comfy armchair to change game discs at least more than five times–within a ten-minute timeframe. Let me explain the why though.

See, I’ve already beaten L.A. Noire, but wanted to go back and finish up all the street crime cases that I skipped during my intense, focused playthrough. I did a few of these petty crime cases in the beginning, but as the main story cases got more crazy and Cole began to lose himself in his work, so did I, letting many of these appetizers fall to the background. Thankfully, via the main menu screen, you can go back to each desk’s respective section and free roam in that world, gaining the chance to find locations, golden film reels, and stop criminals in quick, bite-sized side missions.

The problem is that since L.A. Noire on the Xbox 360 is so huge, it had to be expanded onto three separate discs, with the different desks divided up like so: Patrol and Traffic on disc one, Homicide on disc two, and Vice and Arson on disc three. My quest forward began with me popping in disc three and doing some street crimes from the Arson desk; once those were done, and the map was seemingly empty of red markers, I went to the Vice desk to do the same thing. A message popped up that said I had finished all the street crimes for this desk. Cool, thanks for that. Off to the second disc then, to play the Homicide desk. Did a few more crime missions, creeping closer to all 40 completed. No more markers on the map, but no message like before had popped up either. Oh well. Off to see what I missed during Cole’s time on the Traffic desk (Patrol has no “free roam” option). Upon starting free roam for Traffic, I got that message indicating all street crimes were complete for this desk. All right. Back to Arson desk then, switching the discs out. Load up free roam and can’t find any red markers on the map that highlight available street crime cases. I drive around for a bit and the police radio chatter cranks up, alerting me to a nearby crime in progress. Off I go…only to discover it’s a street crime case I had already completed. Grrr. Okay, maybe I missed something on the Homicide desk. Same thing happened, with no map markers, but getting called to a mission I had previously done. At this point, I only need to finish up two more street crimes to brush them all under the rug, and this is driving me mad. TO THE INTERNET, ROY EARLE! YOU CAN DRIVE.

…

Oh. Duhhh. Discovered that some street crime missions are only available at specific times of the day during each desk, meaning some during daylight and some at night. I had no way of knowing that.

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Basically, for the Homicide and Arson desks, I had to drive around for a good amount of in-game time, waiting for the sun to set/rise, and then–and only then–did the last two street crimes become available. They were easy ones, a car chase and a hand-to-hand brawl. I just wish that there had been a better way of keeping track of completed street crimes in the game. Like, why not have the stats printed next to the “free roam” option in the respective case folders so we wouldn’t have to load and switch out discs so much? Makes sense to me. Unfortunately, this experience does not instill me with a sense of excitement towards chasing down that final newspaper, the remaining 25+ cars, and, uh, 49 golden film reels. Yes, forty-nine. Throughout my entire L.A. Noire experience, I only stumbled across one out of those fifty collectibles.

Anyways, here’s my reward for all the back and forth disc-changing madness:

The Long Arm Of The Law (30G): Complete all street crime cases.

Putting miles on the clock in L.A. Noire

I beat L.A. Noire a couple weeks ago, but I’m not going to be talking about the game as a whole or its ending just yet or all the things I loved slash hated. That will all have to wait until I get to it on my 2011 Completed Games list. In the meantime, I’ve dipped back into the game to play clean up for Achievements, as well as just drive around Los Angeles without the constant pressure of finding clues, undermining suspects, and closing cases. It’s been really nice.

Team Bondi and Rockstar’s 1940s Los Angeles is bland in terms of things to do other than driving from point A to point B, but brimming with beauty and buildings to look at, observe, eye hump, and be amazed with. Aesthetics is the name of the game here, and hoping into a car, tuning in to Billie Holiday, and driving down busy city streets is a little like time-traveling. It’s also quite relaxing because, unlike Grand Theft Auto IV, bumping into a car or accidentally swerving over to the sidewalk does not get the black and white chasing after you; in fact, you’re the black and white, and the game does quietly reprimand you for reckless driving, but never enough to put the fear in you to drive as straight and narrow as they come.

I do try to drive safe and civilian-like, but sometimes I get sleepy and veer into another car. Or some dinkhead begins to turn, but suddenly decides to stop in the middle of the road; that seems to happen a lot. No worries. Cole and his partner are always fine, never thrown from there car or anything, and the cars don’t ever explode like they would in Liberty City. Crash a car, find another, and so on. The developers have made it extremely easy to stay in the game, to keep exploring and listening to those snazzy, jazzy tunes, and that’s pretty amazing as most open-world games get boring real fast. Die a few times in The Saboteur or Grand Theft Auto IV, and seeing that I’d have to re-drive (or re-walk) all the way back to where I was is more frustration than I need, and off goes the system. However, with L.A. Noire, there’s none of that. The only pain, I guess, is having to switch out between three different discs to “free roam” certain crime desks.

Anyways, last night, as the heat and sleepiness wore me down, I found out that I’d been driving a whole lot so far, unlocking this fun Achievement:

Miles on the Clock (15G): Drive more than 194.7 miles.

Obviously, this took some considerable time, especially since I reveled in the fact that, during the game’s main missions, you could totally make your partner drive to the desired location without fear of ruining your car or losing your way or simply getting distracted. However, doing so did not count towards your total mileage for this Achievement. Post-game, finding hidden cars and completing more street crime cases definitely helped with this. I think I was mindlessly driving around near the Hollywood sign though when this nugget pinged. Vroom vroom.

I still have a few more somewhat attainable Achievements to go after, meaning I’ll be spending more time in the glitz and glamor of L.A. That sounds fine to me. Locations, newspapers, more street crimes, hidden cars, golden film reels–here I come!

The top five greatest things about L.A. Noire

L.A. Noire is not Grand Theft Auto IV set in the 1940s, and for that I’m eternally happy. That’s not what I wanted. I wanted that open-world feel, but more guidance, more direction, and that seems to be the case here, pun intended. A linear game set in an open Los Angeles that, if you want, you can go explore and get lost in and attempt to run citizens over. But you’re a good-natured detective, and a detective like that moves slowly, meticulously, combing crime scenes for clues and interrogating suspects and musing with partners over possible plans of action. Sometimes action takes precendence, with Cole chasing suspects on foot or car, or trying to survive a shootout, or desperately trying to keep his hat on during a fistfight. But it’s the detective work and questioning of suspects and branching paths that make L.A. Noire its own game, and not just Grand Theft Los Angeles.

Oh, and here are five other great things about L.A. Noire:

5. Make a face, any face

This might surprise some to find my praise of the facial animation not number one of this insignificant list of mine, but that’s how I roll. I like the face work, I do. It’s very impressive, especially considering that both Tara and I immediately recognized Greg Grunberg as Hugo Moller just on his face alone. We were like, “Hey, it’s that guy!” And we were right. It was that guy. And we recognized him before he spoke, whereas it is often the opposite that confirms a suspicion about a voice actor in a videogame. And then Hugo began to talk, and it was like I wasn’t even in a videogame anymore, just a show on TV, where a guy was being questioned, and he was answering accordingly, twitching and looking away and furrowing his brow as we all do, and we had judgment calls to make.

4. All that jazz

In the late 1940s, after the horror of World War II, music reflected American enthusiasm tempered with European disillusionment. Jazz and solo singers breaking free from big band ensembles ate up the limelight, and Rockstar took it a step further for L.A. Noire‘s soundtrack, utilizing the remixing skills of some of today’s best DJs to create new versions of the old. Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Lionel Hampton are re-imagined in spectacular ways. Take a listen, I promise you that the songs are intoxicating and hypnotic. It’s a shame that I don’t drive around more to listen to them, but more on that in a bit.

3. That carrot is not irrelevant

When at a crime scene and searching for clues, Cole can pick up and inspect a number of items, many of which are either red herrings or simply inconsequential to the case. My favorite pick-ups are inside a suspect’s house, where Cole will meander into the kitchen, pick up a carrot, and stare at it for minutes before finally deciding that, yes, it’s most likely not the murder weapon. I’ve also noticed his love for picking up boxes of laundry detergent. Either way, it’s nice that they kept these items in, as it does give the feeling of truly examining a crime scene, no matter how silly they ultimately are. Always examine shoes, too.

2. Baby steps up the stairs

Y’all might think the facial motion capturing work in L.A. Noire is its greatest achievement, but you’d be wrong. Somehow, after seven years of programming and coding and researching, the people at Rockstar and Team Bondi were able to perfectly capture the way people climb stairs. If you don’t hold down the run button, Cole will climb a set of stairs in itty bitty steps, bobbing his head all the way up, like a jogger running in place. It’s hilarious and at the same time instantly recognizable; we’ve all gone up stairs like this at one time or another, placing both feet on each step all the way to the top, and it only helps to nail down immersion and authenticity.

1. You drive, I’m lazy

Most cop-work is done in pairs. Partners are not just a stereotype of the cop genre, but an integral aspect of working the streets and solving crimes. Plus, they can act as a personal chauffeur. At just about any point, you can hold down a button and have your partner drive to the next location. This is wonderful. You still get to listen to the interactive dialogue you’d hear if you yourself drove, but now you can listen without worrying about running into another car or careening off a cliff. If there’s no dialogue to be had, you simply warp to the desired location via a short loading screen. Again, this is wonderful.

One of my biggest gripes with Grand Theft Auto IV is how sadistic the mission structure was, often having you drive across two bridges and many miles to start a mission. Upon death or failure, you’d have to do all that again. It was even hard to stay on track in games like The Saboteur and Red Faction: Guerrilla. Here, in L.A. Noire, arrival at your destination is guaranteed. Occasionally, I do drive, but it’s always messy, and I rear-end a lot of cars, which gets my partner all huffy and puffy. Not needed. Hopefully this is something every open-world game can implement though how is not a quick answer to me. The fact that you are constantly paired up with a second person surely helps.

—

Don’t think I’m 100% sweet on the game though. There’s plenty I dislike, and if y’all are good and enjoy this post and share it with Reddit and Kotaku and StumpledUpon and the whole Interworld so that I can get rich and famous fast, then I’ll do a post on the five worst things in L.A. Noire.

Color versus black and white in L.A. Noire

L.A. Noire is defaulted to play in color, which is a bit odd given its namesake and obvious admiration for film noir, low lighting, and unbalanced compositions. You do have the option to switch between playing in color and playing in black, white, and gray, but you can only select this option after starting the game and getting through its first chunk of cutscenes. That’s unfortunate because now you’ve already experienced the game in color, albeit just for a bit, and I guess it’s kind of like making a turkey sandwich, taking a bite, deciding that today isn’t turkey’s day, stripping the sandwich of its meat, and then replacing it with bologna. I mean, why didn’t you just make a bologna sandwich to begin with?

Okay, food analogies aside, after the opening narration and cutscenes, I switched over to black and white via the main menu options just as young, calm detective Cole Phelps and his partner began searching an alleyway for clues about a recent shooting. The change from color to black and white was phenomenal, striking even, especially with both detectives wielding flashlights, casting these sharp, bright cones of white on everything. It made searching for clues a little tougher due to the epic wash of white, but you truly felt like a bit part in a hardboiled police procedure.

And then a little later the game informed me that doors with golden yellow handles are open to Cole while doors without golden yellow handles cannot be opened. Great. In grayscale L.A. Noire, all door handles look exactly the same: a solid gray. There’s no way to tell the difference except to have Cole walk into every single door, making him look like a complete tool eight times out of ten. Strike one against black and white. The second strike came a tiny bit later as I was flipping through the game’s manual and noticed that, during gunfights and skirmishes, loss of health is indicated by the world’s color fading from color to black and white. The more muted it gets, the closer Cole is to his coffin. Perfect. In grayscale L.A. Noire, you can’t tell how much damage you’ve taken because the world around you is already muted and monochrome. The world doesn’t, for instance, revert back to color upon being wounded. It just stays the same. Strike two.

There’s no strike three. Two reasons were enough to convince me to switch back to color, and while it is not as aesthetically pleasing, at least I can be sure that playing the game will be easier. Certainly, I’ve found doors with golden yellow handles much quicker.

The Saboteur did not make a big splash on the gaming scene, but it’s a game that surprised me and took me for a wild ride across Paris; as the Nazis were destroyed and pushed back, color returned to France. It was a neat gimmick, but those early levels of the game where the only color you can see is red were so attractive and haunting. Same kind of goes for Fallout 3, wherein the Lone Wanderer is transported back to a simpler time before the bombs dropped, to Tranquility Lane, a virtual reality simulation housed in Vault 112. Here, the player will have to free his father from the same trap while dealing with a small neighborhood of 1950s-perfect people. Everything is seemingly pulled straight out of Pleasantville. Both games have a lasting impression on me, and both for the same reason: the excellent inclusion of effective noir stylings. It shouldn’t get in the way of gameplay, but it should definitely set a tone, pun intended.

Other than not being able to truly play in black and white and enjoy myself, I’m having a great time in L.A. Noire staring down suspects and searching for clues. As well as letting my partner drive me to and fro. Every open-world game needs chauffeurs. Yup, even you, LEGO City Stories. I just got up to the first case for Homicide called “The Red Lipstick Murder,” and I’m looking forward to solving some more mysteries this weekend. With Tara’s help, too. She’s like my very own personal assistant detective. “She’s lying! Look at her face!”