Dear Readers,
I know we don’t talk often anymore. And that’s my fault. Hands up. I’ve been busy – cheating on you, if you must know – working on other projects. But I still play games. I just wanted to right some recent wrongs – some injustices the majority of the internet has served up lately. Here they are;
Alice: Madness Returns (Metacritic:68, Me: 80)
Alice was an exercise in wonderful art, solid platforming and a tendency to overstay one’s welcome. The imagination here is stellar, the story is engaging, the characters memorable, the gameplay enjoyable, but ultimately it seemed unnecessarily drawn out in some areas. Yes, entire platforming sections could have been happily cut out and never missed to shorten those lengthy chapters, but have we really gotten to the point where we will complain about a games being too long? Or, more worryingly, have we reached a comfortability as an industry where we can afford to shun platformers when everything else is a shooter? Alice has far too much going for it to ignore it, and after spending 20 hours with it I would happily rate it an 8 out of 10.
L.A. Noire (Metacritic: 89, Me: 65)
L.A. Noire has been garnering a ridiculous amount of hype, acclaim and press since it’s release, but I have to step in and say woah, enough is enough. The tech is fantastic, the locale and setting masterfully crafted. In terms of direction, writing and acting L.A. Noire is second to none. But as a game? As a game it fails. Hard. Walk around a crime scene waiting for your controller to rumble, interview suspects and accuse them if they don’t look you dead in the eye and partake in wholly mediocre chase / shootout / driving sequences. Realistically, behind all that Hollywood Razzle-Dazzle, this is all L.A. Noire has to offer. Also, an annoying amount of cases can’t be solved because an overarching narrative demands it. This is not good design in a detective game, especially for players that can piece together that a suspect is innocent but are forced to finger the poor guy for the murder of his wife / boss / cat. If you want to take us on a merry chase because it provides good drama, don’t make your gameplay stand-alone and episodic, because we’ll just feel annoyed we can’t do it justice. At the core of it all, L.A. Noire shines like the stunning diva that she is; spectacular and spoilt.
