L.A. Noire/YMMV

"You said the house would be empty!"
 * Alas, Poor Villain:
 * Awesome Music: Has it's own page.
 * Base Breaker: Kelso.  There are no exceptions.
 * On the flip side, finding out about  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:
 * While not a significant villain,  is a more petty kind of monster.   And then basically told
 * Deliberate Values Dissonance: The sexism and racism of the post-war era are highlighted.
 * As well as political oppression, namely of communists and anarchists.
 * 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.
 * Fair Cop: Cole.
 * And Roy Earle. Even if he's a racist and a snake, he does have some nice suits!
 * 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.
 * Fridge Horror:
 * 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, the sudden switch to  , and the recent revelation that almost all of the upcoming DLC is actually cut content may undercut this prediction a fair bit.
 * It's Easy, So It Sucks: Some have argued that the gunplay being overly simplified (compared to GTA 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.
 * Idiot Plot: The Homicide desk. Hoo boy. 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.
 * Jerkass Woobie: Herschel Biggs.
 * Magnificent Bastard: Arguably ; it takes before  Not to mention that
 * 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, 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.
 * The above Narm can be witnessed here in all its glory.
 * Nightmare Fuel: The entire Black Dahlia case. The entire thing is just a very unsettling matter to deal with, almost going into a horror movie type deal.
 * When you hear the explanation on why the corpses of the victims of an arson case look like they're praying, I betcha you'll feel something in your stomach.
 * It Gets Worse.
 * If you want to make it worse, after checking the corpse, listen to this piece of soundtrack YMMV though.
 * If you want to make it worse, after checking the corpse, listen to this piece of soundtrack YMMV though.


 * During the "Manifest Destiny" case in Vice, you inspect the Hollywood Post Office after finishing a shootout there...
 * Not as bad as the other examples, but scream as he's run over by the bulldozer  is pretty shudder-worthy.
 * The penultimate war flaskback. In the one before it, Cole sends a man,  While he does it successfully, it turns out that
 * "He's not so bad. He just lays on top of me and grunts for a few minutes. He's kind and he buys me nice things." As said by a twelve-year-old girl, speaking of a fifty-two-year-old man.
 * Replacement Scrappy:
 * 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 GTA 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 GTAIV. 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 GTA and Red Dead, while sprinting itself has been moved to a trigger.
 * And 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!
 * Strangled by the Red String: Some fans don't take the lack of relation development between well.
 * Squick: In abundance throughout the game, such as the Homicide cases, which heavily mimic the gruesome real life Black Dahlia murders, but especially
 * Tear Jerker: Oh, yes. This is Film Noir, after all.
 * Too Dumb to Live:  seems to be able to induce this in his patients.   accepting his (transparently shady) deal is possibly justified by his desperation and trust for his therapist, but what the hell did   think she was doing!? She knows the man's involved in the conspiracy, and goes to confront him, alone, on his home territory, without telling anyone where she's gone, without a weapon, and she turns her back on him after telling him that she knows he's involved in getting people killed.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds:
 * Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: