[Review] L.A. Noire

[Review] L.A. Noire: "

L.A. Noire is one of the most interesting titles to hit consoles in a long time. By now, everyone knows that the game is largely made up of investigating crime scenes, interrogating witnesses and suspects, using your wits, and sometimes your gut, to crack the case. L.A. Noire is a modern day adventure game with some decent action sequences and a pretty good story.

As Cole Phelps, a returning vet from the War in Japan, you start out at the bottom of the L.A.P.D. food chain and try to work your way through the four detective desks. Throughout the game, backstory is revealed through newspapers and flashback cut-scenes after each completed case. My only complaint about the cast, which is full of very good character actors, is that it is hard to see most of the cast of Mad Men and not think about Mad Men. A minor complaint, but it kind of took me out of the moment a few times.

The feature that had everyone so excited for the game was the facial tech that allowed Team Bondi to record actors’ performances to capture the nuances that would convey emotion more efficiently. The early suspects in the game have ridiculous tells that act as a training ground for your budding detective skills. People who are lying to you will hold their breath, look up, hold back grins, furrow their eye brows, literally everything that you would expect a cartoon character who is lying to do. Later on in the game, however, it becomes much more difficult to tell the truth from a lie and, more often than not, if you didn’t take a few minutes before the interrogation to study your evidence, you may not come up with any additional info in your questioning.

Interrogations and facial tech aside, the game looks brilliant. Speaking of how the game looks, let me get this out of the way right now. The game has a feature where you can play it in black and white. This is not just a feature that was thrown in as a novelty. Great care was taken to make sure that the game looks and feels right in this mode. I’m going to go ahead and say it. L.A. Noire is just flat out a better game in black and white. Most people are going to have a hard time giving up the color on their new-fangled HD set so, I have a suggestion for you people. Play the game in color the first time through. After you complete the campaign, replay missions that you didn’t get a 5 star rating on in black and white. The black and white has a kind of “looking back on past cases” feel to it, also this way, you can experience the game both ways. I also recommend turning off notifications as to not break the mood of the game.

The city is enormous and fully open right from the start. It should be made clear that just because the entire world is open, L.A. Noire is NOT an open world game. Every case is linear; you start at the crime scene and follow the investigation through by following the evidence. Once you are done finding all of the evidence, which the game tells you if you did, you will be told where to go next. It feels like an open world because of the freedom that you have, but it isn’t. There are some hidden collectibles to be found like cars, landmarks, and golden film reels, but besides achievements and trophies, there isn’t any real reward for exploring the world beyond where the story takes you. After you complete the game, you are able to turn on a Free Roam mode to complete any street crimes or collect anything that you missed.

I really wish that the street crimes were just a little more varied. Every street crime ended up being a foot chase, a car chase, a hand to hand fight, a shootout, or a combination of several of those elements. Far be it from me to tell a developer how to make a game, but I would like to have seen some of the street crimes include the same interrogation process that the main game was built on. Listen to two sides of a dispute, catch someone in a lie, and take appropriate action. Speaking of foot and car chases, this game could have easily been called L.A. Minority Report, because everybody runs.

The foot and car chases seem to be scripted from start to finish. Your partner will shoot at a car’s tires if you get close and he will yell at you to hit the car to spin it out, but it seems that no matter how well you drive, the chase is going to end in a pre-determined way. If the car you are chasing is supposed to crash at such and such intersection, it doesn’t matter what you do, the car will crash there and not any sooner. The same goes for a foot chase. You can be right on a suspect’s heels and all of a sudden, they press the invisible turbo button and they are 20 feet ahead of you. The chases are exciting, and thank god that the vehicles handle extremely well, but it kind of feels like you are just going through the motions instead of engaging in an interactive experience.

The campaign is fairly long. On my first play through I completed the game in just over twenty hours and I completed most of the street crimes, collected half of the cars and found one Golden Reel (they are all hidden really well except for one). This is one of those games that has a ton of potential. Some of the flaws are frustrating (The button used to run is the same button used to fire your weapon?), but I can’t think of a person that I wouldn’t recommend this game to.

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