About a month ago I came back to and completed L.A. Noire. I
bought it for the Xbox 360 back in 2013, got about half way through then
switched to something else, probably XCOM! Here’s what I found out:
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| I can only hope the previous owner of that blood hasn't got a use for it... |
The game has you playing most of it as Cole Phelps, a
detective for the LAPD, as he progresses through different departments of the
police force – Traffic, Homicide, Vice and Arson. There are a few distinct
sections in the game: The open world, where you drive around Los Angeles
usually to your next location, though there are side mission and unlockables.
There are crime scenes, where you hunt for clues around various locations where
crimes have been committed. And there is the interrogation scenes, when you’re
interviewing witnesses.
The latter is where most of the effort went into the game’s
presentation, as they used motion capture to make the character’s faces move in
an almost film-realistic way. They did a good job of this, unfortunately it
didn’t have the required effect, as character’s clothes and hair remain stiff
throughout. Nonetheless, this is by far the most interesting segment of the
game, where you ask a witness a question, and watch their faces for their
response. If you think they’re telling the truth, you press A, and potentially
get some more information out of them. If they look like they’re hiding
something, you press X to doubt them. And if you know they’re lying, you press
Y to accuse them; you then have to present a piece of evidence that contradicts
the lie. And if you’re not sure one way or the other, you can press B to back
out and come back the question later.
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| Apparently the guy never wore a fedora even once during production. |
I missed a trick here: I found out later that if you accuse
them of lying first, then you have the option to back out if they’re not. But
if they are, they will very often telegraph the piece of evidence you need to
contradict the lie. With the other two options, it might seem that Cole is
being ill-proportionately aggressive; you wouldn’t think that shouting someone
down constitute “Doubt.” But there was a reason for this, too: When the game
was in development, the three options were going to be “Coax,” “Force” and
“Lie.” At some point, the first two options were changed to “Truth” and
“Doubt,” but most of the game’s dialogue had already been recorded and was left
in. Remembering this fact makes some of what Cole says make a lot more sense.
The crime scene sections are handled well too. In order to
keep you immersed in what is essentially a hidden object sequence, you still
control Cole in third person, and whenever he comes across something that is
potentially a clue, the controller vibrates. You pick it up, examine it, and
the game will add it to the records if it is relevant.
This might sound like a cross between an adventure game and
a Bioware RPG, but the game can’t really afford to be de-railed if you get stuck.
Your reward for getting all the clues and asking the right questions are not
solving the crime – that happens anyway – but finding out the whole truth about
what’s going on. That can lead to a certain dissatisfaction, as there’s no
sense of influencing the plot, but rather whether you find out some of its
finer points. Ultimately it was better that way around, otherwise you’d be
wandering around hopelessly lost and confused.
I did enjoy L.A. Noire. It’s a game that promised much, and
due to the limitations of its media, fell just short of delivery. I won’t be
aiming for 100% completion, as aiming for a 5-star rating on each case (I
didn’t manage this on the first one even after three goes) would suck all the
fun out of it, and a lot of the achievement points are tied up in DLC that I
have no intention of buying. But with a lot of focus-tested military shooters
out at the time, and rinse-and-repeat open world games taking up a lot of
triple-A games today, I’m glad I tried the one that tried to do things a little
bit differently.
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