Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Conspiratorially Good

                In 2000, Warren Spector helmed a masterpiece ship into the lochs of gaming history. Deus Ex was the recipient of numerous Game of the Year awards, and universally praised by critics and gamers alike. Offering gameplay beyond the standard run-n-gun variety, the game threw players into a wide assortment of situations and gave them their choice as to how they tackled the situation. In every encounter, it was possible to gear up for, and attempt, to start a third world war, or decide to stealthily creep through back doors and vents, remaining unseen and unknown. Aside from choosing a plan of attack, and whether to kill or leave enemies unharmed, if a little less conscious, players could choose and upgrade several incredibly useful augmentations and skills that proved incredibly useful. Supporting all this choice-laden gameplay was a rich story full of double- and triple-crosses, among other twists and turns, such as modern-day conspiracies about the Illuminati and other secret factions warring over control of the world’s population. With everything so masterfully executed and the game so absolutely chalk full of details a player could run through several playthroughs and still discover brand new things they hadn’t noticed the previous four times, it’s no wonder the game was a phenomenal success, often regarded as one of the absolute best games of all time. Obviously, making a sequel would be an incredible undertaking.

Criminal Flaws Don't Lock Up L. A. Noire

     Calls rain in from all over the city, like drops of blood running through a dying man’s fingers, clutching at his newfound chest wound. In Central, a hit-and-run leaves the victim splattered across the road, bloody skidmarks as his life comes to a screeching halt. A few blocks away, a hopeful Hollywood starlet is found battered, bloodied, and beaten in a park, her dreams having bled dry long before the warm dawn sun found her cool dead body. Across town, a family of four burned alive in their house overnight. The American Dream, up in smoke. Somewhere in Hollywood, two jazz musicians overdosed on some smuggled drugs. Cool cats getting colder by the second.

     All these modern horror stories are the pulp on the pages of L. A. Noire, Rockstar’s new crime-themed sandbox game. In this twist to Rockstar’s usual gameplay formula, you play on the law’s side of the law, assuming the role of Detective Cole Phelps, a Pacific Theater World War II veteran come back to police the streets of Los Angeles. Starting out as a beat-cop, you quickly move up to detective work, taking cases at four desks: traffic, arson, vice, and homicide. At each desk, the aforementioned stories start only half-told, and it’s up to you and some keen, if sometimes questionable, detective work to fill in the gaps and make the partial stories whole.