A Completely Unique Masterpiece
Make no mistake; LA Noire is an adventure game, through and through. Even though you're running around the classic open-world environments Rockstar is known for, participating in car chases and gun fights, most of that is mere window dressing compared to searching for clues and interrogating suspects. The real meat of the game involves unraveling the sordid truth behind a murder, behind a suspect, and eventually, behind an entire city. If you enjoy a good detective story, filled with all the classic noir trappings, you're in for one hell of a treat.
LA Noire stars one Cole Phelps, a straight-laced man who's returned from World War II to serve in the LAPD. It doesn't take long for young Phelps to advance from blue uniform to pressed suit, working in Traffic, Homicide, Vice, and even Arson divisions as a hard-boiled detective. In many ways, Cole shares certain traits with past Rockstar protagonists; he has one rough past, and his good intentions can sometimes be led astray. Despite these similarities, Cole Phelps is very much his own man, and his journey will captivate and emotionally devastate the player.
The characters and story are the true stars of the game. Each partner, boss (the work kind, not the monster kind), and suspect have their own unique trappings that the player will either grow to love or hate. Thanks to the brand-new facial capture technology present in the game, practically every human emotion is successfully captured on the screen, from Roy Earle's sarcastic smirk to the mortician's tired expression. It may sound gimmicky, but the effect truly is breathtaking; you'll never look at a face in a game the same way again, for better or for worse (seriously, almost every other game looks like it's populated by high-poly Muppets now).
The fancy facial technology is used for more than characterization. After you gather any clues scattered about the scene, the interrogation process begins. You choose a question from the list, and based on their response, you'll have to categorize their answer into one of three categories; Truth, Doubt, or Lie. Most of the people in LA Noire aren't very good liars; a simple darting of the eyes or nervous expression can give them away. If you decide that they're lying, you'd better have the evidence to prove it; thankfully, if you don't, the game allows you to back out of an accusation. It isn't as forgiving if you wrongly decide to pick Truth or Doubt.
Regardless of how well you answer a suspect's questions, the game keeps things moving. Fail an interrogation, or miss vital clues in an area, and chances are they'll turn up somewhere else. That doesn't mean you can just fail your way to solving a case, though; it's very possible to blow all your leads and get a poor case rating. Nevertheless, failure is not always the end, and that goes a long way into making the experience more immersive.
While the detective work is the real star of the show, that doesn't make it any less engaging. Rockstar and Team Bondi prove that putting the heat on a suspect or foraging for clues can be just as exciting as firing a gun or driving a car. It is a high-budget adventure game with concepts that (for the most part) work exactly as intended. You've never played anything like it before, and there's a good chance that you'll never play anything like it again. Though the game itself may not be replicated in the future, the lessons learned from LA Noire have raised the bar in the industry as a whole. It's truly a big step forward. You owe it to yourself to give it a try.
