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Home News Biggest Disappointment of 2011

GAMING NEWS

Biggest Disappointment of 2011

Posted on Friday, December 23 @ 01:14:09 Eastern by


L.A. Noire


Platform(s): Xbox 360, PC, PS3

Publisher: Rockstar Games

Developer: Team Bondi

Maybe it's the track record Rockstar Games has or the seven years it took to develop L.A. Noire, but something ended up souring my experience. Maybe it was the pacing or the stiff cardboard bodies that seemed disconnected from the facial motion capture. Maybe it was the lifeless world or the insanity of protagonist Cole Phelps. Maybe it was the horrible ending or the fact that the gameplay grew incredibly stale after the first playthrough. Maybe it was all of these things.

While the crime caper should be played if only for the brief novelty of it all, the narrative is mismanaged and poorly organized. It might not seem apparent at first, it can be blatantly obvious the second time through. As transporting as the game might be, anything else worthy of praise has been stained by the nasty working environment and the shuttering of Team Bondi.

Runners Up:
  • Duke Nukem Forever
  • Dragon Age II
  • Homefront
  • RAGE
Related Games:   Dragon Age 2, Duke Nukem Forever, Homefront
Tags:   Best of GR, LA Noire


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Comments
  • drathbone
    drathbone
    Joined: May 2011
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2011 at 6:13 am
    Glad I'm not the only one who thinks RAGE was a letdown.
    0 0
  • Stickyellowsock
    Stickyellowsock
    Joined: Oct 2009
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2011 at 6:36 am
    ....GET THE FUCK OUT!
    I couldn't put the game down and got sucked in. RAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH OPINIONS!!!
    0 0
  • hovdog
    hovdog
    Joined: May 2011
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2011 at 8:02 am
    I liked LA Noire. My pick would be Dragon Age 2; I couldn't even get through the demo without throwing up. I still feel completely betrayed by that piece of filth.
    0 0
  • warmaster670
    warmaster670
    Joined: Jun 2007
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2011 at 12:39 pm
    lol, must not have liked DA much then, they werent that different aside from teh speed being up a bit.
    0 0
  • Chunibrow
    Chunibrow
    Joined: Mar 2010
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2011 at 10:23 pm
    Origins was very different actually, and much much much much better. Dragon Age 2 was the most disappointing game I have ever played. Ever.
    0 0
  • Daddio
    Daddio
    Joined: Nov 2008
    Posted: Dec 24th, 2011 at 6:58 am
    lol ya what in the deuce are you talkin about. DA2 was a completely different game. i loved DAO, i played the crap out of it. after 10 minutes of DA2 i pooped myself a little, then turned it off.
    0 0
  • LinksOcarina
    LinksOcarina
    Joined: Nov 2005
    Posted: Dec 24th, 2011 at 1:06 pm
    Eh...not really. Other than an art style change and gameplay tweaks via combat, it wasn't too bad.
    0 0
  • Ivory_Soul
    Ivory_Soul
    Joined: Nov 2005
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2011 at 9:25 am
    L.A. Noire wasn't a disappointment at all!! Rage was! That game was a piece of serious crap.
    0 0
  • Lien
    Lien
    Joined: Feb 2008
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2011 at 9:53 am
    But... i liked dragon age 2 and L.A noire... But yeah F*** rage!
    0 0
  • NecroWolf
    NecroWolf
    Joined: Oct 2005
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2011 at 11:32 am
    Rage was a great game for what it was, I enjoyed my time with it. It was a 15-year Action FPS. Nothing more, nothing less, and for that, it was fun.
    0 0
  • Snacko
    Snacko
    Joined: Jul 2011
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2011 at 1:42 pm
    It takes quite a game to out-dissapoint Duke Nukem Forever.
    0 0
  • Snacko
    Snacko
    Joined: Jul 2011
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2011 at 1:43 pm
    On second thought, a good Duke Nukem Forever would have been marginally more disappointing.
    0 0
  • UghRochester
    UghRochester
    Joined: Jun 2006
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2011 at 2:38 pm
    I'm going to agree with the replay value the game lacked, but I still think Duke Nukem Forever was the biggest disappointment. At least L.A. Noire's timeframe wasn't as long as DNF's, but it was still pretty long. Team Bondi did a great job with motion capturing, but their repetitive crimes made it stale a little bit. I gave it an A - but now I should have game it a B+
    0 0
  • Ranim
    Ranim
    Joined: Nov 2005
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2011 at 3:15 pm
    Battlefield 3 was the disappointment of the year. It was hyped up as a true sequel to Battlefield 2, but they cut production halfway through and switched to consoles, resulting in half finished maps that simply don't function properly at 64 players, and an overly simplified teamwork and class system that will forever make balancing that game incredibly hard. Back To Karkand proved how rushed and crappy the stock maps are, and its just sad.
    0 0
  • sg4real
    sg4real
    Joined: Apr 2011
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2011 at 4:18 pm
    My opinion would be Duke Nukem or Homefront.
    Games that don't deserve to be here: L.A Noire, DA2
    0 0
  • OdiousLupous
    OdiousLupous
    Joined: Jul 2011
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2011 at 5:11 pm
    I didnt buy any of those games, might get Homefront and Rage when they go on sale on Steam.
    0 0
  • UrbanMasque
    UrbanMasque
    Joined: May 2007
    Posted: Dec 23rd, 2011 at 7:52 pm
    Terrible choice GR. L.A. Noire does not deserve this. Shame on you.
    0 1
  • xxmrcyanidexx
    xxmrcyanidexx
    Joined: May 2011
    Posted: Dec 24th, 2011 at 1:00 am
    I'm with you on this one. I don't know how something you waited on for 15 years and it turns out to be complete **** is not more disappointing than a game that instituted a whole new brand of facial capture technology, put a new spin on detective games, and was given a B+ by the very same people.
    0 0
  • OdiousLupous
    OdiousLupous
    Joined: Jul 2011
    Posted: Dec 25th, 2011 at 8:17 pm
    I think the tech they used was a great idea but the replay value of a detective game is always going to be terrible. Cursed by their genre of choice.
    0 0
  • UghRochester
    UghRochester
    Joined: Jun 2006
    Posted: Dec 24th, 2011 at 7:01 am
    Yes, bad choice indeed. We should go outside and wait for them walking down street and publicly beat them on the street (referring to a video GR posted while ago for lolz).

    Oh wait, here's the link www.gamerevolution.com/manifesto/modern-game-journalism-the-​movie-9659
    0 0
  • Blazin13
    Blazin13
    Joined: Dec 2010
    Posted: Dec 24th, 2011 at 5:24 am
    How did this beat Duke Nukem? How?
    0 0
  • Daddio
    Daddio
    Joined: Nov 2008
    Posted: Dec 24th, 2011 at 6:58 am
    i completely agree, DNF!!!!
    0 0
  • NecroWolf
    NecroWolf
    Joined: Oct 2005
    Posted: Dec 24th, 2011 at 1:00 pm
    It beat Duke Nukem because nobody was expecting Duke to be good in the first place.
    0 1
  • UghRochester
    UghRochester
    Joined: Jun 2006
    Posted: Dec 25th, 2011 at 11:13 am
    After 14 years, people were patiently waiting for the game and how great it would be. It was after the demo when people realized the game was crap. That's why DNF should have been the biggest disappointment.
    0 0
  • NecroWolf
    NecroWolf
    Joined: Oct 2005
    Posted: Dec 25th, 2011 at 5:10 pm
    True enough, but personally when a game exceeds a certain amount of time in development, I assume it's going to suck... because so far, the rule of "Development time=GREAT GAME" has not been true.
    0 0
  • OdiousLupous
    OdiousLupous
    Joined: Jul 2011
    Posted: Dec 25th, 2011 at 8:19 pm
    They strayed from the way the game was and people remembered and tried to make it like games today. Plus "too many chefs in the kitchen" after a decade and a half of development.
    0 0
  • Ananymous
    Ananymous
    Joined: Apr 2011
    Posted: Dec 25th, 2011 at 2:03 am
    DNF was by far the most disappointing game, Rage was a great action FPS with a thin plot and L.A. Noire as far as I'm concerned was a great detective triller of a game.

    Demo of DA2 made me sad compared to how DA:O was, didn't play Homefront either, didn't look appealing.
    0 0

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