 L.A. Noire
Submitted Saturday, May 21, 2011 - 12:35:00 AM by Klaitu
Ahh, Rockstar Games, is it even possible for you to make a bad game anymore?
 Grand Theft Auto 4, Red Dead Redemption, and now L.A. Noire. Rockstar continually knocks it out of the park with well designed, fun games.. and I'm glad to include L.A. Noire among them!
You're Officer Cole Phelps, detective extraordinaire. You'll embark on about two dozen individual cases where a crime has been perpetrated, and it's your job to figure out whodunnit. If you're familiar with Film Noire, you'll feel right at home in L.A. Noire.
I've been asked a lot about the gameplay elements of the game, and it's sort of hard to classify, so I'll do it by comparison:
Take GTA 4 and set it in 1947 Los Angeles. Old cars, old style, old fashion. The game has an open world, but it's just incidental to the plot. A chapter will start with you being assigned a crime to investigate. You get in your car and drive to the crime scene GTA style. When you arrive, you explore the area looking for clues, not unlike Resident Evil 1, Indigo Prophecy, or Heavy Rain. The Investigation phase actually feels like those classic adventure games from ye olden days. There are some puzzles that need doing during these as well. Any clues you turn up appear in your handy dandy notebook!
The clues might lead you to another person or place that you need to investigate next. In the case of a person, you might question them for information. The game generates questions for people based on the clues you discovered at the crime scene. You ask, they respond. Then you decide if their response is True or a Lie, or if it's a Lie and you can prove it with a clue you have. If you interrogate correctly by reading body language, you will uncover more clues to your investigation.
Some of the people you meet don't like cops, and may run away from you (which happens a lot) and you have to chase them down. Some shoot at you, and you can shoot back. The gunplay controls are pretty much identical to Red Dead Redemption. Some of them run away in cars, which results in a car chase.
L.A. Noire has a lot going for it, notably the story which is absolutely pitch perfect for Noire style. The music here is incredible, and the gameplay is top notch.
There's one other special mention that L.A. Noire gets too, they used some sort of high-tech 3d facial scanning method to motion capture the actor's faces, so when you see the characters talking, you're actually seeing that character perform the part. All the motions from their hair to their necks is recorded, so every little bit of body language in their face is preserved. It's never been used in a game before, but I can tell you that it works like gangbusters!
What's more is that you can recognize the actors by their real life faces! The cast includes people like John Noble and Aaron Staton.. people who are actually good actors.
Part of what makes L.A. Noire so great is part of what makes it fall a little flat as well. The same facial scanning technology that reads those performances so well totally sucks at making hair. Every person in the entire game has greasy, slicked back black hair. There are no blondes, no redheads, no brownhairs.. all black, all greased to the extreme, including the women (who end up having a bun knob in the back of their head).
Another flaw with the game is the way the story unfolds. If you totally botch an investigation, miss clues, or just do stupid stuff it does not change the ending to a story. If you screw up an interrogation, the clue you missed will pop up somewhere else (most likely over the police radio). There's no real advantage to being good at L.A. Noire because the game is going to force you to progress the story no matter how bad you suck as a policeman.. and you'll be lauded for your detective skills no matter what.
Along with this is that the game presents you many times with a choice between two options that you know are not correct. It makes it difficult to choose the option the game wants.
Here's an example (not from the game) of another problem the game has during an interrogation:Policeman: Tell me about bread? Did you buy bread for lunch today?
Suspect: I really enjoy apples!
(Choose Truth, Doubt, or Lie)
Now, what exactly am I evaluating? Is he telling the truth about his liking apples? Should I pick truth? He didn't answer what I asked.. is he avoiding the question? Should I present him with the bread receipt I got at the crime scene earlier? Should I split the difference and pick doubt?
The game throws this at you maybe 10 or 11 times during the game, and the answers are NOT consistant with one another. There simply is no way to know the correct answer so you have to 100% guess, and it pisses me off.
The final flaw the game has? Mazes. There is one particularly maddening maze in this game: in the catacombs under a church. There is no light in the catacombs (despite the fact that you carry a flashlight around with you, you can't use it in the catacombs) AND there's a maniac in the catacombs with you. You can't see where you're going, you can't even really tell if you're running into a wall or not. It's your character on a pitch black screen playing a running animation. You can twirl the camera, walk in other directions, but it all looks the same.. and it is absolutely godawful. I wandered aimlessly for an hour and a half and I eventually came to a grate that was locked (but it was lit up and I could see it). I wandered for another 45 minutes and I eventually found the suspect running away from me, so I emptied an entire clip into his back and luckily that counted.
So anyways, in summary--
Pros:
- Awesome Story
- Awesome Atmosphere
- Awesome Acting
- Awesome Music
- Awesome Gameplay
Cons:
- Lack of hair diversity
- Game is incredibly easy
- Suspects respond with impossible answers
- A Godawful, horrible pitch black maze
Overall Score: 8 of 10 (the maze alone docked it a point)
Quality Rating: 5 of 5
Buy It!
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Strange, New Worlds
A Message to All Game Developers
THOR!
You know, I don't get around to seeing many movies in the theaters these days. Maybe 4 or 5 a year. Why? Because they mostly suck. There are very few franchises that you can depend on to deliver a quality story. Marvel is one of them.