10 Video Games That Were One Critical Flaw Away From Greatness

10. L.A. Noire

Critical Flaw: The tonally-sporadic interrogations. Oh L.A. Noire, you had so much promise. By only being published by Rockstar rather than developing, Team Bondi did away with the rebels n' rapscallions tales of GTA to instead try their best to do an extremely serious take on the detective genre - with some truly revolutionary face-mapping technology to boot. The idea was that you'd mount up your evidence in a variety of different locales, before hauling in your suspects and giving them a good grilling - with the realistic facial expressions giving away if they were lying or not. So far, so good. However when it came to your character of Cole Phelps, actually trying to ask a series of questions with any semblance of continuity was impossible. You'd select something like the 'Doubt' prompt if you thought your suspect was telling porkies, only for Cole to leap into action, shouting down your (presumably still innocent) witness - just to then snap back into his original calm demeanour with whatever you chose next. It was incredibly jarring, and in a game where the utmost care had been put into everything else, stuck out like a thumb with a neon 'Sore!" sign sticking out the top. Even worse you could have multiple pieces of evidence that would help prove an allegation Cole just blurted out, but only one particular piece would work with any given line of questioning, leading to what should have been one of the most celebrated parts of the entire experience just being an exercise in frustration.