So... L.A. Noire... (Possible Spoilers)

I know quite a few of you were really looking forward to it but since it's come out I haven't really heard any of your opinions on it.

Were you like me and thought it was a boring, mediocre, and overly long and drawn out disappointment? Or was it everything you thought it would be, i.e. "THE BEST GAME EVER?"

Here are some of my thoughts on it, collected from another site:

Right now I'm trudging through L.A. Noire. Am I in the minority here in thinking this game is unnecessarily long and tedious? I think this game would have been a lot better if they'd just focused on you being in homicide. Maybe add some more cases not related to the Black Dahlia stuff and keep all the street crimes in. That would have been fine. Instead I'm stuck doing more bullshit cases in Vice.

-It seems that Team Bondi spent so much time working on the characters faces that they forgot around the rest of the body. They got hundreds of actors to do voices and the facial animations and it seems like they only got just a handful to do the rest of the body. It's really apparent when you're walking besides someone and see that you both have the exact same walking animation. I mean, 90% of the voice actors are no-names, they couldn't say to them "Hey we'll bump your pay an extra hundred dollars if you put on this suit and walk around for an hour?" And the body animations they do have look bad, like when he gets clothes-lined in one of the first missions. Doesn't help that the guy who voices Cole makes some really wimpy sounding noises when he gets hurt. There's also a lot of clipping issues when two bodies collide which is weird because GTAIV and RDR didn't really have that problem. Then again Nico Bellic and John Marsten were criminals and when people get in their way they just push them down and walk over them. I guess Cole Phelps is so much of a boy scout that when a civilian gets in his way (usually when chasing after a suspect), rather then push them out of the way he politely dematerializes and phases right through them like he's fucking Casper.

-The facial animations really do look good during gameplay, like when you're walking around and you tell your partner something or when you're in cover telling a suspect to put their gun down. It really does look real. And then you get to the interviews where they put the camera right up on the characters face and it loses it's effect a bit. Hard to explain but it looks like they cut the actors face off and slapped it on a mannequin head. The tech still needs a lot of work.

-The game really seems to coddle you. This action sequence too hard for you? Well go ahead and skip it? Need to chase this guy down? Don't worry the game's got you covered. Just hold down the run button and we'll turn around corners for you. Don't like driving? At all? Just let your partner drive you everywhere like he's your own personal chauffeur. The game has the same problem games like Mass Effect and MGS and Final Fantasy and every JRPG under the sun where the gameplay takes a back seat to the story and you get the impression that the developers would just rather be making movies.

The game really isn't anything special. Investigating the crime scenes in Condemned were a lot more fun, challenging, and engaging then working a crime scene in L.A. Noire. I'm only playing through it out of some kind of obligation since I already paid $60 for it (And only because K-Mart was having that sale where if you bought the game you got another $20 game free and a $20 coupon (Which I used to get Singularity, a better game then L.A. Noire)) and because I spent even more money on the Rockstar pass because I thought the game would breeze buy and wanted to get as much gameplay out of it as possible. Boy was I wrong! The Rockstar pass comes with a download for a DLC that hasn't even been released (Reefer Madness) yet and I'm not sure I'm even going to wait for it. I'm probably going to end up selling it after beating it, if I even get that far. Game is testing my patience and I still have two whole desks to get through.

PS: The Rockstar Pass comes with a download for a tommy gun that is kept in the trunk of your car the entire game and I have never once ran into a situation where I could use it because half the time when I get into a gunfight I'm miles away from my car. Not that I would even need it since your handgun works perfectly fine. I don't even know why they even give you the option of picking up other guns.

And oh yeah, the insurance guy was a hell of a lot more cooler than Cole Phelps. Playing as him was the highlight of the game for me.