At a glance...

L.A. Noire review

It's very hard to pigeon hole L.A. Noire. It's an open world sandbox game like Rockstar's main franchise, Grand Theft Auto, but not. It's a detective story abut finding clues and talking to witnessing like "CSI", but not. Part shooter, part driving game, story-driven, but not. All these qualities make L.A. Noire quite unique.

The best way to describe L.A. Noire is as an open world sandbox detective game and whilst we can draw some comparison with GTA, the similarities are only skin deep. There are no rampages in this game or random harming of civilians. You are set square on the side of good in this game, one of L.A.'s finest. You play as detective Cole Phelps, a war veteran, who is fast on his way up the busying heights of the L.A.P.D. Starting as a patrolman working a beat, you manage to solve a few cases which help you catch the eye of the homicide Captain who knows talent when he sees it. This serves as L.A. Noire's tutorial sequence and helps you get to grips with the basic gameplay mechanics. It also illustrates the game's main story-telling technique, cases. There are 21 of these cases in total and they serve to break the overarching story into discreet chunks. It also makes L.A. Noire feel different to similar open-world games; it's like buying a DVD boxset of your favourite show and having a selection of episodes to watch. Most of these cases are fairly self contained with a large majority of them seeing you catch your man. I really enjoyed LA Noire’s use of this format and it reminded me of other games that have tried this episodic approach such as Alan Wake or Alone in the Dark. The unfortunate thing here is that I don't feel like they went far enough. At times, the game wants to tell more narrative, but they attempt to cram it into the case framework. A better approach would have been to keep the more self-contained stories to cases and have more story-driven sections in between. They do this to some extent by telling of Cole's command during the Second World War, but again they didn't go far enough and these flashbacks are exceedingly brief and are non-interactive.

The game's first half feels like a fresh change of pace from other games, but eventually this then reigned in, spoiling the effect, in order to continue the story telling as the conclusion approaches. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because as the title suggests, there is a gripping 'noir' tale being told here. As you investigate your way through the dangerous underworld of Los Angeles, the story is worth it as all the threads come together. As is typical of noir stories, you'll meet your fair share of dirty cops and corrupt politicians. L.A. Noire definitely has its own story to tell; for all the freedom it gives you early on, it takes away when the twists and turns start coming. Whether it was down to some quirky writing in the story, some of the curve balls that the game throws at you don't really make sense; the character of Cole Phelps they have portrayed thus far seems at odds with the character they need in order to tell the story. That said, the game does build up to a exciting ending, one that has a great emotional impact; it made me feel the same way that Heavy Rain had done when all the plots came together.

Enough about the story though, the real meat to L.A. Noire is getting to play detective and this is where the game shines. Almost all cases start off in black and white with the case title front and centre, very reminiscent of the noir films of the 1940's and 50's. What follows all depends on how much the game wants to reveal, it could be the crime being committed or it could cut straight to the police briefing room. Either way, after a quick briefing from your captain, it's off to investigate the case, which means it's time to head to the crime scene. When you get arrive, you’ll notice that the patrolmen have already cordoned off the area, leaving you with the difficult task of hunting for clues. You’ll know when this happens because the whole mood of the game shifts, the music changing in tone as you investigate to a slow and steady beat. Sound plays an important part of this process and you’ll need to keep your ears open as your wander around the area. Audio clues will tell you when you’re next to an item of interest and when you're near one, hitting a button will make Cole Phelps stoop down to look at it. Once the item in question is in your hands you can manipulate it with a twist of an analog stick. All these items are available in fantastic detail and Team Bondi have gone to great lengths to ensure each item is as realistic as possible. Most notable are the documents that you get to inspect which certainly have an air of authenticity about them and there is a tremendous amount of written detail on them, if you have the inclination to read them. The game itself will pick out any permanent details for you, with your objectives updating as you go. Ultimately this will lead to new evidence and locations appearing in your notebook. In an attempt to makes things interesting, the game also has its fair share of false clues too. I can't count the number of times I picked up a beer bottle in the hope that it would finally be a clue worth looking at. If there's a dead body at the crime scene, you'll also get to investigate that too, looking for hints in the victim's wounds or items still in their clothing. This isn't for the squeamish though as L.A. Noire doesn't hold back, and just as much detail is present on the dead body as every other clue you find. A jingle will announce when you've collected all the clues that are relevant to your case, but unfortunately there were a few glitches where the crime scene music stopped altogether and I couldn't tell whether I had collected all the evidence.

Hunting for clues is only one side of the coin however; each case will have a number of people to talk to and this shows off L.A. Noire at its most impressive. Utilising a new technology called MotionScan, characters models are created from their real life counterparts in incredible detail. An array of thirty-two high definition cameras are used to record the actors going through dialog and their performance is transferred almost literally onto their in-game models. I want to take this opportunity to state how incredible this technology looks; this is certainly a giant leap forward in the way actors are conveyed in video games and at times it's hard to tell them apart from the real thing. As you progress through the game you many notice a few familiar faces from television portraying some of the characters such as "Fringe"’s John Noble and some of the cast of popular 1950's drama, Mad Men. There are some downsides though; motion capture has to be performed separately from the MotionScan sessions which means that it can look a little odd at times, with the body occasionally looking very jerky compared to its realistic head models. These highly detailed models make it perfect for L.A. Noire’s interrogation scenes which are a core part of the game. Taking out your trusty notepad, you are presented with a list of questions that you can ask the POI (Person of Interest) that you are up against. The crux of this conversation comes when you have to assess whether the witness or suspect is telling the truth of not. Three options are available to you; you could take them on their word, call them an outright liar or have doubts about their story with no evidence to back it up. You have to come to your conclusions through a little bit of guesswork, a little bit of luck and some logic based on the evidence that you have gathered. Conversations can go many ways, particularly if you haven’t found the right clue to catch them out, but the key to these moments is reading the expressions on your suspects' faces. This is why a technology like MotionScan is needed, as you are able to read the nervous tick on their face or the shifty movements in their eyes. In order to cater for players of all skill levels, these visual clues are often plainly written on a suspect's face and are a little too emphasised at times, but this gets increasingly difficult to spot as the game goes on, with some characters outright lying to you without a single hint on their face.

Much like the hunt for clues, sound plays an important role here, with a long drawn out piece of music that starts as you conduct the interview with long tense strings constantly keeping you in suspense. When you choose one of the options available to you, another audio cue will play to immediately let you know if you've chosen correctly. Praise must go to the composers for picking out the most well-engineering clip, which triggers an almost Pavlovian response within you. You really do care when you read your subject well or catch him or her out in the lie, and you can’t help but feel a little depressed when you fail to spot the subtle lie. With all this praise to the editing and sound quality during these scenes, it’s a shame to see that the writing seems to let it down occasionally. I often found myself unsure of what evidence the game was actually looking for, and often had to hit 'Lie' just to find out. There’s a midway point here as you accuse the suspect of lying, which hints at what evidence you need to present, and allows you back out of it if you don’t think you have what you need. Despite the heated tone of detective Phelps’ accusations, there is never a penalty for calling them a liar and then backing out, which is odd, considering how hostile it gets between the two of you. The suspect acts as if the accusation never happens and reverts back to the neutral state where you have to make up your mind. 'Doubt' is also an odd button, and at times it seems like it should have been relabelled as the “shout a lot and see what happens”, so aggressive these outbursts are. Suspects can get impatient during these interviews and can often call you out if you take too long, but despite a statistic relegated to a menu, there isn't a penalty to these moments. It would have been nice to see these make more of a difference, but it keeps L.A. Noire within its tightly-controlled narrative so we can understand why this needs to be this way.

L.A. Noire is primarily focused on these two gameplay mechanics, but it wouldn’t be a good noir tale, or a good detective story, if there weren't some chases and gunplay thrown into the mix. These really help to diversify a case after you've been hunkered down at a crime scene for too long. Due to the nature of gunplay in these types of open world games, the gunfighting segments are a lot more rigid in their formula than the other sections but are still enjoyable. When they start, you are normally only equipped with your service revolver, but you can pick up weapons from the bad guys that you manage to gun down. However, you are in combat for so little time you rarely get the opportunity to use them, and because of this ammo is never a problem. There are no on-screen elements for health, but you’ll know when you're at low health as the screen slowly turns black and white, with some hard breathing sounds coming from your character. Cover-based mechanics are also present allowing you to move from cover to cover as well as blind firing and popping out to take out a goon.

Chases, on the other hand, usually all start the same way, but are more varied than the gunplay counterparts. You arrive at a location and the suspect makes a run for it as soon as he notices you. L.A. Noire provides an interesting mix of foot and car chases our the course of game. Car chases are an exciting combination of high-adrenaline pursuit and sudden jumps as obstacles get thrown into your path such as cars swerving to avoid you in busy intersections, or trucks getting in the way down tight alleyways. If the chase goes on long enough, backup will arrive and will block off the route ahead, but at times the game encourages you to drive alongside them and get your partner to shoot out the tyres. On foot chases are equally exciting as you leap over fences and climb up the side of buildings. If you manage to catch up to your suspect you can tackle him to the ground. Alternatively you can draw your gun on him and if you manage to hold the reticule over him long enough, Cole will fire a warning shot into the air, effectively ending the chase. I must again applaud Team Bondi for the amount of variety they put into these chases, but like many of parts of L.A. Noire, they are heavily scripted and repeat performances of these sequences will reveal how you can only catch the suspect at certain sections of the chase.

With the exception of the concluding two cases, you’ll always be accompanied by a partner, and you’ll get a different one for each of the four desks you belong to. They are there to help you when you're in a jam and to provide support during the chase or gunplay sequences. If you don't feel like driving, simply holding down the button when getting into the car will get your partner to drive to the next location. After any important dialog is out the way, the game will simply fade to black and then pop back when you arrive. This a simple and elegant way of hiding the long stretches of distance between the locations if you don’t want to bother with the hassle of driving. Whilst I was hesitant to use the feature early on, I began to use it more and more as I progressed as there's not a lot you can do when driving except to answer incoming calls (more on that later). AI drivers are also complete idiots and panic like a deer in headlights as you attempt to drive past them. This is incredibly annoying as you try to make your way through a crowded junction, and even the siren on the police car seems to be ineffective at getting traffic out of the way; because of this, the driving experience quickly becomes frustrating with little or no payoff.

As we've already mentioned, the game is engineered to progress the story; someone will always go down for the crime you are investigating, even if you don't have the evidence to prove it. In typical 1940’s fashion, suspects can get charged with little or no evidence and whilst this does effectively close the case, you’ll get a scolding from your Captain for doing so. This seems to be the game's way of failing a section, but the story will continue regardless. You will also get presented with a rating on your performance for that particular case, noting down the number of evidence pieces collected and answers guessed incorrectly. On top of this you'll also get a ‘cost to the city’ report that details how much damage you’ve managed to cause. Whilst you can never kill any civilians or destroy any non-mission cars, you can still knock up quite a hefty charge by the time you collar your man. Finally a sentence sums up what happens afterwards, usually indicating that you've got enough evidence to satisfy the DA but it seems a shame to relegate this to a throwaway line on the final screen. All told this will give you a star ranking out of five, encouraging you to retry it to improve your rating, but much like other story focused games such as Heavy Rain, the game loses a little of its magic if you do so. Conversations are typically the same, with only minor insight granted for correctly guessing a previously incorrect accusation. Timing is more key in case replays as a lot of the action sequences are about responding to the scene of a crime in progress in time. For example, you may find that a group of thugs who previously got away make an appearance the second time round as you are in more of a rush to get there.

The game will also keep track of progress via a rank, a levelling system that you improve by getting answers correct to interrogations, identifying landmarks and completing side story patrol cases. As a reward for gaining certain ranks, cars will be unlocked at the various compounds throughout the city. More interestingly you also get something called intuition points. These can be used during the interviews and are there to help you out; you can use them to remove one of the incorrect options or to provide statistics from the community such as which answer most players selected. It's an interesting system and it really came in handy during some of the tougher interrogations, but for the cued in players, you’ll find your gut instinct to be way more useful.

At the very beginning of this review, I mentioned that L.A. Noire is an open world game and that is certainly the case. The amount of real estate that you get to explore is incredible and a quick look at the map reveals how much ground you get to cover. That said, if you wander off the beaten path there isn't really that much to do. There are a number of key landmarks that the game encourages you to explore, but if you are unfamiliar with Los Angeles you will miss many of them, and some of them leave you wondering why they are landmarks at all (a few factories and businesses make the grade). There are also the usual collectible items to hunt for in the form of film canisters (and badges if you’ve got the pre-order DLC), but they are worse than the landmarks and are like looking for a needle in a haystack. The game simply does not provide any help in looking for them. That said, free roam's saving grace is the patrol call outs that you get to take part in. Available during the cases, or as a free roam mode called "Streets of L.A.", these consist of 40 different mini-cases for you to take part in. After a call comes over the radio, you get the option of going after it and a new objective appears on your HUD . These are incredibly varied and can see you hunting down a suspect fleeing from the scene of a crime, stopping a robbery in progress, or stopping a jumper from plummeting off a building. These are all enjoyable and are at the same level of quality as the main cases, but they are unfortunately incredibly short with some crimes being completed in less than thirty seconds. Throughout this the engine does a remarkable job of showing off 1947 Los Angeles, but it does strain occasionally in doing so. Model and texture pop-ups are quite common, and the landscape at moderates distances is reduced to a haze. And whilst the texture details are very impressive, you may also spot some poor quality shadows. These usually aren't that noticeable, but when you're zoomed in over a body, it becomes an eyesore.

I thinks it's a pretty undisputed fact that Rockstar are the king of open world games, and whilst I can appreciate that it was developed by a different team (which was later acquired by Rockstar), the game certainly seems to have some of that Rockstar magic; it's just a shame that wasn't a few more things to do to encourage you to explore. If I was awarding a score purely on the technology, L.A. Noire would definitely be getting full marks, but unfortunately a few bugs and some lack of encouragement to explore means that L.A. Noire doesn’t quite earn top marks.

Ratings

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