I never paid any attention to the advertising. And I still hated it. It had a fun mechanic. A single fun mechanic. Dodging.

But that's all the game was, in its entirety. Shoot a few shadows, dodge. It never grew beyond the one thing. It was repetitive by the second level. If you've played one level, you've played the entire game.

Edit: More on Alan Wake because I hate it with a passion. Alan Wake was clearly designed to be an episodic digital delivery game. Every single chapter/stage/whatever, you lose all your equipment. And a few times you lose it in the middle of a chapter. Like it wasn't designed to carry save data forward. But they didn't go through with the episodic release. So there's no chance for feedback and improvement between stages. So it's just the same thing... over... and over... and over. With a tacked on driving sequence in a spot.

That's messed up! I never heard anything about this, but that's pretty nuts!

Thanks to Rockstar Games for being so damn selfish PC gamers cannot get to try L.A. Noirs and thanks alot Pirates for making it happen.

I'm too early in to really judge yet, but so far I'm underwhelmed. It's probably just a subconscious reaction to all of the hype. I've yet to play a Rockstar game that I didn't like, so I'm not at a breaking point or anything.

My problem is I'm naturally distrusting, so when I interrogate someone I assume they're lying. Since I always want to be "right" I have to reload if I misjudged someone's reaction. That means I have to sit through the unskipable parts again and again. It's like the adventure-game equivalent of a jumping puzzle, and I keep missing the jump.

However, I really like the rest so far. I like that the clues are in logical places. The game really pays off if you pay attention and try to think like a detective. Like I said, too early to tell.

Just get used to the various facial expressions, there doesn't seem to be a large amount of different "types" of lying. They'll generally start some combination of shifting their eyes, squinting, btiing their tongue, and looking from side to side if they're lying.

If they're telling the truth, they'll always seek direct eye contact and seem calm and unconcerned. I don't think I've met an exception to this rule yet.

Also, use intuition. Keep solving street crime cases to raise your level early on to earn more intuition points to help weed out alternatives on the harder questions.

I really, really, really wanted to like this game. It's one of the few games I ever actually bought at launch. I love the noir influence, although playing a boy scout is nowhere near as interesting as a traditional morally ambiguous noir protagonist. I was keen to see a high profile action game bring some more adventure game elements to the table. The way they handled this is what bugs me about the game though. It is too easy to deconstruct the game logic and remove any genuine critical thinking from the crime solving, even without the auto-cues. Not only that but despite whatever actions you make, from what I have seen, the cases always manage to solve themselves anyway. The only incentive to actually do well at the game is pat on the back and a gold star on your chart.

Pity. I was afraid of this. The developers probably didn't want to risk anyone getting bogged down at the expense of the triggered plot and events moving in an expedient fashion. Or make them feel like they were playing "Post Mortem."

Anway, from the promotional materials, interviews, and trailers it looked a little life Mafia 2 by way of Dashiell Hammett. Is that accurate, in terms of feel (and more importantly) length? And what's it like, ambiance-wise?

Cole's not a Hammett character, probably closer to something Cain if anything but that's still a stretch. Perhaps it isn't quite fair to call him a boy scout because his arc does open up eventually, but they still only go so far with it. I found most of the meat in cases themselves. As it stands the game does't work as well as it should when it comes to uncovering who did what, but in a hardboiled story why is a more pertinent question. In this sense it works decently and the game can be enjoyed as an interactive movie if nothing else. The art, the music, some of the other characters and the detail in the world makes the the tone fantastic though. It was the main thing that kept me going through it. You can burn though the story pretty fast and I found myself trying to do more of the free roaming to pace it out more.

This game has to be the most broken piece of shit I have ever loved to play. The conversation system is totally random and completely unforgiving. The cases are all linear as shit which ruins the feel of a real investigation. The repeated "search the room" and "run after dude" and "drive after dude" mechanics feel like something out of 2001. The indoor graphics and faces look awesome but everything else is rough and with pop-in galore. The opening menu has more style and emotion than the entire game itself.

All that said... god damn am I loving the game, just because it's right up my alley. It's like a fucking textbook case of bias ruining my ability to stop playing and call it crap. How it got as many good review scores as it did and made it into certain GOTY lists is beyond me because the game itself is shit, but the experience is awesome.

I hated the main character but still finished it. Must be something to do with every arrest after Traffic being a bit political. Not quite. Sometimes you can go to several locations, and use the evidence gained in one to stimulate the interrogation in the other. Although the proper sequence is fixed and breaking it makes you miss on some clues. Oh, and there's one homicide case where using partner driving makes you miss a whole witness.
But in general it's a linear crime series playing on your screen, with a lot of cliches and traditional scenes.

I just started homocide, so maybe it gets better. So far the main character seems okay, just smug.

I've reloaded to see what changes I can effect. They're there, certainly, but overall it seems to be very 1-2-3 to the ending. Kind of like Mass Effect I guess... you can alter some cutscenes and outcomes, but the real route will always be the same.

I'm actually playing through the game for the first time on PS3 and I agree with most of your points

for me there are some points and moments in the game that are cool but the game has tons of problems and in the "Game" department it's total shit, too bad Team Bondi spent more time working on the Facial animations and expressions than making the actual game good

Attached image sums up my feelings and verdict for this game

I feel the same way. I shudder to imagine how much time/money was wasted creating the useless open world.

The game sold millions and millions of copies but that did not matter because so much money was taken and wasted during development on useless shit

Team Bondi closed after the release of this game

Is the game playable on PC? I have a laptop, i7 2670 @2.4 ghz quad core, GTX 555M, 8GB RAM and I installed GTA4 yesterday, just to see if it played OK - the DRM killed the experience, but even on low, the game was freezing every 5-6 seconds for small intervals, which is funny because I can play even the Witcher 2 and BF3 on this rig. :-P