Set in 1947, post-WWII Los Angeles is about to boom and become a cesspool of sordid and illegal activity, just as the US enters its golden era. Players follow Detective Cole Phelps, a silver cross recipient during America’s campaign in Japan, who has returned from the war to a burgeoning career as one of LA’s finest detectives. L.A. Noire looks to replicate the ‘classic film noir’ era of the 1940s and 50s, and does so magnificently. Adding to a faithful visual style, the developers and writers have delivered a product that oozes film noir down to a tee. Throughout the game, you’re playing case-by-case, but running in parallel you have the story of Cole’s personal turmoil, and the seedy underpinnings of post-war LA that envelope the package.
The result is a remarkably engrossing and multi-layered tale, which will reward players with a number of twists, thought provoking moments, opportunities to dig a little deeper and grim environment, where you’re not guaranteed a happy ending. It’s refreshing for a Rockstar title that the characters you encounter and play as aren’t your run-of-the-mill exaggerated stereotypical gits, but remarkable portrayals of the time and the inspiration material. While Cole Phelps is a rare ‘good’ Rockstar protagonist and comes across as the most relatable, some might consider him less memorable. The story itself, while put together superbly, almost is weighed down by trying too much at times, which can make it difficult to follow or remember finer details. And without giving too much away, some occurrences may come off ‘as a waste’ when viewed in the grand picture.
Yep. He's definitely dead.
L.A. Noire has been built from similar technology as GTAIV, so players will notice that the two titles are stylistically similar. However, the former makes minor improvements, particularly to the character animations, finer details and goes for an even more realistic style. The biggest addition though is the facial motion capturing technology - MotionScan - used to capture facial expressions. While occasionally hit-and-miss aesthetically, it plays a huge role in interrogations and actually works really well the vast majority of the time. Not only does it bring characters into life like never before, it shows video game characters in an entirely new light, and avoids issues such as lip-syncing. Rockstar titles have been the best at creating realistic open worlds and L.A. Noire is the most robust use of it, but it stumbles with hints of aliasing, weak texturing, occassional frame rate dips and very awkward ‘failed realism’ glitches. There are no such qualms with the audio department, with top-shelf voicing further solidifying the characters and the music backing the age, while it makes superb use of sound queues to supplement gameplay.
Playing on the ‘right’ side of the law is an obvious difference between L.A. Noire and most other open-ended action games, the True Crime titles excepted. Core mechanics accepted, it’s unfair to directly compare the it with GTA IV. Anyone who rejects L.A. Noire on the basis that it lacks the freedom and scope of a title more established titles, is doing it wrong. It really is a unique kettle of fish. With focus on crime-scene investigations and interrogations, L.A. Noire plays much more like a puzzle game, with dashings of ‘create your own adventure’ – it’s a slower and more cerebral experience. The game is divided up into different cases, across four different kinds of ‘desks’ and will last around 20 hours if played thoroughly.
The crime scenes and evidence gathering have been extremely well designed. As mentioned, handy music queues tell you when you come across something interesting, and will tell you when you’ve gathered all evidence. Occasionally, you’ll need to examine the evidence further and not everything you find is relevant. All evidence found is recorded in your notebook, which can be accessed at any time. It’s the 1940s, so while there is nothing fancy, the notebook is a hugely useful and varied tool. All these seemingly simple additions make sure you’ve got everything at your disposal so that you can at least feel like you’re a top detective; once it’s not until a few cases in that you realise how powerful your tools are and how well they’re designed in relation to your context.
Look! I'm a koala!
Once you’ve gathered evidence, you then need to interview/interrogate the suspects. Using innovative facial motion capture technology, you need to take careful account of what everyone says, what everyone does, how they react and what evidence you’ve found to determine whether they’re telling the truth, hiding the facts (doubt) or outright lying. Just remember, you need the correct evidence to back up a lying accusation. It’s quite fascinating and intriguing to try and read into what you’re being told, and it’s even more satisfying when you get it right. Getting things right, will lead to the case being solved in the most ‘efficient’ manner. However, just as you can miss crucial evidence, you can get your interrogations wrong. And one of the most fascinating aspects is just how the game continues when you get things wrong. Missing evidence may mean that you won’t be able to prove that someone is lying. Messing up interviews and interrogations may put people offside and clam them up. You will still finish the case, just you may miss out on getting the conviction, or you may convict the wrong guy. And the result will carry through the rest of the game.
Outside of the cases and interrogations, there are a lot more smart designs in L.A. Noire. This may be something major such as ‘intuition’ or the vehicle driving mechanics, which intelligently, haven’t been made too ‘realistic’. Intuition is earned through experience, up to a max of five intuition points, which can then be used to help find all the clues at crime scene, or help the player pick the right interview answer. It smartly implements the community in this system, and when used properly, is very helpful in solving cases. However, it’s a system that’s extremely easy to exploit too, which can undermine the game. Despite driving vehicles from the 1940s, the handling is smart and easy to pick up, while still being distinctive between vehicles. Other additions include simple things such as a trip skip, case check points, and only being able to enter doors with gold handles. L.A. Noire is a much slower paced game than something like GTA, so these smart designs go a long way to ensuring that players stay on board. Many of these decisions take out the usual frustrations from open-ended games, and should be implemented in future titles.
So while L.A. Noire shouldn’t be ignored or chastised for being different or slower than your usual open-ended title, and it should be praised for its use of design, technology and near ideal capturing of the essence of film noire, there are areas where it falls down. Being fundamentally similar to GTAIV, one aspect that never went down as well as it could have has been the combat. There are a number of action sequences, but none last long and none are too demanding, so players will get by. The problem though, is that a lot of players may find these sequences comparatively mundane to modern whizz-bang set pieces. So it’s a real catch-22. On the one hand, in fits into the game’s context and is a relief to players that combat is sparse and not relied upon to fill in the play hours. On the other, it comes off as unendearing and lacking.
Oh, he definitely up to something...
While most of the individual cases are endearing on their own (they can’t all be great) and there are only a handful of questionable junctions, players tackling one after the other are likely to find the core gameplay quite formulaic and repetitive. In an attempt to be accessible, the variety suffers and there are only so many predictable chases you can go on, while the investigation shtick runs low on steam at the backend. Otherwise, most of the open-world aspects outside of the case solving leave a lot to be desired; exploration and extras don't really give much. The street crimes are outright boring, shallow and placed ridiculoulsy far away, particularly in comparison to the main game, but thankfully, they are short and easy to repeat if necessary. Trying to make them accessible and fitting them into the context of the game has taken away from the overall experience. As a result of the accessibility, the game often suffers from ‘MGS2 syndrome’, where tiny gameplay segments are regularly interspersed with cut-scenes, albeit engrossing and sharp ones. For all the care put into the new stuff, the game yearns for that extra touch with the older gameplay staples.
L.A. Noire deserves a lot of applause. It nails recreating a classical film noir experience, with a wide branching, multi-layered, immaculately presented and confronting story. It uses the kind of technology that most would have expected to come out of this generation and it implements superbly to the gameplay. The case-solving dynamics between the finding and implementing of evidence makes for endearing gameplay at a considered pace, and is surrounded by smart designs. However, just like the classical film noir tales that it represents, not everything ends on a happy note. The story and cases have the occasional hole and feeling of meaningless efforts. When something is so realistically presented, a failure is so much more noticeable. In trying to be accessible, players used to modern whizz-bang gameplay may get bored and disappointed. Regardless though, you’d be mug allow these factors to take away from one of the shining lights of this gaming generation.
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