Thayala’s World

I’m two and a half hours in and I wanted to jot down a few notes about Rockstar’s latest offering. The post-World War II Los Angeles setting is gorgeous, and the character and vehicle design is spot-on. So far, everything the developers promised about the character facial animation (based on motion capture by 32 cameras surrounding the faces of live actors) is true: these are some of the most nuanced character performances I’ve seen, but manage to avoid the “uncanny valley.”

The gameplay (at least so far) is separated into cases that advance the career of Detective Cole Phelps and incidental street crimes that are announced over the radio as you drive from one location to the next investigating a case. There’s no feeling of a sandbox here. While the setting is vast, aside from the street crimes there’s no motivation to wander the city. You’re always heading to some destination involved in a case.

So far, cases have started with a brief flash of the crime being committed (but with the details artfully left out, like many police procedurals) followed by Cole being assigned the case by his C.O. When you arrive on the scene, you investigate the scene for clues, which largely consists of you moving Cole around the scene waiting for audio (a soft chime) and tactile (controller vibration) indicators that you’re standing near something that you can investigate. Cole dutifully picks up the object, and you’re informed by the game whether what you’re examining is a clue or not.

This is one area that’s bothering me a bit: searching for clues feels a little too binary. Nothing might be a clue. If you pick it up and it’s not relevant, the game comes out and tells you so. Anything that is a clue is added to your notebook for later reference.

As an aside, it’s strange to play a detective in a setting before forensic science became a key investigative strategy. Cole nonchalantly picks up weapons, moves bodies, walks through blood spatter, etc. So far there’s been no gameplay that requires dusting for fingerprints or looking at trace through a microscope. Which is a good thing.

You proceed to interview witnesses and suspects, which consists of you selecting a topic from your notebook which causes Cole to ask a question. You then judge the response by selecting one of three choices: truth, doubt, or lie. If you select “lie,” then you must select a piece of evidence from your notebook that refutes the statement. If your intuition is wrong, then Cole’s reaction causes the suspect to omit some piece of information that would help your case.

If you don’t have direct evidence that the character is lying, you’re left with studying your suspect’s reactions and emotional state based on the character animation. Which actually works pretty well, most of the time.

Then you move on to the next location (a suspect’s house, the notification of death, the morgue, etc.) and repeat the process until you’re lead to the suspect.

Anyway, so far I’m having fun, but there are a few things that bother me about the gameplay, most of which seen to be inherited from the GTA games. Driving feels really loose, resulting in cars that sway back and forth on the screen and frustrating car chases. You can skip a lot of the driving by having your partner drive, which is the equivalent of taking a cab in previous Rockstar games. Combat is weak—hand-to-hand fighting feels like it’s taken a step back from GTA4, and shooting mechanics aren’t great.

So far, the end of every street crime and nearly every case has resulted in the death of the primary suspect. It’s likely that I’m missing something (have to go back and check) but I’ve yet to subdue anyone in the game. Most of the “pursuit” skills feel clunky, in fact, so whether chasing down a suspect in a car or on foot, both feel clumsy. Cole seems to be channeling “Dirty Harry” in his approach to law enforcement despite my best effort, and although you’re strongly discouraged from doing damage to the city or its citizens, there have been no repercussions from the fact that I’ve inadvertently run over two pedestrians while trying to catch a suspect.

Edit: Apparently, I’m not the only one who’s noticed these things.

Overall, I’m having a good time with the game, but I’m already concerned that the gameplay will start feeling repetitive.

More later.

A few thoughts on the games that I’m playing.

Fallout: New Vegas

Cartoonist and gamer Tim Buckley (Ctrl+Alt+Del) writes that he hasn’t enjoyed Fallout: New Vegas as much as he expected.

Every time I fire it up, I enjoy it for about fifteen minutes, and then I’m overcome with an unavoidable feeling of “Oh yeah, I’ve played this before.” Which is to say, I think I put so much time into Fallout 3 that maybe I got burnt out on the same barren wastelands and Bethesday playdough-face NPCs.

I see where he’s coming from: Fallout: New Vegas is, certainly in the first few hours that I’ve played, very similar to Fallout 3. But unlike Buckley, I was immediately immersed in the world again. Other than continuing problems with freezes, I’m really enjoying the return to the Fallout universe.

In case you’re wondering, I went with my go-to Fallout build: guns, science, and locksmithing with a dash of sneak.

Civilization V

The most recent Analog Hole Gaming we recorded includes an interview with Renata (Citizen Azeroth podcast) about her impressions of Civilization V. When I got back from the trip I immediately jumped on Steam and purchased a copy myself. In my opinion it’s everything you like about Civilization, only better. A lot of the city micro-managing (deciding which tiles your citizens should work, for instance) has been eliminated in favor of a richer unit strategy.

Though it doesn’t sound like much, the elimination of unit stacking and the addition of city defenses has a huge impact on gameplay. You have to really consider the placement of units and how you plan to reinforce them. It’s a much deeper gameplay experience and I’m really enjoying it.

One thing that hasn’t changed about Civilization is that it’s still a huge time sink. Sitting down to play a game is an investment of hours. Beware.

Rock Band 3

Continuing the trend of the sequels I’m playing, Rock Band 3 is also more of a good thing. I haven’t explored the pro modes yet (the keyboard should arrive today) but the standard instruments still feel right. There are a lot of great new songs—some of which I can’t believe haven’t been available in Rock Band yet—and as usual Harmonix does right by giving you access to all of your existing downloaded music as well as songs from the previous two Rock Band games. If only I could get it to import my Beatles Rock Band songs as well…

I wish I could put my finger on why I like Rock Band so much and I’ve pretty much lost interest in the Guitar Hero franchise.

Torchlight

Yes, I know this game has been out forever, but I rediscovered it in my Steam library and have enjoyed getting a bit of an action RPG fix. Seems like action RPGs would be a good match for the iPhone, or especially the iPad… wonder if the Torchlight folks are thinking in that direction?