L.A. Noire is Team Bondi and Rockstar Games’ love letter to the film
noir genre, complete with a a lovingly recreated post-WWII Los Angeles.
In contrast to the general open-world games created by Rockstar, this
time you aren’t able to create wholesale mayhem on a grand scale, which
makes sense since you are playing as an officer of the law. Nay, sirs
and ma’ams, this time investigation and interrogation are the name of
the game. At its core, L.A. Noire is an adventure game, where time is
spent searching crime scenes for clues and pumping persons of interest
for information. There are segments of third person shooting, but they
take a back seat to the aforementioned aspects.
You play the role of Cole Phelps, a decorated World War 2 veteran turned
beat cop. He’s a very by the book sort; practically a boy scout when
compared to a Niko Bellic or John Marston. The story is told through
Cole’s rise through the LAPD ranks via cases at different desks,
including traffic, homicide, vice and arson with his time as a beat cop
acting largely as a tutorial for the game to come. Interspersed between
the cases are some interesting vignettes showing Cole’s time in the war
and how it ties in to the story of what’s currently going down in the
city of angels. Believe me, by the time you get to the climax, every
damn thing ties together. It would also behoove you to collect all the
newspaper collectibles, since they are the games way of expounding
behind the scenes things happening in the story that Cole wouldn’t
directly know about.
From a technological standpoint, the facial animations in this game are
completely out of this world, though they tend to make the bodily
animations look poor in comparison. The game world is pretty
impressively modeled on Los Angeles, boasting 90% replication on the
Social Club ticker. The driving seems like it handles much like GTA IV,
though without the aid of a full scale gps. I can understand why it
isn’t there thematically, but the minimap is there already, might as
well go the whole 9. Honestly, my favorite part of the driving is
setting a waypoint and telling your partner to drive to the destination,
since much like the goggles, the siren does nothing. I can’t deny my
love for the aesthetics of the cars during that period though; they even
had a Hudson that looked like the pictures of what my grandfather used
to race. The shooting feels serviceable, but again, that isn’t the main
aim. There’s also the general open world fare of collectibles, landmarks
and film reels, which don’t really add anything mechanically, though
the former does make wrapping up the homicide case line easier. There
are also street crimes to bust, basically the side quests of the world.
They do occasionally involve characters involved in previous cases, most
notably a hit and run driver that gave me a certain satisfaction to
finally put away.
Investigating crime scenes involve walking around the scene looking for
clues, when you find something that may be relevant a musical chime
will play as well as some controller feedback, but these aids can be
turned off if you so desire. Another musical cue plays when all the
clues at a particular location is found so you don’t spend all your time
looking at the always sadly useless empty bottle. Interrogation is
largely a game of being able to read someone’s expression, another great
use of the tech, and knowing when to doubt and press them for more
information, or to flat-out call them a liar and use a piece of evidence
to prove it. If you’re stumped, you can also use your intuition, which
you can store up to 5 points per case, allowing you to put all the clues
on the minimap, remove an incorrect answer from a line of questioning,
or to ask the community, which will show percentage breakdowns of what
everyone else playing the game picked. The intuition points are earned
via an experience system, which funnels in from different sources such
as how well an interrogation is preformed or finding collectibles. It
also seemed like I had a full stock of intuition for each case once I
hit 20, but I wasn’t using a lot of points by that point of the game
either.
I’ve heard about this game causing some ps3 overheating problems, while
mine never overheated per se, the fans were always in high gear and
blowing hot. I experienced two lockups and the frame rate only stuttered
on me once the entire game; not enough to cause me any strife in the 28
hours I put into it.
All in all, L.A. Noire is something you play to experience the story,
because it really is like watching a film noir story unfold. The
character performances are impressive, to the point of being eerie and
almost believably human. The style of gameplay might not be everyone’s
cup of tea, but I had a hell of a time putting it down until I finished
it.
