Playing LA Noire again to see what Stoney is on about. Finished a case, letting the partner drive, then realized I want to see more of the town. Started driving on my own, and am finding controls appropriately sluggish to that era's cars. I'm running into dead ends a lot, that's annoying.
Is there a way to get a path shown on the minimap to the current destination? It's annoying to have to use START > MAP > ZOOM to a useful distance > mentally plot a path > START... wait 3 or 4 seconds of black screen to return to gameplay...
Then there's the fact that items shown on the menu's map don't show on the HUD's minimap. That's annoying.
The streetcrime side missions are kind of fun, but they remind me of GTA IV. "Drive there and shoot those guys."
Driving around to see the town isn't a good idea in that game. It's not that sort of open world game imo. And the side missions outside of tying up some story loose ends are repetitive. The base gun and driving mechanics aren't strong enough to support it. So outside of just trying to level up and get intuition points, they should be avoided imo. That game is a main path game.
Yeah, and my "open world game" love is almost all in the meandering around town and doing side mission stuff. I'm going to just mainline this one and get on with my life.
Beautiful map, lovely effects and sense of place, and even LESS to do than in GTA IV. So annoying.
Driving and shooting do suck, too. Turn on your siren, people on your side of the road pull over. Oncoming traffic will TURN LEFT IN FRONT OF A POLICE CAR, siren blaring, full speed.
And the pursuit missions are right up the buttocks of GTA IV's model of "oh, no, no shooting; not until we have you where we want you" -- They show you how to do a warning shot in the tutorial, then give you chase scenes where you can't even draw your gun while the guy is booking in a straight run across 100 yards of open parking lot.

Also, I've played for 5 hours, game says I'm 30% done. Game was 7 years in development. IIRC, Getaway was long in development and short in final gameplay experience. McNamara should probably try and steer away from expensive in-game cinematic experience. Or game development.