L.A. Noire – Review

 

Introduction:

Once again Rockstar Games in conjunction with Team Bondi have released a title that is sure to leave its mark on the industry. L.A. Noire takes place in Los Angeles during the later part of the 1940’s, it involves different kinds of crime such as murder, drug trafficking, arson but mainly focuses on solving murders. Or simply put – deaths involving foul play.

You are put in the shoes of an up-and-coming detective named Cole Phelps who was a lieutenant during the second World War; you learn the ropes of the game in a very good tutorial and with the help of your partner slowly begin to rise in the department taking on several different roles.

After you’ve taken the “tour of duty” as a regular cop you get promoted to detective and put on the Traffic Desk which has you investigating crimes involving cars and possible accidents. Luckily you run into a lot of foul play and you’re able to put someone behind bars at the end of most cases, which is strangely satisfying. So is shooting a suspect in the leg when getting sick of chasing him/her.

Gameplay:

When it comes to the game mechanics like running, aiming and just generally controlling Cole Phelps as well as inspecting the world around you they work quite flawlessly, most of the time anyhow. There has been many times when I ‘round a corner only to get stuck at a ledge and at one point I was forced to reboot the game because I was unable to jump down from a box.

There are some restrictions put in place which stops you from going on a rampage much like in other Rockstar games like Grand Theft Auto (GTA) or Red Dead Redemption. One of these restrictions is that you cannot pull out your gun whenever you want to, only at specified moments when the suspect you’re apprehending is armed, or if you chase someone long enough and they refuse to stop.

I understand that the developers wanted us gamers to actually take it easy for once and just sit down and play a game seriously. If you don’t do that and go on a small rampage using your car as a battering ram (which is possible) you´ll have to suffer severe penalties at the end of your case. You can also skip an action sequence or a certain part of the game if you fail it more than four times in a row; I never had to do so myself and I can’t understand why they put this mechanic in there since it doesn’t seem to have any use what so ever.

Another thing I didn’t understand were the car pursuits, when chasing down a suspect your partner usually calls out that he is either going to shoot the tires or tells you to ram the other car. After about ten of these chases I began to notice that there was a “surprise ending” in some of them if you chase them long enough without catching the perpetrator. So I tried it out and apparently – if you take it easy, keep the suspect in sight the whole thing will resolve itself by having the other car driving off a cliff, skidding into the L.A. “river” or smashing into a roadblock and flipping several times.

While I’m talking about cars, I just want to mention that the steering is horrendous. It feels as if you’ve got two cars glued together, one atop the other which makes the feeling very sketchy and stiff. When I gently move the left thumbstick I don’t want to ram into the nearest building in the same direction. Best thing you can do is have your partner drive and simply skip to your destinations, it’s a lot quicker as well.

On to the part regarding crime-solving, when looking over a crime scene as soon as you walk near an object your controller will shake as if it was a very excited dog that just found a treat, when that happens you should pick up the object. After you’ve done that you can choose to inspect it further, if it isn’t relevant to the case Phelps will usually say something like “circumstantial” or sometimes not say a thing. The whole “looking for clues” thing is too easy anyway because you have the vibrations as well as music in the background telling you if there are more clues to find or not. If the music stops, you’ve found it all.

Graphics and Music:

A lot of you probably know this already but L.A. Noire has the best facial animations ever created in public gaming history, as far as I know this took a lot of time and very expensive equipment. Boy do they pull it off, I first felt the faces to be creepy and looked out of place since… it was game, it’s not supposed to look that good. After an hour it had grown on me and Phelps was invading my brain. The game puts a lot of weight at looking after certain “tells” when a person is lying. Problem is – they overact so much that you can usually see it in a few seconds. All you have to do then is accuse them of lying and present the evidence, if you’re not sure or if you lack evidence at that point, you go with the doubt option. You have no idea how unusual it is for someone in this game to actually tell the truth.

Some other things that made me happy was the musical talent which really brings you back to the 1940’s without much hassle, but also the way people talked. Along with some quite famous actors from movies and TV shows starring in the game made this experience very enjoyable. The voices are very believable and so are the ways people move and act in the game.

Final Thoughts:

L.A. Noire surprised me; I didn’t think I would enjoy it nearly as much as I did. Some of the restrictions and “tips” (controller vibrating) should have been removed however; making the game slightly tougher would have been something good. When playing it with the default setting it feels as if you’ve got someone holding your hand all the way through and if the facial animations hadn’t been there this game would have tanked very fast. All in all, it was a good experience and I will surely return for more.

Design: 9.2
Story: 8.8
Gameplay: 9.0
Presentation: 9.3

Total: 9.0