We Review: L.A. Noire

The world was a completely different place back in the late 1940s, and many things we take for granted did not exist: today’s gender and race equality ideals had not been born yet, and neither had the Internet. Man had yet to step on the moon, and the world was just freshly scarred from a global war. Rockstar Games’ L.A. Noire pulls us back through time to that era to find out what life was like with the LAPD. Did they do a good job? And is the game any good? Hit the jump to find out.

As usual, you’re going to have to pay a little bit of reading tax, in the form of some nostalgia from me. Back when I was yet a youngling, before the advent of more than 16 colors on your PC screen, a game called Police Quest, by company Sierra On-Line, appeared [Ed: Actually, Police Quest and VGA were released in the same year]. It was completely different from other games in the Quest genre in that proper police procedure was tantamount to finishing the game. It was so realistic, in fact, that it was rumored that the game was used as a police training tool.

L.A. Noire is similar in its adherence to police procedure, to a fashion. In short, the game follows the story of Cole Phelps, LAPD badge number 1247 (played by Mad Men’s Aaron Staton), a World War Two veteran who joined the Los Angeles police department after his discharge from the military. Initially, Phelps (badge 1247) is a standard patrolman who shows a bit more initiative than patrol officers generally show [Ed: So not much, then?], and is elevated to rank of detective. Through the course of the game, Phelps (badge 1247) solves crimes and generally seeks to make L.A. a much safer place for the citizens of 1947.

The large focus of L.A. Noire is solving various crimes that occur with seemingly alarming frequency. Each crime gets its own film noir-style title card (“The Set Up”, “The Red Lipstick Murder”) and starts with a short briefing at HQ. After the briefing, you can head down to the car with your partner and drive around the streets of 1940s L.A., either following the leads of the main story, or responding to calls for assistance from other officers around the city. Or you could just drive around and take in the sights. If driving around and following a marker on the minimap is not quite your thing, you can force your partner to drive and take you straight to the relevant area. Forcing your partner to drive, however, means that you do not hear the calls for help to attend to street crimes, so some driving around is necessary if you want to do more than just follow the storyline, what little there is of it, anyhow.

Solving a crime involves not just looking for clues at a crime scene (your controller vibrates to tell you that something important might be nearby, but you can turn this feature off to make it more difficult—if you are still using a Sixaxis controller on your PS3, you’re going to get this difficulty setting by default!), but also chasing down suspects on the run, fighting with aggressive suspects, tailing suspects, and interrogating witnesses. Here is where I start talking about the game’s most amazing feature: the facial motion capture. No doubt you have already heard about the rig of cameras—called MotionScan—around the actor’s head that perfectly captures the facial movements of the actor as their lines are delivered. This precise capturing allows you to try and detect, through facial movements, eye movements, and facial tics, whether the person being interrogated is telling the truth or lying. You have the option of believing their words; doubting that they are giving you the full story; or accusing them of lying. If you attempt the latter, you have to back up your words with evidence, so lay your accusations with care.

The sheer attention to detail is everywhere in the game, from the people, to the cars, to the vividness of Los Angeles itself. The designers of the game used aerial shots of 1940s L.A. to reconstruct the city as it looked like back when not even your parents had been born. Think on how long ago that actually was! The clothing styles, linguistic features, adverts, music, ideas and paradigms, and even the blatant racism and sexism are accurately recreated. It is simply amazing how much detail has gone into the game. Everything is so brilliantly and beautifully polished that you’re likely to go blind from the glare if you stare at the game for too long.

My own personal problems in reading faces and expressions aside (I really do suck at it, and every expression looks like every other expression to me. I’m talking about real people here, not even the faces in the game—I suspect I might have some form of adult ADD), the chief problem with the game is that it feels far too much as if it is on rails, as it were. There is no real way to lose at interrogating, and by and large, your beliefs and accusations have very little bearing on the outcome of things. Answering correctly might open up other dialog branches and yield further clues, but all these do is give further insight into the case. Answering incorrectly still nets you the barest necessity for solving the case, since Phelps (badge 1247) will go ahead and say all the right things to get what you need to go on with the case. Quite literally, there is almost no way to “lose” at interrogating, and bearing in mind that this is the most-touted part of L.A. Noire, it seems to be a strange failing. Some cases do, however, depend on a choice between two suspects, but afterwards it is made painfully clear who you should have chosen, should you choose the wrong guy. This means that not much brainwork needs to go into solving the crime, since Phelps (badge 1247. Get used to this line, because you will be hearing it a lot in this game) helpfully informs you what the next step should be if you even start looking like you might be the tiniest bit stuck. For example, there was a case where Phelps (1247) was trying to figure out where to go next, and I’d barely turned the wrong corner when he exclaims, ever as helpful as Microsoft’s blasted, infernally cheerful paperclip Clippy, that he’s figured out where the next destination is, leaving me to wonder when the game was going to let me do some of the thinking.

The other issue I have is with the actual driving around. It can become incredibly, tediously boring driving from point A to point B. Honestly, I’ve had more fun picking the keys off my keyboard and cleaning up the dirt trapped underneath. Yes, you can get your partner to drive. And yes, you can get out your car and wander around L.A., but there is really little point to it, other than to see the sights. If you are an achievement or trophy collector, incidentally, there is an award for jumping into one of each of the game’s 95 different cars, but once again, unless you’re driving along for the fun of it, there is no real point in using anything other than the police cars for one good reason: the police vehicles have police radios inside them that allow you to respond to street crime events. If you have no intention of playing the short side missions (of which there are only 40), there STILL is no advantage of using one car over another. The game is quite linear in its progression as well, and not quite as sandbox as anyone would have you believe, given that in a sandbox, you at least have the option of building a sandcastle in any way you choose. Or smashing up your friend’s one.

Despite these minor issues, L.A. Noire is still a lot of fun to play, and I understand that Rockstar see this game as the start of a new franchise. Please bear in mind that the 18 age rating is very well deserved; there are some frighteningly disturbing scenes in this game (and they’re warranted, given that it IS all about crime investigation). And no, I am not talking about any scenes that happen in the morgue. At the end of things, the primary focus is not on the (short-lived) fighting or the (more boring than peeling bananas) driving, but on the (incredibly interesting) investigation aspect. The interrogation mechanic is by no means perfect, but it is amazingly impressive, and I expect it will only improve with games to come. The facial animations alone are worth the game’s price, and the fun of solving the crimes is just that: brilliantly good fun. I only wish that the game had left some of the thinking for the player to do. It goes to show, however, that crime procedure games have come a long way since good ol’ Police Quest. Just be careful out there, ok, kid? It’s a dangerous world out there.

Score: 7 ¾/10 (point loss for linearity, railroading, and ease)