On the scene of an arson case
For those tired of the FPSs, RPGs, RTSs and other acronymic genres typical of modern video games, last year’s L.A. Noire from now-defunct Australian developer Team Bondi and well-known publisher Rockstar Games offers an experience unlike any other game I have played to date. It is not without its flaws, but its unique atmosphere and setting, great characters and writing, and surprising amount of variety more than make up for some frustrating gameplay foibles to create something worth experiencing.
The first thing you notice when L.A. Noire loads up is how thick the game is with its late 1940s noir trappings. Everything from the main menu of the game to its characters right down to the title card for each individual case is reminiscent of the novels of Raymond Chandler and the shots of John Alton. The music is a perfect mix of genre-appropriate horn themes and licensed tracks from the era. The noir trope is underused in video games, and the developers of L.A. Noire know when to lay it on thick and when to ease off on it, with the result that both the noir angle and the 1940s California setting feel like a breath of fresh air in the world of video games.
The game’s 1940s California setting is rarely explored in video games.
The characters in L.A. Noire tend to follow noir tropes with “hardboiled” detectives, corrupt backroom dealings, honest blue collar men, and a decidedly misogynistic view toward its female characters. The protagonist, Cole Phelps, an ex-marine turned cop turned detective is an unusual protagonist for a video game. Previous Rockstar protagonists Niko Bellic (Grand Theft Auto IV) and John Marston (Red Dead Redemption) were flawed and had checkered, even villainous pasts, but they were likable. I wanted the best for those characters, not only because I was playing as them and I wanted to see the rest of the game, but because I was genuinely hoping that things would turn out well for them. Phelps, on the other hand, borders on unlikability. He’s relentlessly by-the-book, a teetotaler, and judgmental of others for their vices. I found myself resenting his success (ironically, in a way my own success) along with Phelps’s peers.
The game’s story, spanning homicide, arson, vice, and traffic desks, throws Phelps and those around him for quite a few twists and turns. It’s an engaging tale, with enough twists and turns that it kept me interested all the way to its conclusion. That conclusion however, felt unsatisfying. After the likes of GTA IV and RDR, I don’t expect a Rockstar game to have an unambiguously good ending, and the end of L.A. Noire is no different. But unlike GTA IV or RDR, I felt no closure when the credits rolled.
All of this great writing and atmosphere would be all for naught if the game was a chore to play. I hate to say that I have mixed feelings on this front. Gameplay is certainly serviceable and there is enough variety that I never got bored of playing the game, but some elements of gameplay could be better and others seem tacked on and downright strange. Investigations are episodic in nature and include three fundamental parts: investigating crime scenes, interrogating suspects, and action/chase sequences. I found the investigating to be one of the more well-designed parts of the game. The objects you find while investigating are interesting to look at and the musical cues that tell you when a clue is nearby and when you have found all the available clues in the area are a stroke of genius.
The facial animations are second-to-none.
Interrogations, on the other hand, are frustratingly hit or miss. These situations are where the game’s much ballyhooed facial animation tech comes into its most direct and useful application. In an interrogation you choose a line of questioning from your case notes and then have three options: you can assume the suspect is telling the truth, you can doubt the testimony, or you can accuse them of lying. The last option requires you to present them with a piece of evidence you have found in order to catch them in the lie and force them to give up information. The game tells you to look for facial cues such as shifting eyes and pursed lips to clue you in to when a suspect is not being forthright with you. A suspect that is telling the truth, on the other hand, will tend to look straight at you. I found the distinction between the “truth” and “doubt” state to be generally consistent but just inconsistent enough to be a bit frustrating. When I was able to catch a suspect in a lie it gave me a rather exhilarating feeling, but there were too many instances when I felt like I had the evidence to prove a suspect was lying and the game shot me down. Considering that you can’t get the full picture in a case without getting the interrogation right, it can get very frustrating.
Finally, there are the straight-up action and chase sequences, which run the gamut from acceptable to bad and frustrating. The shooting is fine and feels very much like standard GTA and RDR fare, with its decent cover mechanic and movement that feels a bit too stiff. Car and foot chases and following sequences feel similarly lifted out of a GTA game and oddly out of place with the rest of the game’s material. The sequences where you have to follow a suspect on foot or by car and not lose them or be discovered are particularly frustrating and terrible. Ironically, you can’t really fail a case but you can fail these middling action sequences. Mercifully, if you fail them a couple of times, the game will let you skip them with no penalty. It’s almost as if the game’s designers knew they were pointless and could have been better represented with a cutscene.
Captain Donnelly is one of the game’s best written characters.
Speaking of things that are out of place, L.A. Noire features an open recreation of Los Angeles in the late 40s replete with famous landmarks. The city is virtually empty except for these landmarks, some hidden vehicles, and side missions. Landmarks are innocuous enough and hidden vehicles can be completely ignored, but side missions are an oddity in this game. They are interesting little five to ten minute vignettes, sometimes even connecting back to the main story cases and featuring some of the main cases’ middling action gameplay. This wouldn’t be so strange or off-putting if not for the fact that they occur at all points during your cases. It’s very incongruous to be at the point of cracking a case or making an arrest and stopping to catch a car thief or bank robber. Worse still, the time it takes to do one of those missions often was long enough to make me forget key details of the actual case I was working on. These trappings make the game seem like it was originally designed to be an open-world game (which it most certainly is not) repurposed to what it is now. Much like the driving in the game, they don’t detract from the overall experience, they just don’t add anything either.
Despite these blemishes, L.A. Noire is absolutely worth experiencing, particularly now that it can be found for dirt cheap (I bought my copy on Amazon for twenty bucks). With the release of L.A. Noire, Rockstar Games, to me, is quickly becoming the video game analogue of that one favorite film director some people have. I appreciate their vision in the world of high-budget video games, and I eagerly await their next release.