L.A. Noire gets Rockstar Social Club integration
Rockstar Social Club features for L.A. Noire are revealed.
It probably won't come as a huge surprise, but Rockstar has confirmed that it will be incorporating Rockstar Games Social Club functionality into its upcoming sleuther, L.A. Noire.
First introduced for Grand Theft Auto IV, the Rockstar Games Social Club provides both in-game and web-based features. Players will be able to access the Social Club website for access to a "wealth of robust game progress stat tracking and friend comparison features that members have come to expect, including enhanced versions of the checklists that everyone loved with Red Dead Redemption."
L.A. Noire's in-game Social Club bonuses will include an exclusive "Chicago Lightning Suit" that gives protagonist Cole Phelps an accuracy boost when using shotguns or machine guns. (See the top image of this article to get a look at the special duds.)
The most intriguing Social Club integration in L.A. Noire is an "Ask the Community" feature. Players connected online can use this feature to see the choices that other players made in certain situations, broken down by percentage. While it doesn't necessarily indicate the best solution in a given scenario, it's interesting to be able to see how other players chose to react in a particular encounter.
The "Ask the Community" feature, in conjunction with the recent announcement that casual players will be able to skip difficult action sequences, further indicates that Rockstar is doing all it can to make L.A. Noire more accessible to casual players. Thankfully, these additional features are entirely optional and merely provide workarounds for rookies, rather than dumbing down the core gameplay across the board.
For more about the game, be sure to check out our earlier preview.
L.A. Noire is coming to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on May 17.
-
Shacknews
replyJeff Mattas posted a new article, L.A. Noire gets Rockstar Social Club integration.
Rockstar Social Club features for L.A. Noire are revealed.-
i'm going to come out and say it, i think "Thankfully, these additional features are entirely optional and merely provide workarounds for rookies, rather than dumbing down the core gameplay across the board" is an odd statement to have in this article and could have been replaced with more thoughtful commentary. this seems like something you'd read within the forum comments, not written by an editor.
it also lends itself to alienating anyone who uses those features and doesn't want to think of themselves as a rookie or be considered someone who likes "dumbed down" gameplay.-
This is tame compared to what Steve and Maarten used to post in articles eight years ago.
-
You're absolutely right.
-
"...these additional features... merely provide workarounds for rookies, RATHER THAN dumbing down the core gameplay..."
Maybe a misread? I just meant that I was happy they decided to reach a larger audience via those "workarounds," instead of lowering the overall difficulty for everyone.
I'm happy that the game is going to be inclusive of casual and seasoned gamers, alike.
They're optional features, and they make the game accessible to a lot more people. It's clever, and won't alienate anyone who has been playing R* games for years and expects some action-based challenge.
Also, I'm pretty sure that if you're using in-game hint systems and skipping the hard parts, "rookie" is a fair moniker. (Plus, the whole cop tie-in.)
-
-
-
Well it's a good thing it won't be coming out for PC then, huh?
-
-
-
Oh, problem solved. I won't be buying it.
I can't stand using my consoles now, fucking long load times and shitty graphics. 5 year old hardware that wasn't even top of the line when it came out.
The likely only other, and last, console game that I will buy will be The Last Guardian. Shadow of the Colossus had a dogshit framerate for the visuals it produced and was still epic, so I expect the same from the next game. Other than that, these consoles are done (for me).
Doesn't help that Sony was kind enough to store my credentials in plain text and apparently also my credit card info, shit that we don't even do in our tiny dev. shop of like half a dozen people since it's obviously fucking retarded.
-
-
IAWTIDWAAFEFGS. However, it's sort of a quandary, along with "I don't want one authentication network to rule the whole PC platform", and "I don't want to be forced to find out to which authentication network a game has imprisoned itself". It pretty much sucks that the only choices on an open platform are "monopoly" or "eleventy billion logins to manage".
-
-
I am sure marketing departments are jacking off to the idea of having direct access to their buyers though these custom rolled mini communities but I don't think they are sustainable over the long term and I don't appreciate yet another account/login and yet another network dependency. Live/PSN/Steam are that layer. I don't see Sony or Microsoft permitting such features if they even cast a hint of a shadow over any of Xbox Live's or PSN's community features.
-
It's too late now to stop the trend; Microsoft and Sony already allowed EA to roll their own matchmaking network, and Rockstar and Bioware have their own loyalty networks. Any publisher with the money can roll up now and say, "EA / Rockstar did it; we want to do it!"
-
-
