Shallow

For all the great technology and effort that went into designing the game, the results are pretty disappointing. The re-creation of 1940s Los Angeles is impressive in it's detail and the face animation technology employed in the game really is fantastic. Ultimately, this is a very story driven game first and foremost and precious little attention has been paid to the story.

The last set of cases was quite interesting and there was real momentum to the story. Except that, the cases were mostly pointless and terribly cliched - police corruption in the vice squad, wife and lover murder husband, crooked producer rips off mafia financier etc etc. Every LA Film Noir cliche has been employed in this game. In the homicide squad, I followed the same routine for 6 cases straight - talk to husband of murdered woman, talk to bartender, talk to other man at bar. It felt like I'd visited every fucking bar in Los Angeles by the end of that sequence of cases. There are also have smaller 'street crimes' that you encounter when you are driving around the city. They usually involve shooting a lot of people, chasing a suspect on foot or chasing a suspect in the car - over and over. No imagination has been applied here either.

Apart from the problem of mediocre stories, the cases were very linear as well. You don't have a lot of branching in the story, it just goes straight as a straight line. The puzzles in the game could be solved by an 8 yr old. More than 2/3rds of your time is spent driving around to get from one location to another and walking around the crime scene "searching" for clues. If you walk around enough, you'll eventually find them all. I was utterly fed up of the driving and walking by the end. The game really feels like a lot of walking and driving connected by bits of story.

The highlight is supposedly the suspect and witness interrogations, which employ the face animation technology. You can to guess if they're telling the truth, holding back or lying. If it doesn't sound terribly exciting, you would be right. It's easy to tell if the person being interrogated is not being totally truthful, but choosing between accusing them of holding back or lying turns into a bit of guesswork at times. Questions have to be asked in the order they are listed almost all the time or their answers start to sound weird (like referencing information that was revealed in questions higher on the list, that you actually haven't asked). The whole process is more or less linear, like the rest of the game is.

In the final analysis, while I was very impressed with the ambition of the game, the result is half-baked. I'd love to see all the great technology being put to use in a game that has a deeper experience and more attention to detail.

7/10