I listened to a great review of this game on the most recent Final Score podcast, and thought it sounded awesome. I’d love it on PC, but I’m wondering if my laptop can handle the apparently fabulous facial display capabilities. I do have a PS3, but don’t really want to tie up our only TV with a one-player RPG-style game.
[spoiler] In the murder cases, how many times do you see the temp barman before he reveals himself as the killer? I only remember seeing him twice and the second time I saw him, I thought he was likely to be the killer. Police procedurals often do this: towards the beginning of the story, you meet a character who seems very minor a few times but the writers make sure you notice him.
Was anyone else surprised by the adultery twist? After you go to the blueroom bar, Phelps and the singer go to an appartment but I didn’t think there was going to be anything that would develop from that. Was I supposed to pick up flirting clues between them? It just seems like one minute, he’s questionning her, then they go to her place and have sex and the minute after that, they’re a couple. I might have missed something.
[/spoiler]
Michael,
[spoiler]I saw the adultery thing coming a mile away; they really set it up from the very earliest when you meet Elsa get slapped around by the vice detective and getting drugs from the doctor. Then when he starts frequenting the club I started to figure that was where things were going.
I also noticed the temp barman a couple times but didn’t put two and two together on that one.
[/spoiler]
Tell me about saving games - can you save anytime you want, or is it only between missions like GTAIV?
Not being able to save a lot pretty much ruins games for me. I’m intrigued with this one, but I will never again buy a game where I have to re-do a ten minute scenario 10 times because I keep getting killed in the last 5 seconds.
It autosaves often, like when you start a new case, visit a new crime scene or interview a new suspect or what have you. Kind of a Fable style saving option, in that if you make a balls up you can’t just reload to an earlier save. Or you can, but not too far back.
But what about non-autosaves?
As far as I can tell there’s just the autosaves, you can’t do separate save files like GTA IV or RDR.
I got it yesterday. It’s pretty good, but not great. The main character speaks so harshly to everybody even when he first meets him that it comes across very campy. He’s just always got a very severe tone.
I’m finding the interrogations to be fun but also more guess work than I expected. The faces really don’t tell you as much as you’d like. I dunno.
The thing is 3 discs long on 360.
If you get to spot that is in a building (like interrogating someone at the police station), you can run out of the building into the street and it will autosave. There’s one where I had to interrogate more than one and after getting the first one right, I ran out into the street and it saved from that point.
Did anyone get the hanf of interrogations? Sometimes, I’d get 0/4 and sometimes 4/4 or 1/3 and 2/3 and didn’t know why really.
Body language and tone of voice helped but I repeatedly got unexpected results.
I’m not sure I always get it either. It’s more a matter of, if I know I have a clue that refutes what they just said, then it’s easy, otherwise, I’m basically guessing about whether or not they’re telling the truth. I try to pay attention to eye contact and blinking and whatnot, but unless they’re going off on a serious twitch-jag, I’m just about 50/50 on the guessing.
I haven’t had much luck using the Intuition options in the interviews. The Ask the Community is usually too slim a percentage, and taking away Doubt and leaving me Truth or Lie really doesn’t help at all.
I tend to save the Intuitions for clue finding.
Rhiannon8404 picked it up yesterday, but didn’t get a chance to play it. I haven’t spoken to her in a few hours, so it’s possible she’s checking it out as I type this. I’ll ask her to come here and post her impressions once she has some.
[spoiler]When the temp barman was mentioned again as being on the night another murder victim was drinking I thought he was our man, but couldn’t do anything with the info. Can you actually catch him the first/second time or are you railroaded into doing his whole Shelly clues thing? Ended up shooting him in the head.
Gotta say the adultery thing caught me really off guard. As in, I musta missed a cutscene off guard. I thought he’d been framed or something, as I’d picked up the paper where Roy Earle says that he’s gonna sell you out. All the time I was expecting Phelps to declare his innocence and shout that he’d been set up, only for him to slink back to whats-her-face (the only contact with Frau German-knickers I can remember is a decidedly un-romantic interrogation). [/spoiler]
OK, so I spent of good deal of the day playing the game. I like it so far. I think the interrogations are fun, but I wish I understood what I was doing better. I guess that will come with play time.
I so totally suck at driving. I usually have my partner drive, but what I really need to do is go out and practice. At the end of the case where it totals everything up, my damages costs are always very high.
The important thing is that you can’t accuse someone of a lie if you don’t have proof of them lying. Even if they ARE lying, if you can’t back it up, you won’t get anything.
I mostly did fine. I had one interrogation where I got zero right, but most of the time I was 3/3, 2/3, 3/4 etc. My strategy became farily simple - if they were looking straight at you - unswerving gaze - they were telling the truth. If they were shifty, I looked to see if I had proof that could back up a lie accusation. If not, I’d go with doubt.
Before you ask a question, push up on the right stick to look at the person’s face. This is their baseline look/behavior, if they look just like that after you ask a question they’re telling the truth. If they look/act different they’re lying, so call them on it if you can prove it or choose doubt if you can’t.
There have still been a couple interviewees I just couldn’t read, but overall my percentage is pretty good.
Just finished it.
[spoiler]Holy shit.
Quite RDR-ish. Main character replaced by someone called Jack then dies!
Shame Roy Earle didn’t get his comeuppance. Quite liked the bits playing as Kelso, a nice change of pace and some satisfying moments, like assaulting whats-his-name’s mansion and popping him in the leg. Although once I did start as Kelso I figured Cole’s days were numbered. [/spoiler]
Got it, love it. I had been wobbling between getting Noire or Brink. I very much think I made the right choice.
I have two questions – and please no spoilers, I’m still in homicide.
A) Is it possible to arrest perps on the street crimes, or is death the only option. I’ve tried to be suave and shoot at legs and arms and shit, but nothing seems to work as good a plug to the noggin.
- Is it possible to ‘lose’ at this game? I mean, could I eff up every single clue search and interview and still get to the same ending? If so, that sort of dissapoints me. I was playing last night and I completely borked an interview – 4 wrong out of 4 – and I was thinking, maybe I ought to punt and play the case over from the beginning. But then … if it doesn’t really matter, what’s the diff?
You can fire a warning shot to get the perp to stop. And you can tackle them. I’m guessing some can only be stopped via death, but a lot can be apprehended alive.
But hey, you put somebody behind bars, right? I think it’s definitely possible to utterly screw up and individual investigation and put the wrong guy behind bars. I’m not sure if its possible to blow the overall plot line, though.