L.A. Noire/YMMV

• Awesome Music: Has it's own page.
• Base Breaker: Kelso. Everyone falls into one of two camps: either he's a total badass who was a better protagonist and more fun to play than Cole, or he's The Scrappy who derailed the last few cases of the game due to being a Marty Stu action hero in a Noir setting. There are no exceptions.
  • On the flip side, finding out about Cole and Elsa's affair can be a potential base breaker, either showing the former's still human or being the point he becomes unlikable.
• Catharsis Factor: It feels SO fucking good to run over the racist, sexist douchebag known as Roy Earle with a car. Granted, you get a Game Over if you kill him, but it still feels SO satisfying to do it.
• Complete Monster:
  • Garret Mason and Harlan Fontaine.
  • Leland Monroe and Roy Earle have shades of this as well.
  • While not a significant villain, June Ballard is a more petty kind of monster. She allowed her own niece to be drugged and raped so she could have good blackmail material against Mark Bishop, all because she wasn't picked as an actress in his next movie. And then basically told said niece to suck it up when it was all over.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Most of Cole's partners. Even Roy has some fans.
  • Dr. Malcolm "Mal" Carruthers.
  • Captain James Donnelly for being an Irish Catholic Badass.
• Freud Was Right: Rusty boils down ninety percent of the L.A. Homicides to this.
  • Rusty's Rule: If he's bangin' her, he's our killer.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The game has turned out to be an unexpected hit in Japan, topping local games charts. This is presumably owing more to the game's narrative-heavy structure, reminiscent of local visual novels than anything else.
• Good Bad Bugs: It is full of glitches and weirdness. Just see this video.
  • More fun glitches.
• Hype Backlash: The initial previews and reviews for the game seemed to indicate it would be a solid contender for Game of the Year on several websites, but increasing complaints by players about the somewhat underdeveloped romance between Cole and Elsa, the sudden switch to Jack Kelso as the player character in the endgame, and the recent revelation that almost all of the upcoming DLC is actually cut content may undercut this prediction a fair bit.
• Idiot Plot: The Homicide desk. Hoo boy. About half a dozen women all found dead in the exact same unusual circumstances, some with messages clearly meant to taunt the police, and it isn't until the penultimate case that anyone seriously entertains the idea that there's a serial killer. It's somewhat justified by Captain Donnelly being a borderline Knight Templar obsessed with delivering swift retribution, but it's still jarring.
  • However, Phelps does uncover more than enough evidence to charge the suspects, and even though he's wary of how convenient it all seems, he doesn't have the proof to say otherwise.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks: Some have argued that the gunplay being overly simplified (compared to Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption) makes the shoot out scenes either this, or frustratingly unpolished. It gets really noticeable near the end of the game when things start going crazy.
• Jerkass Woobie: Herschel Biggs.
• Magnificent Bastard: Arguably Garrett Mason: it takes five wrongly-accused men before the LAPD realizes that the killer is still out there. Not to mention that he comes face to face with Phelps and Galloway in the first Homicide case without either suspecting him.
• Marty Stu: Jack Kelso. For a guy who exists to show Cole he's not perfect, Kelso seems pretty perfect himself.
• Memetic Mutation: Troll Phelps.
• Most Annoying Sound: Get an interrogation question wrong. That little bit of music is the game mocking you. But...
• Most Wonderful Sound: The clunking piano music you are rewarded with for making a successful accusation, as well as the sound of your XP bar filling.
  • The sound that plays when you've discovered all the clues on a scene.
• Narm:
  • In the second mission of the homicide desk, Cole finds that the murder victim left behind a preteen daughter. Once they located the daughter, they sit down, and over the course of a mere minute, they manage to tell her that her mother was murdered, just to immediately start with the questioning. The girl's reaction is more than questionable. Quite Narm, that is. She has a deeply grieved and worried look on her face, and when she is told that her mother is actually dead, she immediately breaks down crying (without any for of, you know, digestion). Cole then asks her to answer a few questions. She immediately ceases crying, and gives him a mildly disgruntled "Okay". She answers all questions with the mood and tone of an adult who wasn't too close to the victim, and not with the catatonic reaction of a 13-year old daughter. She at one point even states that Phelps is so rude to her although her mother had just died. Typically adult reaction. No kid could be so pragmatic after such a traumatic event.
  • Fail the DLC Traffic case "A Slip Of The Tongue". It's worth it, just to see the normally cool Captain Leary scream "DA CHIEF'S GOT MY BALLS IN A FRYING PAN!" and kick a bucket at Cole as he and Bekowsky make themselves scarce. Can be witnessed here in all its glory.
• Replacement Scrappy: Jack Kelso, who the writers seemed enamored with enough to make him pretty much subsume Cole's role in the story. A Replacement Scrappy name Jack from Rockstar game!? Hmm.... where did I hear about about this before?
• Scrappy Mechanic: Many people have taken issue with the hyper-sensitive driving controls. Regardless of whether or not it's a problem, it's a definite polar opposite to the car handling in Grand Theft Auto IV.
  • Also, Cole's ridiculous overreactions to doubting peoples' testimonies, followed by the fact that he ends up looking foolish and defeatist if the player chooses to revert their decision, make him look like a Rabid Cop with bipolar disorder. This became a source of Memetic Mutation literally hours after the game released.
  • Killing a perp with a human shield is nigh impossible compared to Grand Theft Auto IV. It's not uncommon for them to duck several of Cole's bullets before plugging their hostage for crying out loud! A trick that always worked well for me was to shoot the gunman in the leg to stumble him, then just finish him with a head or chest shot before he recovers.
  • The Foot Chases are quite bad given that trim, fit Phelps is one of the slowest men in Los Angeles. In some instances, he will be outrun by men twice his age until a scripted event intervenes. In terms of the gameplay, this is a result of the sprint function being revised; button mashing now only works when you're close enough to tackle a suspect. If you've played other Rockstar titles, though, you will find yourself being outdistanced at the beginning of a chase because said tackle button is located where the main sprint button was in Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead, while sprinting itself has been moved to a trigger.
  • Similarly, car chases: they're obviously scripted for the most part, witt chased cars accelerating unusually fast and turning so unnaturally as if they were pulled by an invisible string. This would be more believable if you were chasing sports cars, but some of the chases involve pickup trucks, which are normally the some of the slowest vehicles in the game!
• Squick: In abundance throughout the game, such as the Homicide cases, which heavily mimic the gruesome real life Black Dahlia murders, but especially during the Arson case 'A Walk in Elysian Fields' when Mr. Morelli's severely burnt corpse breaks apart. It even freaks out WWI vet Herschel Biggs.
• Strangled by the Red String: Some fans don't take the lack of relation development between Cole and Elsa well.
• Uncanny Valley: The faces of the people in the game are the actual faces of their voice actors. Whether this is creepy or not is up to you. If you're prone to being creeped out by realistic-looking computer animated characters, steer clear of this game. Made worse by the fact that you'll occasionally see NPCs talking to themselves in a very realistic manner, or hurling anger and insults (or flirting) at Cole for no particular reason.
  • The motion capture for the rest of the body doesn't seem to be as sophisticated as it is for the face (example: the hands are pretty static and don't move until it's necessary, like picking up a piece of evidence), which might make the animation fall into the uncanny valley for some.
  • The skin of everyone is incredibly smooth, and oddly shiny sometimes. Take a look at your skin and see how smooth or shiny it is.
  • It seems to have trouble capturing eyes/wrinkled skin. Case in point, John Noble.
    • Ron Perkins, who plays Fred Nicholson in the "Nicholson Electroplating" DLC case, is a similar example here.
  • It can also terrify if you figure out the trick... mainly that they can only animate one face in a shot. It's painfully obvious with the camera angles, only one person talking at a time and the numb expression of your partner doing an interrogation.
  • You can view all of its glory here.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The new motion capture technology used in this game is put to good use in cutscenes. The detailed facial expressions can make you think you're watching a Live Action movie rather than playing a game.
  • The tech is designed with the gameplay in mind, having players determine how truthful suspects are during questioning via facial expressions and body language. A possible case of Awesome Yet Practical.