LA Noire

So I finished LA Noire.  For those rare readers not actually in the game industry or hardcore gamers, L.A. Noire is a modern open world game where you play a detective in 1940’s Los Angeles.  It’s meant to basically be a video game version of an Ellroy novel, with original material.  Since it’s an open world game, initial expectations included a GTA style sandbox to play in.  No such luck here as L.A. Noire is basically a by-the-numbers linear adventure game set in an open world.

I’m going to post overall thoughts first, then I’ll put a more detailed spoiler section together to get into more specifics for those who have finished the game.

When I first started playing L.A. Noire, what struck me was many similarities to a Nintendo DS game entitled “Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney”, wherein the player takes the role of the titular attorney charged with defending all manner of suspects in a culture where guilty until proven innocent is the rule of the day, and, in fact, one must find the perpetrator of the crime before one is allowed to go free.  The game is silly and has overall silly themes with a few odd moments of gravitas, since, after all, some of these cases are murder cases.  The basic mechanics are find clues and then during the course of cross examining a witness, catch them in enough lies to prove their guilt or at least begin to prove your client’s innocence.  Phoenix Wright is a fantastic game and doesn’t overstay its welcome.

L.A. Noire covers very similar territory, the basic gameplay is that you find clues and interview witnesses in order to determine what happened.  Clues are used to catch witnesses in lies, and the cases all progress in a linear fashion.  You never quite get to court, and you’re not “defending” someone, but the overall premise turns out to be very similar.  There is one key difference, however, L.A. Noire does overstay its welcome, at least for me.

The tone of L.A. Noire is quite a bit more serious as you’re put in the shoes of Cole Phelps, a returning war hero with a mysterious past.  You are an earnest and honest cop, something of a rarity in 40’s LAPD, apparently and you’re constantly searching for the truth despite what other police officers and even your superiors might want.  It’s an interesting character to some degree, but very much an archetype.  The past, which you eventually uncover, that they give Phelps is compelling, but ultimately feels more like a gimmick than something that adds real depth to the character.  As you play the game, Phelps’ career moves through several “desks” of detectives, changing depending on the crimes Phelps investigates. Each desk feels like a separate episode in the “L.A. Noire novel series”, basically.

The clue searching mechanics are interesting at first, but quickly get somewhat repetitive where basically it’s a 90’s adventure game, but instead of hunting for a pixel with a mouse cursor, you’re hunting for a vibration with the controller in 3d.  This is somewhat compelling at first mainly for its novelty, but the novelty wears off.  At this point the mechanic isn’t bad, as long as it’s in service of a good story.  The adventure game like clue hunting sections are broken up with driving, shooting, and melee fighting  sections.  The shooting sections, at least, can usually be skipped if the player loses enough times, with no detrimental effects to the player.  This is an interesting idea and I can actually see it work pretty well, though I played through all the shooting sections.

The shooting mechanics are serviceable if uninteresting, though the cover mechanics are horribly broken, and to my mind, unshippable.  The only saving grace is that generally the shooting sections are ridiculously forgiving, so it rarely becomes frustrating, even if it looks kind of silly.

The driving is likewise broken with some of the worst feeling vehicle mechanics I’ve met.  Excuses can be made about it being 1940’s cars, but I know a good vehicle friction model when I feel one, and L.A. Noire doesn’t have one.  This is especially frustrating as the open world is built with protrusions in the middle of key driving areas that the player gets easily hung up on, forcing a failure in chase missions. The other type of driving missions, follow missions, are exactly as fun as they are in other open world games.  That is to say, no fun at all, and tedious in the extreme, if not very difficult.

I found the fist fighting sections to actually be something of a pleasant diversion.  The melee system is dead simple, allowing dodging, blocking, and a few different attack types.  There’s something of a rhythm to the melee and it’s generally pretty forgiving

The other core mechanic is interviewing witnesses to determine if they’re lying.  This is both the game’s highlight and biggest disappointment.  The much ballyhooed facial scanning technology comes into play here with actors basically being scanned in for a digital performance, and players expected to carefully watch the performance to determine whether the witness/suspect is lying or not.  On paper, this sounds like it would never work due to the performances not being good enough.  Interestingly enough, I actually feel like they nailed that, and generally I could tell when someone was lying or holding something back, and when I wasn’t able to tell, it generally felt like it was my fault.  The problem with the system is the options you’re given.  Truth, Lie, and Doubt.  To my mind, lie should be a stronger version of doubt, and there should be some spectrum to the questions, rather than 3 discrete answers.  The way the mechanic actually works is you need to remember the clues you’ve uncovered so far, and if you have a contradiction, you have to select “lie”, if you read the face as not being honest, but you don’t have any clues to prove a contradiction, you should select “doubt'”, otherwise you should select “truth”.  Problems come into play when you haven’t found all the clues, can tell that someone is lying, and select “doubt”.  This ends up being the wrong choice, even though it feels right and it’s incredibly difficult to tell that it’s not the right answer.  At least it was for me.  The entire “doubt/lie” mechanic feels poorly thought out and confusing and severely damages an otherwise amazing mechanic. 

As for the open world, there are a few random street crimes that have the player chasing down a perpetrator and stopping them, aside from that, the open world is completely wasted and simply window dressing.  There are no sandbox mechanics whatsoever and the incredible amount of time and money spent on building this world would have been much better spent elsewhere in the game.  Technically the open world performs well with little sign of LOD popping or low res geometry coming to the forefront. 

Graphically the game is interesting but nothing much special, aside from the facial animation and artwork which is fantastic.  The overall graphics are  nowhere near on par with Grand Theft Auto IV in my view, but it’s not a bad looking game. 

To sum up the spoiler-free section, it’s an interesting game with a few interesting, if broken mechanics, which might even work, if the story, writing, and characters were great, which, in my opinion, unfortunately, they aren’t.  Reasons why can be found in the spoiler section, immediately following. Ultimately I found the game to be a disappointment, never quite making good on its promise.

BEWARE, SPOILERS, TURN BACK NOW MORTAL!

Uniform/Traffic Desk:

This part works beautifully for me: somewhat interesting cases, getting my feet wet with the mechanics, hinting at a deep backstory for the protagonist all wrapped up in a fairly high production value package.  Sucked in.  Not sure why I’m so engrossed but I want to keep playing.

Murder Desk:

Starts off strong, interesting cases, serial killer aspect, referencing real events with the Black Dahlia, pretty damn awesome… at the beginning.  As time goes on, I’m more and more sure that the people I’m arresting aren’t responsible for the crimes, then all of a sudden I’m very sure, now I’m kind of annoyed that I have to arrest innocent people, suspension of disbelief is broken.

Finally, the clues are coming together, we trace the killer back to his hideout, confront him, and THE KILLER IS REVEALED TO BE………

The temp bartender I briefly talked to in a couple of the cases?

Really?

Are Velma and Daphne going to show up?

Do I at least get a scooby snack?

You’re seriously going to make a James Ellroy referencing game, with similar elements and even use the same case for inspiration, and the ending is going to be a  SCOOBY DOO ENDING???

EPIC FAIL.

At this point I no longer have any faith in the game to tell me a decent story.  I’ll keep playing ‘cause I’m invested, but this is pretty disappointing.

Vice Desk:

Now my partner is someone the game has already taught me to dislike and Cole seems completely oblivious to this fact.  Roy Earle is obviously a bad guy from before you even get transferred to Vice and somehow Cole just trusts him throughout the entire sordid affair.  Chasing down the heroin racket isn’t as interesting as the red lipstick murders anyway and at this point I’m in full grind mode where I barely even care about the game.  Roy is a caricature of a corrupt cop, Cole is an oblivious hero character archetype, and the interactions between the two are obvious and frankly poorly written and uninteresting.  The outcome is inevitable and obvious, and the twist of Cole actually having done something wrong feels more like a cheap gimmick rather than some hidden depth to his character.  They took the payoff without doing enough work to set it up and it feels totally tacked on.  Super lame. Especially since you never even meet Cole’s family in order to see why what he did was so wrong.

Arson Desk:

Now I can barely get myself to play the game.  They don’t even bother fleshing out the Arson partner, just murkily mention that he’s difficult to get along with.  The cases are somewhat interesting, but it’s really a grind at this point and I might not even finish the game, until…

They put me in Jack Kelso’s shoes, which is actually a pretty interesting twist and I really liked it.  It helped the end of the game out immensely and got me re-interested in the game.  Kelso still doesn’t quite have a 3 dimensional character but he’s a nice counterpoint to Phelps and it was interesting to work cases from a different angle, even if my suspension of disbelief couldn’t handle that an insurance company investigator gets to call the police information robot from the future…. err…. police operator to get information.  Also why is he able to carry a gun?  It’s very weird.  The ending played out in an interesting way, and even though they still didn’t do the work to pay off the “reveal” at the end, it’s not quite as bad as the murder investigation. 

Overall the story is pretty weak.  I’ve read a number of reviews that have talked about the great characters and writing, but I’m sorry, if you don’t tack the damning with faint praise tag “for a video game” on the end of that sentence it’s just laughable.  Watch L.A. Confidential and then come back and play this game and tell me that there is good writing or characters.  It’s so rare to see a game that isn’t sci-fi or fantasy have a story that’s even remotely well put together that I suppose this game looks good by comparison, but I found it to be a big disappointment and I really think we should expect more of our industry.  I actually think, had the story been better, I would probably have loved this game.  As it stands, I found stuff to like, but overall I have a hard time recommending it.  The broken mechanics really hurt as well, and taken as a package, I think it comes up pretty short. That’s not to say it’s a terrible game, I’m just not sure if it’s a good game, and if it is, I certainly don’t think it’s a great game.  I guess my review had a pretty weak ending too.  I hate to waffle, but there is some genuinely interesting stuff going on with this game, and I think game developers are doing themselves a disservice if they don’t at least give it a look.  That said, there’s enough crap here that I hope the industry doesn’t follow this game too closely.

Malazan Book of the Fallen

I finally finished The Crippled God tonight. 

I have to say, this is the greatest epic fantasy series I've read.  The incredible detail brought to the cultures, the larger than life characters and situations, and the epic convergences just come together to make an absolutely incredible series.  Obviously I'm flush with just finishing it, but I'm totally blown away by how well it comes together in the end.  This series is really a testament to how much can be done with a bunch of hard work and talent.

Erikson and Esslemont have created easily the most thought-out, fleshed-out, and "designed" fantasy world I've ever read about.  That alone is worthy of praise, but within that world, they created a host of characters that are sympathetic, likeable, and three dimensional.  Characters you can root for and cry with and be impressed by.  They set up amazing convergences of events that bring together exactly who the reader wants brought together, and rarely do the convergences disappoint.

The Malazan book of the fallen, a 10 book series by Steven Erikson is the "mainline" plot in the universe so far.  It follows Marines from the Malazan Empire as they have adventures on all the continents of the world.  In doing so they come across many cultures and races.  Each culture and race is a fully fleshed out culture as one would expect from an Anthropologist/Archaeologist.  The series is full of heroes and oddly has very, very few villians as Erikson is fond of changing viewpoints on the reader to get the "other take" on the actions of a previous novel or chapter. 

Erikson and Esslemont have mentioned that they hate tropes and cliches, and the book does neatly avoid most fantasy cliches, not quite all, but I don't want to spoil anything.

Anyway now that it's done and it's had a satisfying conclusion, I have to fully recommend Malazan book of the falllen to anyone who likes epic fantasy, it's the very best.  There is, however, a caveat.  The first book is incredibly confusing as the reader is thrust directly in the middle of the action.  To make matters worse, the second book takes place on a different continent and contains very few characters that appear in the first book.  By the third book the nature of the series starts to take shape and you're back with well-known characters again, and at that point, I think the series hits its stride, though, I do think the first two books are good, they just happen to be much better when rereading the series.

Fantsy Fans:  Go read this series, by the end you will not regret it.

I would talk more about specifics, but I fear spoilers for those who haven't read it, if you have read it and you want to talk about it, drop me a line.

Changing Titles

I've changed the title on my blog, which used to be called pinonoir to books on a CD.  I wanted to start blogging about wine specifically and I thought the pinonoir name just works better for wine than it does for nerdy stuff.  Books on a CD refers to how CDs used to be advertised as "it can store thousand and thousands of books", plus I post about books, and computers and stuff so I thought it just fit.

The Golden Age of Fantasy; a Representative Year

I’ve talked about this time being The Golden Age of Fantasy to a few people, and this year, I think, possibly shows it off better than any in recent memory.

First off let me defend the idea that this is The Golden Age of Fantasy. Ever since Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Robert E Howard defined the genre in the first half of the 20th century, there have been fantasy books.  Of course there were similar works before that, but I’m talking about what the modern reader considers to be “fantasy” books started with that group of authors, particularly Tolkien.  There have been high periods and low periods, many storied authors have taken a crack at it, with mixed results. 

Then, to my mind, in the late 80’s, early 90s, Robert Jordan took a huge swing at breaking open the genre by attempting to write The Ultimate Fantasy Epic, sticking in every trope, treading every worn path, and, to my mind, trying to give the fantasy reader exactly what he or she wants.  A huge epic yarn sprawling an enormous world with a real sense of depth and history spanning a dozen cultures in as many cities.  An intrepid set of heroes, a mysterious prophecy. All the ingredients for an incredible fantasy epic.  Unfortunately he didn’t live to finish it, and his work is only now being wrapped up by a new fantasy writer. 

But what a shot he took.  The first few books captured my imagination in a way nothing besides Tolkien had really done in a fantasy setting.

And I think I wasn’t the only one whose imagination was captured. 

So for me, The Wheel of Time marks the beginning of this new golden age. 

It wasn’t alone of course, there were other authors working at the same time or just before who were breaking new ground and trying new things, but as near as I can tell, and obviously this is very arguable, a real torrent of great fantasy followed the Wheel of Time.

For me, the Next Great Series, was A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin.  Where Jordan was hitting the tropes by the numbers, Martin was using them to trick his readers and blindside them with outrageous occurrences.  This series wasn’t about worldbuilding and magic, it was about politics and characterization, and in some was, about just plain fantastic writing.  Unfortunately the writing seems to have stalled to some degree with the preponderance of plot threads too much for Martin to manage.  Let’s hope he makes his way out of it because I suspect there’s an incredible conclusion waiting for us.

The next great series to come to my attention is actually a bit older and it’s called Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams.  I found it a bit tough to get into, but quite rewarding once I’d managed to work my way through it.  I don’t have a ton to say about it, but I found the conclusion pretty satisfying.

At this point I have to mention the next great fantasy series that came to my attention, and it’s fame and popularity probably eclipses anything else I’ve written about.  It could practically define The Golden Age of Fantasy by itself.  Of course I’m talking about the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, which is finished and satisfying and magical and fantastic and unexpectedly adult and overall just a wonderful series. 

After those, I was exposed to The Malazan book of the Fallen, an absolutely increidble exercise in worldbuilding by Steven Erikson, an anthropologist by trade and Ian Cameron Esslemont, an archeologist.  The story, as near as I can tell, is that Erikson and Esslemont were RPG gamers and created their own RPG universe together and ended up writing a screenplay in their universe that never got picked up and led to them each deciding to write a series of novels.  However it came about, the Malazan universe is rich and rewarding full of incredible detail and fantastic characterization.  Very tough to get into, with a few baffling books at the beginning, but well worth the investment by the end. The last book in the first Malazan series has just come out and I’m currently reading it when I’m not writing ridiculously long blog posts.

After these huge series, I was exposed to Joe Abercrombie’s first law series, a darkly funny take on what can basically described as a twisted Dungeons and Dragons party (trust me It’s good).  Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastard cycle, which has a fantastic book  (The Lies of Locke Lamora) and, what must be described as a sophomore slump Red Seas Under Red Skies.  Still good but not as good as Lies.  Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series, not to mention individual works like Warbreaker and Elantris.  Great ideas built into solid books.  And last but not least, Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles, which are so far both fantastic books: The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear.

There are even more authors I’d put on a tier below those guys that are still worth checking out, but I’m running out of time.  Needless to say, I’ve got fantasy novel recommendations in spades so don’t be afraid to hit me up for one. 

As for this year, so far, what IS DEFINITELY out or coming out:

New Ian Cameron Esslemont, Stonewielder.  Good, but not as good as Return of the Crimson Guard.

New Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear.  Fantastic, highly recommended.

New Steven Erikson, The Crippled God, finale of the original Malazan series, and so far, pretty damn good.

Joe Abercrombie, The Heroes, another dark hilarious jaunt.

What is PROMISED:

Dance of Dragons, by George RR Martin, FINALLY the next Song of Ice and Fire Book.

The Republic of Thieves, by Scott Lynch, new Gentlemen Bastards Book.

Mistborn: The alloy of Law, a new Brandon Sanderson set in the mistborn universe.

Ghost Story, new Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher.  Modern Fantasy, but Fantasy nonetheless.

And that’s all I can think of right now.  It’s been a long day. 

Still, an INCREDIBLE year for fantasy!

The “Post PC” world

The other day I was reading engadget and there was an article about how Apple is “making its own rules” or “way ahead” or something in the “post PC world”.  And I got pretty annoyed.  I didn’t really read the article as much as skim it, but it was standard tech blog Apple fan love, and that crap is really starting to get on my nerves.

Obviously, I work for Microsoft, so it’s not like I’m not biased, I’m hugely biased.  I think Microsoft is a great company that’s doing some really great things in a lot of spaces.  I like my Windows Phone, love my X box, and I love Windows 7.   I think Azure’s got a lot of potential, and I’m basically guzzling the Kool Aid.  So I am biased, and I can recognize that.

Even with my pro-Microsoft bias, I can tell that Apple has used their unique position to craft some incredibly amazing products.  They are one of the best consumer electronics hardware companies in the world, and a world class software maker to boot.  The iPhone is a triumph of simplicity and design, married to nearly the perfect amount of usability.  The iPad seems completely unassailable at this time in the consumer market.  There is basically no competition for it because none of Apple’s competitors can pull of the hardware and software together to create such a beautiful device.  The iPad 2 doubles down on the sexy at less than a centimeter thick! 

But…

A Post PC world? 

Really?

Because of a tablet?

The problem with that statement is that the iPad doesn’t replace anything.  It’s a great device, to be sure, but you need a PC to really get the most out of it.  And all of the tasks you’ve been doing on PCs for the past 25 years, you actually still need a PC to do. 

The iPad is fundamentally a fantastic consumption device.  You wouldn’t want to write a novel on an iPad, though I suppose it could be done.  You wouldn’t want to edit a film on an iPad, or manage a spreadsheet.  You wouldn’t really even want to post to facebook on an iPad given a choice.  Furthermore, it doesn’t even seem apple has any plans to make it a great content creation device with their overall eschewing of pen based input.  So how does an iPad create a post PC world? 

I will grant you that the iPad does replace one PC in many people’s homes.  The venerable “surf the internet while watching TV” netbook.  So it replaces a secondary or tertiary computer.  Hardly a “post PC world”.

And why does this bother me so much?  I mean it’s some dumb article on a tech blog.  It bothers me because I feel like this concept has captured the imagination of financial analysts and investors the world over, and it’s constantly damaging my company’s stock.  For basically no reason.

I will admit that Microsoft doesn’t have the prowess to build a product the way Apple does.  It’s just not at the core of what Microsoft does as a company.  Microsoft is a software company and Apple is largely a hardware company.  Apple does hardware very, very well.  Microsoft attempts to find partners who do hardware very, very well when we can, and in rare cases we build our own. We’re not going to be showing off sexy new devices every 2 years, but we do have a solid software and business foundation that will last for years and has already allowed us to expand into several billion dollar businesses. 

Maybe one day investors will notice.

I’m not saying Apple’s stock doesn’t deserve to do well.  I’m not even saying that Apple shouldn’t be more valuable than Microsoft.  I just can’t imagine how many more hugely profitable businesses Microsoft can build and never have the stock go up.  It seems like there’s literally nothing we can do to get people to invest in us, mainly due to the “exciting new tech product” of the day, despite that it could be a flash in the pan and in no way threatens Microsoft’s core businesses.

All you iPad owners who want to flame me, for some reason, flame away, but make sure you do it on your iPad, right after you’re done writing your novel, or carefully editing your photos, or modeling a 3d character, or writing some code, or doing some taxes.

Living with Windows Phone 7

A bit earlier I posted my initial impressions of my Samsung Focus Windows Phone 7 device.  I know some people read my thoughts and might be interested what it’s like several months later. 

I still like the phone, even after that initial glow is off.  The back button remains irritating though I have largely gotten used to it.  I’ve actually found the battery life to be pretty good.  Much better than it seemed at first, so that’s pretty nice.  Zune pass is still blowing my mind, even though I’m downloading songs instead of streaming, it’s nice to hear about the top 10 albums of the year and have several of them available to you at no extra cost, on your phone, which wirelessly plays through your car’s bluetooth stereo. 

I’ve found the kindle app to be good, especially since you can set it up as a black background with white text to save power.  I wish there was a way to turn off auto rotate like there is on the iPhone version.

The facebook app is abysmal and REALLY needs attention.  The less said about it the better, but it’s buggy and has terrible user interface.  Granted it is sort of a “facebook phone” so a lot of that ends up being handled by internal apps, but it still feels crappy to have such a poor facebook app.

The games story isn’t great yet, but it seems like a bunch of cool stuff is coming soon, like Angry Birds and Plants Vs Zombies, so I’m not so worried. 

I haven’t missed copy and paste too much but it will be appreciated when it lands, along with faster app loading.  The second update this year with multitasking and superior office integration will be huge. 

Anyway I still like the phone, I had the dubious pleasure of setting up my old iPhone for my mom, and it felt really slow, so I’m still happy with the speed of the phone, and I’m really looking forward to what’s next.