I'm in rather bad shape this week, as I'm recovering from a tonsillectomy. I did spend much of this time playing L.A. Noire though, a game that I really felt like I had little to say about initially. I kind of disliked it at first, but it slowly grew on me as I spent more time with it (maybe its overall slow pacing was perfect for someone that is trying to just take it easy while his body recovers). It gets better as one grows accustomed to its "vibe."
Having heard some criticism of the game's tendency to be more of an interactive narrative than a game, though, got me thinking about how that tendency matches the overall tone and attitude of typical examples of hardboiled fiction. So, I grabbed a copy of Raymond Chandler's "The Simple Art of Murder" (an essay on Chandler's sense of what a detective story should be) and talked a bit about L.A. Noire in terms of genre conventions and why its inevitable momentum towards solution may be entirely appropriate for its genre.
Here is the result:
L.A. Noire: The Fatalism of American Sticktoitiveness
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