L.A. Noire

There are plenty of things that make me feel seriously old these days, but one that stands out a lot as a gamer is remembering a time when the number of hours a game took was an important selling point. Final Fantasy [ファイナルファンタジー] games, Baldur's Gate, RollerCoaster Tycoon, Civilization, Football Manager - back when I was about 14-15, it felt like just about the only thing I judged a game on was how long I could play it. But of course, things change - you get a job, get a girlfriend, have to actually make an effort to keep in touch with your family rather than just see them at dinner time every day, and suddenly a game like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim looks almost hilariously unappealing to the 27 year old me, considering that it was literally exactly the kind of game the 14 year old me wanted.

So I guess it says a hell of a lot about L.A. Noire that it's the only game I've played in 10 years that I actively wish was longer. A lot longer. Even with all the DLC added, L.A. Noire feels too short, a trip into a fantastically fully-realized world that cries out for sequel after sequel after sequel. Sequels that, thanks to the well-documented issues between Team Bondi and Rockstar, we'll probably never get.

The first thing you'll notice about this game, and the first thing any discussion about it really has to start with, is that it looks absolutely phenomenal. That Team Bondi managed to get a game to look like this in 2011, a whole console generation before it even makes sense for anything to look like that, is incredible - and better yet, the graphics are completely integral to the gameplay. Because so much of the game is spent interviewing people, looking for their tells, being able to cast doubt on what they're telling you, it simply wouldn't work without the level of detail in the character's facial work that L.A. Noire brings to the table. Thanks to that, playing this for the first time carried with it a childish, giddy thrill, a sense of disbelief that it even exists, that you're even playing it. For somebody in their twenties that remembers how incredible some PS1-era cutscenes looked at the time, L.A. Noire is a real 'started from the bottom, now we here' moment. Christ, I owned a ZX Spectrum when I was 6. Imagine if music had ever advanced this much in 21 years.

It's a magnificent period piece, too. The game is very careful to tell you that it takes place in 1947 (to the point where one of the trophies is unlocked by driving 194.7 miles), and it's clear that they carefully considered pinning it down to that year - it allows the game to take place during Hollywood's Golden Age, with all the misty-eyed glamour that entails, but also in the aftermath of World War II, with a whole slew of characters trying to rebuild their lives after serving their time in the marines. The research that went into building the world up from those two ideas is almost as impressive as the graphics - there are references to contemporary films and news events all over the place, and half the crimes you investigate are crimes that actually took place in LA during the '40s (most notably the Black Dahlia murder, which you solve and are then given a reason never to reveal the murderer's identity - nice touch). The architecture, the cars, the fashion; this is, frankly, as perfectly realized as gaming gets.

You can understand, then, why it was the first film ever to be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival; and yet, it's the more film-y elements that hold the game back a little. While the world and the presentation (including the soundtrack, incidentally) are absolutely fantastic, everything else is good rather than great - the storyline is interesting without being as provocative or gripping as it might be, and the characters are appropriate without being especially empathetic. The gameplay elements, too, are at times ridiculously easy. I like that, because it allows you to enjoy the world and soak it all up without becoming frustrated and constantly being reminded that you're playing a game, but it means that the sporadic action sections - car chases, shootouts, and the like - are fairly repetitive and not very compelling to watch rather than play. It certainly can't stand up to many other triple-A titles of recent years on that count. It's refreshing when viewed as a game, in the sense that it gives you a gun but gives you a responsibility to only use it when necessary, but seen in cinematic terms, it falls a little flat. L.A. Noire feels like it's encouraging you to view it as a film a lot of the time, but that's just about the worst way you could possibly look at it.

It stills ranks as a hell of an achievement, though. Right now, in 2013, L.A. Noire feels like it's ahead of its time, and it might well be three or four years into the lifecycle of the PS4 and XBox One before we start seeing a regular stream of games that match up to it at the things it does best. It's flawed, sure, but I'd still feel that anybody who owns a console capable of playing it would be missing out in something special if they skipped it. I guess that's what makes it so galling that we're unlikely to ever see a true sequel for it; if somebody ironed out the flaws from this game (and they're pretty easy flaws to fix) without damaging its strengths, we'd surely be looking at one of the greatest video games ever made.

Flaws:
1. You can't fail in this game. You can't really feel the consequences of your wrong choices or methods. I could do a 8/16 or 16/16 right choices and it wouldn't influence the game. I've failed interrogation and yet I just automatically started it again from the checkpoint until I did the right questions.
2. "True/Doubt/False". I'd say there are not enough space for your own thought process and creative methods, while also the options can be misleading when you expect Phelps to act one way and he says stuff you definitely didn't want him to say. It would be good to at least see his starting line near or below every option.
3. Face and body reading. It's mostly seeing who blinks like crazy or doing some other weird stuff that screams that they are lying or hiding anything, and less of analysing things in your head. It's boring.
Also there's not much psychological aspect where, for example, you could let a person get away with the lie at first, but that would lead to a better results in the longrun. Here, you need to expose them immediately.
4. The game is just easy. The riddles and puzzles are just easy. The hardest thing were stealth missions and yet they were pretty easy and not that much fun.

I sure could think of more flaws, but I am lazy and don't really want to think about flaws because I like the game.

Good stuff:
1. I'll put it all together into 1, the atmosphere.
It makes me comfy. I like Phelps and his story, I like other characters despite them not being very detailed, they just have the charm. I like the late 40s, like how it looks, how they communicate with each other, like how things on the streets, what people wear. And the biggest part of it being the music. Some might say they've got the timeline a bit wrong, but it still does a thing for me. Good radio, good gameplay and cutscene music. The sound carries this game a lot.
They wanted to create a noire detective atmosphere and they did it.

Story:
I was a bit surprised by how nuanced the story in L.A. Noire was. Considering the game came out in 2011, I was expecting something that pandered a little bit more to police officers. I should have known better, however, as Rockstar has always tried to add some commentary to their games of this era (and later). Cole Phelps is a good character and the way they develop him during the story seems realistic for what a man like him is going through. Furthermore, you grow to really hate the more antagonistic characters in the story. Roy Earle is a good example, as he’s already unlikeable upon first meeting with him and continues to be completely unlikeable throughout the entire story.
Cole’s partners, Roy Earle, Elsa, and Jack Kelso were characters that kept popping up frequently in the story and made a real impact. Each of Cole’s partners ended up going through an arc of hating Cole because he was very straight-edged, to having respect for him and his drive for justice. After a certain point, however, I started getting overwhelmed with the amount of plot-relevant characters I kept getting introduced to. It felt difficult to keep track of all of them, especially when none of them were too incredibly distinct. Sometimes the story got way too confusing and bloated because of how many characters there were.

Spoilers:
Another odd turn for me was to have Cole cheat on his wife and use that as the factor to cause his fall from grace to happen. It was necessary to the plot to have him lose his highly respected position, but I just couldn’t care about it, as we had hardly seen Elsa this entire time and had NEVER seen Cole’s wife. This is the point when the story begins to lose traction. This part felt forced, but I also felt as if the ending was particularly forced, especially when it came to the last antagonist. The fact that it was one of Cole and Kelso’s old war buddies was good to tie up Cole’s story and explain why Cole has such a huge chip on his shoulder. It just felt a little forced after spending so much of our time investigating random handymen and whatnot. The last stretch of the game was needed but executed in a very forceful way.
Lastly, I liked the ending a lot. It was sad to see Cole die. It was aggravating to hear Roy speak at his funeral. It was worse when you could piece together that the new DA sold out Cole for Monroe and the doctor. You know that corruption continues from this point forward and probably only worsens and it’s an accurate ending for the one good cop in the sea of bad cops. Cole would never be a man who would submit to unjust demands and that’s why it was so easy to give him up and it makes you as the player feel like a great injustice has been done to this man.

Gameplay:
I hated driving. Like most open-world rockstar games (all of them) I just hate driving around for endless amounts of time to get to different story locations with little to do. You can respond to various dispatch calls, but generally, the world is pretty empty and lifeless. It’s not that driving controlled poorly or felt awful, it was just so incredibly boring for me. I always preferred just having my partner drive for me.
The gameplay ended up feeling pretty repetitive. I wish it felt more like I was solving an actual case myself instead of being spoonfed information each time I picked up an object. It was boring that Cole would just tell me what to do.
Interrogations were probably my favorite part of the entire game. I loved talking to people and trying to guess what they were thinking. I loved catching them in lies with hard evidence. If they ever made another L.A. Noire game I would hope they would just expand on the interrogation system. There were times when I wished I could have asked them more questions but the game just wouldn’t allow for that.

TL/DR:
L.A. Noire is an interesting game storywise, especially in the front half. The gameplay is okay but can get pretty repetitive after a while.

- I am dumb. no matter how much I pay attention to something, I still won’t be able to comprehend and decipher everything. it’s not the game’s fault that I struggle with remembering who everyone is, and that actually makes the game more enjoyable for me as a result.

- I LOVE the ability to have my partner drive to skip driving to the location, but may have used it too frequently. it’s nice to keep the game moving, but I’m sure I missed out on a bit. then again, I feel the game could have not been open-world and still retained the same feeling.

- the dialogue choices are too vague. it took me a bit to get used to the difference between Truth and Doubt and the difference between Doubt and Lie. I learned it’s always helpful to choose Lie if you’re suspicious about someone as it could potentially reveal a more obvious decision the game wants you to make, and you can always back out of it as well. on the other hand, the correct/incorrect chimes are a bit too obvious. I think it would have been so much more interesting if the game didn’t give me immediate, concrete feedback on how I was doing, and instead let events play out how I handled them.

- too much of this game felt meaningless. initially, my choices felt very validated with how actions progressed. as soon as I realized that the story wouldn’t have progressed any differently had I gotten everything correct or everything wrong, I didn’t feel as attached to the whole scope of the game anymore. the story itself is fantastic, but feels too linear when I think about the possibility of multiple endings based on how well I solved cases.

- I haven’t had a lot of gaming experiences, but this will definitely remain as one of the most unique ones for a long time. never before have I wanted to be a 1940’s detective; investigating crime scenes, conducting interviews, shooting out car tires, all while spouting now-outdated vernacular and trying to appreciate that new “bebop” music.

- bit clunky both in gameplay and the incredibly impressive facial animations making everything else look a bit lifeless. still enjoyable enough as a game, but can sometimes feel a bit more like a semi-interactive movie.

It was already a masterpiece before the memes but I'm grateful to have this game consume a not-negligible part of my entire personality.

This is definitely one of the best detective games you can buy. The crimes in the game feels gritty and realistic as they were based on real cases in 1940s Los Angeles. The facial motion capture is amazing, not just for the interrogation but the acting in cutscenes, making them really captivating to watch. The gameplay is quite linear, however the game provide you with enough freedom to make you feel like you are a detective, while not making the game too frustrating to play. There are also many cases where there are multiple endings and you have to decide who is the criminal upon interrogation. The interrogation in this game is amazing especially with the facial capture. While sometimes the actors exaggerated their facial movements, many times it is very hard to tell and you will have to review the evidence to decide whether they are lying, especially in the DLC cases. The investigation gameplay in this game is very satisfying as by collecting all the clues and making good decisions during interrogation will not only provide you with more clues but also make you more aware of the motives and the suspects, making subsequent interrogations more fun as you feel like you know what you are doing. This sense of progression make investigation feel very rewarding. The game story and characters are also very well written and keep you playing.

However if you think this game is like GTA, you won't enjoy it. The open world, while faithfully recapture Los Angeles, is lifeless and boring with nothing to do beside the repetitive Street Crimes. Most of the times you will have your partner driving for you since the map is way too oversized for a game like this. If you want a detective game, this is great.