2. L.A. Noire (2011)
On paper, at least, L.A. Noire sounds like a dream come true: you play as a '40s detective in a digitally-rendered Los Angeles, solving gritty murders using your initiative - throw in all the film noir references you can shake a Maltese Falcon at, and the fact that the game was produced by Rockstar, and you've got a recipe for success, right? In a lot of ways, L.A. Noire managed to live up to the hype conjured up by its genuinely awesome premise, but - in so many others - it felt far too ambitious for its own good. That's to say, what we all thought the game was going to be like (based on what we'd been told in the built-up to release day) didn't quite manifest itself in the gameplay. What we got instead was a dumbed-down version, where pressing A over and over again at a crime scene seemed to be the developer's idea of "detective work." That's to say, the main draw here was based around the idea that you could solve crimes in your own unique way, using information you'd gathered personally via your instincts. L.A. Noire even utilised impressive motion-cap technology, in which real-life actors' faces were transposed onto their in-game counterparts. The idea was that you could read their expressions to judge whether or not they were telling the truth. To use some '40s slang, it all sounded pretty "nifty," though the end result was far more restrictive and a lot less fun than first imagined. Although L.A. Noire wanted you to feel like you were in charge, making all the decisions to build cases against suspects, the fact remains that the game couldn't get away from the feeling that it was ultimately leading you along a pre-set track, a designated path. And in a way, it was. Your actions didn't really have as much of an impact as the game purported, and it all felt a little underhanded on the part of the games' creators. All right, so they might not have been able to realise the concept in such a way as to please everyone, but it all felt pretty basic. The fact that L.A. itself was largely unresponsive didn't help to rid me of the feeling that more time had been spent on getting the actors scanned into the game than into the actual gameplay mechanics. That said, much of L.A. Noire is thrilling and immersive. In terms of aesethics, there's nothing quite like it. But so many 5 star reviews across the board, and near-on universal praise? As Cole Phelps might say: "There's something not quite right here."