Crime dramas haven’t been featured much in games, but this one changes all that.
L.A. Noire, Rockstar Games’ latest high-profile release, puts players into the role of Cole Phelps, a rookie officer with the Los Angeles Police Department who looks to put a dent in crime and corruption in a city filled with both. In his quest for justice, Cole must investigate numerous crimes, search for clues and interview witnesses and suspects while surviving the politics of 1947 Los Angeles. What Cole eventually uncovers, however, is a sinister plot lurking in the shadows of a city desperate to pull itself out of the pits of crime.
Gameplay in L.A. Noire is like nothing you’ve ever seen before. L.A. Noire puts heavy emphasis on crime scene investigation and interviews/interrogations of witnesses and suspects. Each crime scene has different clues to look for and evidence to find that will help you solve each of the game’s 21 cases. Overlook a clue and you might miss an important piece of the puzzle which can end up costing you success. Missing clues can lead Cole to neglect an important line of questioning or skip a key location he must visit to assist in solving the case. Players must be sure not to miss anything if they plan on solving each case and putting the right person behind bars.
Along with clues and evidence, witness interviews play a massive part in fighting crime. In each interview session, Cole must assess if a certain answer given by a witness or suspect is a lie or the truth by watching each person closely. Looking Cole in the eyes while answering is usually a sign of truth but a glance to the side or an uncomfortable facial expression might give away a lie. In some instances, you’ll need a specific piece of evidence to prove you caught someone in a lie and without that evidence, the lie will go unproven and Cole might hit a dead end in his case.
Aside from the main story cases, Cole may be called to answer one of the 40 street crimes that take place in L.A. Noire which can range from a suspicious individual to attempted robbery and even murder. Players can choose to accept or ignore each call without a penalty but successfully completing a street crime can give Cole experience and intuition points. These important points can either help Cole find all clues at a crime scene or pick out the right answer in an interview either by eliminating one answer or polling the online community to find out the most popular response. The more experience Cole accumulates, the more intuition points he’ll acquire, up to a maximum of 5 per case.
Rockstar outdid itself with the level of detail in this one. Character models feature an unparalleled amount of realism in both their movements and facial expressions. Subtle movements in character faces are portrayed almost exactly as a real actor would and is indeed the driving force of the game. This high level of accuracy is what allows players to conduct the interview sessions successfully since players must pay attention to such subtle things as someone licking their lips, swallowing deeply or even just frowning in order to crack a lie. Not only do the character models look impressive, everything about L.A. Noire screams 1947 from the clothes to the cars and even the city of Los Angeles itself. The game’s soundtrack also fits the part nicely with music befitting a crime drama including snazzy jazz numbers heard on the radio or during intense chases.
While L.A. Noire succeeds at looking impressive and delivering innovative gameplay with flying colors, it is only average at best with everything else. While the gameplay may be unique it is also disturbingly repetitive. Every case has Cole visit a crime scene, gather clues and interview somebody with only the dialogue and the case details differing from case to case. A little variety would have been nice. In fact, without the street crimes, L.A. Noire would have no other content whatsoever since aside from the story cases and street crimes, players have nothing else to accomplish besides driving around Los Angeles looking for landmarks and adding to Cole’s vehicle collection.
The story in L.A. Noire only really matters at the end since the cases Cole encounters at the beginning of the game have little to no bearing on the game’s final outcome. The cases do serve the purpose of building the character of Cole Phelps and setting the scene of 1947 Los Angeles nicely, but add nothing to the overall story and more or less act as practice for the last few cases which actually do matter. One other thing that really bothered me was how Cole acted during interviews. At any given moment Cole can switch from a polite gentleman to an overly-aggressive jerk trying to squeeze information out of a witness. I understand the whole good cop, bad cop routine but Cole comes off as more bipolar than anything else as he acts gentle and understanding one second and frighteningly murderous the next. By the end of the game I wound up hating Cole’s character, but that had to do more with the rest of the game and less so with the interviews.
L.A. Noire had huge potential to be something really great but by the end of the story I was actually disappointed. I felt let down by the lack of…well, anything to do in the game besides the story cases, the repetitive nature of the game and the incredibly unsatisfying way the game ended. I’m not in the habit of giving away spoilers, so you’ll just have to see for yourself what you think in the end. That’s not to say L.A. Noire isn’t worth playing, it is. The visually appealing detail in both the city and its inhabitants is incredible to look at but it doesn’t make up for the game’s biggest flaw: boredom.
Visiting the game’s various locations involves a heavy amount of travel. Driving through Los Angeles is more tedious than travel has ever been in any of Rockstar’s games before. Travel can potentially take more than 5 minutes and that seems a lot longer considering that, if you want to avoid all the frighteningly stupid drivers, you’ll want to have your police siren on at all times. Listening to that for 5 minutes made me want to mute my TV on more than one occasion and that should never happen in any game. You can have your partner drive and skip all the travel altogether but then you miss out on potentially important things like street crime calls or the LAPD contacting your car for information which only happen when Cole drives.
Play L.A. Noire if you can, but don’t pay full price for it. You won’t want to miss out on experiencing what this unique game has to offer but once you play through it once, there really isn’t any reason to do so again.
