Playing L.A. Noire...
Great game concept, amazing setting and vibe, but.. it has some serious flaws...
The investigative mechanic is just outright bullshit. It's essentially just a modified version of point and click adventure which then turns into a guessing game with interrogations.
I say that because while telling if someone is telling the truth or not is generally fairly easy; telling whether or not they are lying is less so. Also, "lie" means to always make an accusation of deceit, which in turn, always means guessing the correct evidence to back up your assertion. At times, you might think one piece of evidence naturally links into another but the game developers didn't think it through.
It's unfortunate, but it really brings the game down from what it could've been.
The game would've been infinitely better with naturally branching dialogue trees based on the evidence you've collected. You could have a system that wouldn't allow you to ask more than a certain number of questions before someone lawyers up; but so often we here the threat of violence - I don't get why lawyering up would even end the interrogation. That part also makes little sense.
Also, considering it seems apparent that violence is a regular part of these investigations; I'm not sure why that isn't in the game. It's not beneath Rockstar (see GTA V, Trevor interrogation), so it isn't a moral issue. And your character continually references "giving out lumps." So... not sure why that isn't a way to reset interrogations even if it means reducing your stars at the end of the case.
Also, you're clearly charging the wrong guy in a lot of cases - and you know it, but there's this invisible, artificial barrier, preventing you from NOT continuing on with the prosecution.
Another thing that's upsetting is the random street crime you face during your investigations. It's generally placed at seeming random locations throughout the map - but this is tiresome and boring. Driving constantly back and forth between these locations is annoying - but the reality is is that if you choose not to, you'll level up very slowly making the game more difficult (more guesswork).
The game teases that you can solve cases early, but that's not really true. You can solve cases incorrectly, but never truly early.
And worse of all, and this is probably true for all GTA's from 3 to 5 including L.A. Noire, is the scripted car chases.
Driving in GTA is awful. Straight up, the driving mechanics in these games are terrible, and I say that as someone who is quite good at it, but man is it cumbersome compared to even the simplest racing games. So when you're constantly chasing criminals on the road, and you expect them to suffer the same shit mechanics only to see their cars actually teleport across the road - it's insane.
You may never notice this if you're not really good at racing in GTA, but if you are, try to get up on a guy too early in the script, and try to run him into the side of a building. The physics in the game completely breaks and he'll somehow manage to evade you - even if it means hoping to the other side of traffic. That gets old after the 3rd or 4th time it happens.
Foot-chases suck.. Why can't I catch up to a fat old man when I'm a cop and former Marine? What the fuck? When you get close to early, every guy turns into Usain Bolt and just darts off. I've never lost an assailant, but the scripted chases are fucking annoying.
The game is really fun and engrossing, but that's because of the setting, mood, story, and the very interesting characters. Very much like GTA V. Rockstar and Bondi did great on that front, although there are some obvious issues - its generally forgiven because it's still a video game and expectations are generally low with respect to story and character development.
All in all, I'd give the game a solid 8.5. I take away points for being slightly monotonous with overused minigames (investigation/interrogation) that weren't very well thought out. Also take away points for having basically no mods and no DLC after 5 years of being released. You can beat this game relatively quickly (25-35 hrs), and replayability is low, I think, since you know the outcome of the cases and since the game tells you if you fucked up an interrogation (so you'll remember who lied and who didn't - I dunno why it does this, it removes suspense from the game).
Hope they do a part 2 to the game; but make it more difficult with less hand holding and a better interrogation system.