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| This game is old school |
Story
You play as Cole Phelps, returning WWII war hero and patrolman. Or at least you start off as a patrolman, but you don't stay dressed in blues for long as you rise up LAPD's ranks and work vice, homicide, and arson.
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| The LAPD's tactics haven't changed much in 70 years |
The storyline is developed through cases, newspapers you can find in the game, and flashbacks to Phelps' time in the war. Compared to other games, L.A. Noire puts a lot of emphasis on the story and while it's not exactly worthy of an award it's a lot better than the usual "save the world by ______" story, plus it does have a few good twists.
Gameplay
This is not your typical Rockstar game, or at least not like GTA or Red Dead Redemption. For one, you can only wield your weapon when the game lets you, and you can't run over pedestrians, as they always find a way to move out of harm's way.
The game is broken up into different cases that involve finding clues, interrogating witnesses, and sometimes shooting or fighting scenes. At the end of each case you are ranked and then moved on to the next case. The game tries to make the biggest point about it's interrogation sequences in which you're supposed to take advantage of the magical face capture to "read" whether a witness is lying. You are given three options after each statement and have to decide whether a witness is telling the truth, lying, or just doubt their statement.
These choices feel like they are mislabeled sometimes and it seems that Phelps' can only ever be angry when he doubts someone, which is funny sometimes.
Finding clues is probably the least fun part of the game, as it mostly involves walking around a scene until your controller vibrates and then hitting a button to make Phelps look at something nearby. Although you can disable this "hint" there's no real other way to tell if you've found all the clues for a case.
Apart from the cases, the game also has "street crimes" side missions which almost always involve chasing down a suspect either on foot or in a car. All of the games actions reward you with experience points which level you up and can offer rewards in the form of intuition points which can help reveal clues or remove answers during an interrogation, new outfits, and rare car locations.
Presentation
The game looks good, really, really good.
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| I recognize this guy from somewhere... |
However, it doesn't look good all the time. It is possible to drive so fast that you can beat the textures and one more than one occasion I crashed into a hydrant that hadn't spawned. But the game still does look good enough to be able to pick out specific actors who make an appearance in the game. For example you'll be able to spot half the male cast from Mad Men.
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| Sadly, they left the women of Mad Men out |
The voice acting also benefits from having actors, although sometimes there are pauses between characters that break up the immersion, however, as these are usually happening during a driving sequence I like to pretend that Phelps is so focused on driving that it takes him a while to respond to his partner.
Speaking of sounds, the soundtrack, and radio commercials are excellent. You really do feel like you're in L.A. during the late 40s, I was so nostalgic I even drove out to Olvera Street to see if they had the Aztec Dancers performing, sadly they did not.
Recommendation
This game is tough to judge, there was a big attempt to go the Heavy Rain way and make something different from the tons and tons of war FPS, and in some ways it succeeded doing this as the game was even honored at the Tribeca Film Festival. However, this is a game that feels like it forgets it's supposed to be a game sometimes and feels like a huge quick time event. Still, the pacing is good, the storyline is better than most, and the game play is fluid most of the time.
I don't think the face software will revolutionize gaming but hopefully it'll encourage more storytelling in gaming. I recommend this game as a break from cover based shooting and constant re-spawning, although if you're expecting to be able to go on some GTA rampage in 40s L.A. you will be disappointed. You will also be disappointed if you're expecting the female cast of Mad Men.
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| maybe DLC? |
