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LA Noire Day#9: Drugs Aren’t Cool

Day#9 and I think I’m flipping the idiot switch on this game. The core mechanics are just starting to get on my nerves. The searching is just annoying pixel-hunting and the interview game is just impenetrable at times. I cannot stand how opaque and misleading this mechanic can be. The set pieces here are not fun at all. The change in cases is just not alleviating the repetitiveness and drudgery of this game, and the narrative (and in this session, the secondary character acting) just is not good enough to make it worth it to suffer through. I’m still here, but I’m not sure why anymore. Spoilers within.

We pick it up on the drive to the next crime scene after Phelps says that he’s no war hero. Phelps asks about Earle’s swank car and Earle says you can’t slum it in vice. I get a side case on my way to the next location called “The Blue Line.” There’s a CS of a guy with a tommygun shooting at cops. They are bank robbers and I have to kill them. There’s astupid bug where I shoot through one guy for a while but I get them all, and case (fatally) closed, I get to the crime scene. The coroner is there; two guys overdosed on government issue morphine. Earle knows them through his underworld ties. One of the victims was a distributor. Earle seems to know the drug world inside and out. He says that the drug world is eternal and their job is to keep the system manageable. I get control to search the room and find a numbers slip. I also find a Black Caesar soda cup where something was taped to the bottom. I find a doodle (of slot machine symbols?), and also a radio station note. I have another fun moment where I actually get stuck behind the coroner for a minute and can’t move. Sigh. Since the cup seems to have been the delivery method for the morphine, I decide to go to the Black Caesar’s food hut across the street. There’s a CS of Earle demanding drugs from the guy behind the counter which leads to a foot chase with him over roofs only to get CS clotheslined at the end. Boy was that chase worth it. I then have to fistfight the guy – it’s tough but I win. When I do, we cut to the vendor caught and I have to search the hut. I find more numbers in a trumpet mute and drugs in a box of cups. I question the vendor, catching him in an easy lie to discover that Jermaine Jones is the connection.

I use a phone to get the Jones address, but I go to the numbers place next. I take another side quest en route just as Earle mentions the Phelps was in the Blue Room (the jazz club from earlier) and implies that he was having an affair. Phelps strangely has no comment. He instead responds by poking at Earle about the Bishop guy Earle got off before. The side mission is “Commies” and it’s a hostage situation. I waltz into the bank the hostage are in and take out the criminals like nothing. I leave and try to take a side case, but end up at numbers place first. There’s a  CS of detectives going around back, and then I get control to go up the stairs. Once we arrive in the office, there’s a CS of Phelps talking to Otis. He says that he’s given his cut to the cops and expects to be left alone. I find a slot machine during my search and use the symbols I found on the victim to make a special jackpot to open the slot. Inside, I find morphine. At the discovery, Otis runs and I catch him on street. We cut back CS to room when a walking stick suddenly gets mentioned. I examine it and find a gambling debt in the handle.  Now’s the time to question Otis and I miss the first lie because I didn’t think I saw any relevant evidence. The conversation ends with Phelps putting Otis in jail even though he’s not our guy. I can’t seem to find the final clue here, so I give up and get to Jones’s booking agency. There’s a CS of our approach to the office and we CS talk to Jones, who also responds with a “fuck off since I paid you already” line. Searching the room (LA Noire Step 1) I find a radio and tune it to a station to find drugs and money inside. When the radio opens, Jones sends his thugs at us and we beat them down like nothing in a simple fistfight. I the go back to searching the radio and the rest of the room as if nothing happened, finding a Ramez Removal stick. Then the interview  (the inevitable Step 2 in LA Noire). The fucking interview makes no fucking sense; what evidence is useful? Oh I just realized that nothing’s buzzing here, so I’m missing tons of evidence in my search. I restart and now the buzz works. I redo the interview because of it and realize I truly  have NO IDEA what I’m doing here. The lie option is totally opaque, and as a result, I get 1/3 questions. FUCK YOU GAME. We end the interview with a CS of Phelps and Earle arresting Jones for the drugs but promising leniency.

I use the phone to get the Ramez Removals address and go there. There’s a CS of Phelps talking to a loader when the owner drives off in a truck. I chase truck down after shooting a gunner in the back of it. We then have a CS of confronting the driver. He says he supplies furniture and that the guy SHOOTING AT ME was a clumsy worker. Ok pal. I then search inside warehouse. I see that Otte in the ledger a lot for deliveries, but I can’t close the ledger until I click something else random. There’s maze of furniture in back, and there’s of course no instruction on what to do with it. Eventually, Earle (who by the way is a completely flat voice actor who makes my skin crawl every time he opens his mouth) tells me to go up a ladder and up there I figure out that I have to use a crane to move stuff around. Again, no idea what I’m supposed to move, but I eventually find morphine in ice in a back room. The owner runs and I shoot him quick.

The next stop is the ice supplier, but en route there, I run right into the”Against the Odds” sideplot. In CS, Phelps is told to catch a bag man by tailing him. I start by hitting A to hide behind a newspaper, and then I see the guy enter in CS and have to follow him. Boy, tailing SUCKS in this game. You have no idea what’s incognito and not, so you have no idea where to hide. I fail the tail two times, but then the third time the tail ends after like 2 blocks and shoot them both. Glad I had to go to all that trouble tailing that guy. I finally get to the Polar Bear ice place. Phelps is told by the janitor outside that the factory has been closed forever, and CS Earle shoots him when he notices the janitor is packing. We run inside and they fight. I die once because, frankly, I no longer care about this game and run blindly in. The second time I kill them all and in the subsequent search, we find the drugs at the ice factory. This cuts to a CS of the vice captain complementing us on the catch. 12/13 clues, 4/7 questions, $3.5k vehicle damage and a snide tip about how I could have gathered more evidence. Yeah, maybe if ANY of these mechanics made sense. FUCK YOU GAME.

I have to load disc 3? There’s a disc 3?!?!? Ok, sure. We start with a flashback. Phelps’s platoon is made into a rifle company due to lack of soldiers. We cut to them going up a hill and hearing someone up there screaming. We then watch a medic go up the hill to kill the guy to relieve his suffering. Phelps flips out and puts the medic in custody. The next chapter is called”The Setup”; that’s intriguing. Maybe the plot can actually go someplace now. There’s a CS of Phelps and Earle arriving at club as they CS talk boxing. They walk inside to see a boxing ring where Earle has a bet on the fight.We watch the fight, and man, the boxer’s muscles look SO fake. Earle’s guy loses and the winner runs. There’s a CS of Phelps and Earle going to see why the winner ran. I get control for a moment on the run to end at a CS of Phelps finding out from Earle that the winner should have taken a dive.  Phelps breaks into the room and it’s clear that Hammond (the winner) ran. In CS, Phelps accuses Earle of calling an APB only to get his money back.

I get control to search the room. There’s a newspaper of the alienist Fontaine and trigger a newspaper flashback. It’s the young doctor from before talking to the psychologist from before about the morphine. They talk about the drugs and Fontaine agrees to help. He promises to take the morphine and build housing projects that he will sell for the doctor’s payout. The doctor agrees. There doesn’t seem to be anything else to do here, so I start to leave. As I do, we cut to CS with the crime boss Cohen. Cohen threatens to kill Hammond as they walk up, and CS Phelps tells Cohen to back off or the cops will go after him for the threats. I get control to get an address for a phone number I found in Hammond’s locker. I get a hotel for that phone number and we head there. There’s a CS of a discussion with the desk guy who says people don’t use real names and shows us the register. I have no idea what to do here, so I literally click on everything in the ledger until it triggers something. Oh, Churchill is the right answer because Hammond’s English, a fact I heard maybe one whole time before now. I search his room and find out about a girlfriend who address we get. I don’t think I can stand another search-fight-search-interview sequence, so that’s it for tonight.

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  1. Heath says

    My thought on this game is that it is fun for a blast through…. prolonged play will just be frustrating. Once the “newness” fades it becomes repetitive and the case mechanics become boring. A good idea but the storyline is too lengthy and the replay value is nil.

  2. admin says

    Do you have any idea how much longer I have here, Heath? I am very much thinking of quitting, but I don’t want to bail if I’m close.



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