I am eleven hours in and still on the first homicide case.I must be slow I guess.I drive everywhere myself, respond to the street crimes and occasionally stop to mooch about.

Im still very pleased with it so far.The actors do a great job considering how strange the process must have been.

Edit - @sapperteet You can go into options, and make it so action scenes are not skipped for failing too many times.Or was the bug happening repeatedly?

It was a repeting bug, I kept going down and being unable to throw a punch.

Ah I see.Well it seems the game saved you from it.If you only missed the fight then its a minor annoyance.

Welcome to Australia. That's how much games cost when released new here. *sigh*

I've only payed $120 for 3 games though:
Red Dead Redemption
Gran Turismo 5
Fallout 3

Next time you complain about paying $60 spare a thought
for the "Land down under".

In Zimbabwe it's $47,000.

Yea I feel bad for you guys, you get screwed on the prices and it seems that violent video games are under attack there too.

SPOILERS

How many cases are there involving dead naked women? Who is the real culprit??

I haven't beaten the game yet but I've got the feeling that this game was really overhyped. After Red Dead Redemption I expected a game that is almost that epic but L.A. Noir doesn't even have a main story. You just crack some more or less interesting cases and play 40 boring submissions that are just short and simple gunfights. Yes, LAN has some great face animations but that's all of it. Graphics are good but not really impressive besides it often runs choppy (360 here). The interrogations are sometimes illlogical but it doesn't really matter how many mistakes you make because you gonna solve this puzzle anyway just with a better or worse score. Although LAN is not a bad game but it could have been way more than this. The missing of a real main story kinda breaks its neck. I rather pass on silly things like collecting film roles, unlocking cars and finding places of interests.

I've been finding the Arson cases to be the most challenging so far.... Mostly due to the difficulty in finding the evidence on the crime scene. So many of the pieces are irrelevant, and it feels like I'm running around the scene for an hour just trying to find that last little bit. Mebbe I have a bug, Biggs keeps telling me to press the neighbors for info, but there are no more neighbors to talk to... I aced all 3 questions that I had for Dudley, yet I cannot move onto the next part of the case.

Look in the neighbors front yard for shoe prints, then check the neighbors shoes on his porch.

Its no bug, go to the neighbors yard you have to question.There is a tree in the front yard in the corner closet to the crime scene, by it should be smoked cigarettes and foot prints.Thats the last clue, so now you just have to talk to the neighbor again. It took me a while to find it too.

Oh cool.
They are hard cases though. I totally botched the previous one, charging the wrong fellow (who I felt was an obvious choice, but alas) and getting reamed out by my commanding officer.

Did the same thing, who did you charge with the crime?

Yea I picked the same guy.

At least we got to put someone in jail in that case.
It can be kinda disappointing to spend a bunch of time investigating a case just to have to shoot the crook dead at the end.

I was really hyped for this game

but honestly, I'm a bit dissapointed.

the Facial animations are amazing and the investigations are very well done as far as clue hunting and puzzle solving go; but it's very tedious as you pretty much do the same thing over and over again.

Interrogations I find both fun and irritating at the same time. It's fun to use your own intuition but the game does punish you for getting things wrong, but the punishment is not how I should be punished. If i botch a question it should change the outcome of the case, not give me some little jingle in minor key and tell me on the scoreboard that I failed. What's more, after a while I just got sick of having to interview and interrogate people, it feels like the same old thing over and over again.

the big aspect of the game I hate though, A LOT, is the driving. Driving in LA Noire is horrible, easily some of the worst I've ever seen. Cars feels extremely floaty and there're only two speeds you can go at, fast, or dead stop which makes tailing missions more difficult than they need to be.

finally, I don't like Cole Phelps. he's not that interesting of a character to me--very straight lace, obviously is disturbed by his war-time experiences but really he just seems flat to me, of course I'm still in the first half of the game so that might change, but so far I feel rather underwhelmed.

Using the siren can really help in general driving. Keeps the roads a little more clear. I haven't had any trouble with TAILING specifically, but it seems like the rules established in the last GTA still apply here. Stay 2 cars back and they don't notice you unless you slam into stuff.

EDIT @ EWOKLORD-

After beating L.A. Noire's main story and all street cases (25 - 26 hours) I'm perfectly satisfied with my purchase of it. Though... There are a few things that irk me:

***!A MINOR SPOLIER BELOW RELATED TO THE END OF "VICE DESK" CASES!***

-The rather abrupt, rushed and done before *cough*, ending. (In my opinion) Left a lot to be desired. I sense an L.A. Noire 2 in the makings.
-The complete removal of side activities (i.e. eating) that were in Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption. Though they aren't all that important and don't contribute that much to the base game, they do make the world feel more alive.
-Missions, main or otherwise, can get quite repetitive (go to scene, investigate, go to next scene etc). The game has very limited action, other than the occasional car chase and street crime with only 1 possible conclusion, unlike Grand Theft and Red Dead. (This was something I was expecting purchasing the game, however).
-No Co-Op or multiplayer play. I think Co-Op - at least - would have worked very VERY well in L.A. Noire.
-(In my opinion) Important plot points not fully explained. For instance: why in the heck did Cole Phelps cheat on his wife with a German dope fiend? Inquiring minds want to know. (Seems like writer laziness).
-The blur effect that can take over the faces of the characters. I blame this technical issue on the motion capture system Team Bondi and Rockstar Games used, though.
-Uninteresting characters. (In my opinion) The characters in L.A. Noire aren't very interesting, especially when compared to Rockstar Game titles like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption. The noire genre, though, probably makes this so.

Despite these "irks" I still rate the game a solid 9. I still have to discover locations, get a 5 star rating in all cases, ride in vehicles, and collect golden film reels.

I think, as far as sequels go, the spiritual successor should either be in the same time period, but in Chicago or New York or some place like that, or in the 70s, following the trail of the Zodiac killer. If it was in the same time period, however, I believe people would complain that it was more of the same, even though I would still enjoy it. So, if it were in the seventies it could still be the same basic stuff, but they could pull from different films, like Dirty Harry and Bullit, giving it an altogether different tone. If it were in the 70s, it'd have to be in San Francisco, no other place would be as cool. I loved L.A. Noire, but there's no doubt that there are some things they could have done better. I think that if they kept working on it and refined it, the sequels would be awesome.