L.A. Noire

L.A. Noire, the ambitious Noir game created by Team Bondi of Australia, is something of a confusing case (see what I did there?). It took a five year development process and a new facial scanning system called MotionScan, along with some really impressive boasts of what the game would entail. 
 
So did this game live up to the hype? Did the technology used work out? Well yes, and no. You see, for everything new and exciting L.A. Noire attempts to do, it falls down on some of the most basic mechanics a game of 2011 should have as standard.
 
We begin the game playing as a rookie beat cop, Cole Phelps, a hero of WWII and a man who has a straight moral compass. From the first mission we see the gameplay mechanic of clue finding in play, as you attempt to find a gun used in a shooting. Searching the area will eventually yield some results, and with a little incentive, you eventually find a suspect to interrogate. The main game is split between a number of desks, dealing with specific crimes. The first is Beat, followed by Traffic, then Homicide, Vice and lastly Arson. These different desks give new cases, some are excellent, mostly Homicide, while some like Vice and Arson, are just plain boring. The differentiation in missions is high in the first half of the game, with crimes ranging from simple murders, to serial killings, to the odd tail mission. Each mission utilizes the evidence mechanic well, and allows you to feel like your actually able to build a case against a suspect, interviewing Persons of Interest and learning all there is to know about their lives and dirty little secrets. 

The interrogation system is the backbone of the gameplay. And it doesn't really work. Its not that the idea is bad, its the actual mechanics that let it down. To put it simply, there are three options you can take in an interrogation: Truth, Doubt and Lie. You have to choose whether you believe the suspect or not, through their facial expressions and body language. Unfortunately, the options are convoluted, and oftentimes you pick the totally wrong option because what you think isn’t necessarily what you’ll get. This leaves you in a position to feel just a little annoyed when you repeatedly fail an interrogation, and are forced to reload, although this isn’t the case all the time, as the game rewards failure with other options, something that is welcome, but feels more like handholding in a game that centers around a mechanic such as interrogations. The character models are easy to read, but the options you are given are not a good measure of what Phelps will ask. This leads to many situations where you accuse the suspect of killing someone outright, and they shut down, making the rest of the questioning more frustrating.

The simple mechanics of the game leave a lot to be desired, as cars are blocky to drive and collision detection is terrible. Phelps cannot swim, and therefore suffers from the same debilitating fear of water that many pre-2011 game characters suffered from…but that’s the thing, this mechanic makes little to no sense. Phelps will die when submerged in a pool up past his waist, which really takes away from the realistic world the game is set in. The camera is just awful, as it stays in the same position no matter what way you’re facing, and moves at moments when you want it to stay in place. When you need it to zoom in at vital moments in the game, it zooms out, leaving you with blurred images that are hard to comprehend, making the game that much harder to play. Overall, many simple mechanics fell through the gaps while the devs were busy taking pretty and detailed pictures of actors faces. While this was a noble pursuit and a great way to make a game such as this, it is more often than not, not actually part of the main game. The shooting revolves around a simple cover and shoot mechanic, although the fist-fighting system is actually rather well done, but these situations are too few and far between to really make an impact on the game when it need it. Weapons can be retrieved from the boot of your car, but only when the game calls for it, and more often than not, you’ll stick with your pistol. The game attempts to use the same aiming system as Red Dead Redemption, but its nowhere near as precise, locking on to places where enemies were, instead of where they are now, making you wish it wasn’t there, as the turn mechanics while aiming are dirt slow and suffer from some minor issues, like aiming into the wall ahead of you while your in cover, just because the enemy is on the other side of said wall. It is a disappointing sight to behold, and really contributes to the feeling that the game was rushed around the facial motion mechanic. The health system is somewhat annoying, forsaking a health bar, for the new, ever greying screen. This would be acceptable, only the game is in a noir setting, and mostly everything is a monotone colour, making it hard for the player to see how much damage they have taken. A poor design choice, for a game in this day and age, in this setting. However, the ability to find clues on dead bodies, discover how they were killed draws you into the game, it is engaging and fun, really the only part of the mechanics that work flawlessly. The controller will vibrate over a particular item, and Cole can pick up and inspect it. The more clues you have, the better your chances of making a case stick.

The storyline is quite good at the beginning of the game, while you are tracking Phelps’ career as a beat cop to the Homicide desk. We are introduced to some of the most entertaining and well acted characters in the game, such as your array of partners, to the pure, Catholic, Irish police chief. These performances, along with some of the suspect’s performances, really make the game enjoyable, and draw you into the narrative. It’s a pity then, that Cole Phelps has the characteristics of cardboard, with all the emotion of my morning dump. He is simply a bland and boring character, who has little to no exposition given to his home life. He dodges questions about his time at war and his family, while simultaneously having the most annoying moral compass in existence, acting like a naïve boy scout more than a detective. Phelps has no real character to him, and what we do see of this character is only in passing, through some flashbacks, which make him look more irritatingly boyish and stupid. The saving grace for the characterizations in the game seem to be everyone but the protagonist, because they all seem to live in the world of the game, while Phelps sits on the outside, solving murders and not really showing any hint of humanity to make him seem in the least bit human. As games go, he’s a pretty shallow character, and we never really get an insight into his motivations, which is a major disappointment.

Note: I say at the beginning of the game, because as soon as you hit the halfway point, the Vice desk, another contrived plot is shoehorned into the game, as a replacement for the more interesting Homicide cases. It is by far a weaker plot, and really makes the game drag on another ten hours or so that it didn’t really need.

The free roam mechanic surround the beautiful city of L.A., recreated exactly to the late 1940’s, is a pleasure to look at, but not so much a pleasure to travel around, which you’ll want to do, as Street Crime side missions give you experience, which ranks you up from 1-20, giving you intuition points and extra suits with bonus’. Intuition points are given to the player in order to help them in some of the more difficult cases. Using one will allow you to see where clues are hidden in a large area, or give you a hint of which answers in an interrogation are not in any way useful to the situation. While this is a great idea, it once again falls flat, as the game only gives the player a handful of these points, and they can be misused at any time, leaving the player stranded and guessing during the random interrogation answer selection. A better idea, would have been that the longer and more successful a player is in interrogations, the easier it is to identify a tell, and select the right answer. Unfortunately, this system that is in place uses an old school method of either the process of elimination, or asking the game community for the most selected answer. This removes any need for skill in major interrogations and is a huge missed opportunity for Team Bondi to have broken into an original method of a gaming experience.

The street crimes are worth a mention, not for their content, but for the extreme distances they are placed apart and away from the player. You will be forced to turn around and take a convoluted route just to get to these situations, and you pretty much have to, because they grant a whopping 15+ XP every time you clear them, This is a not-so-quick, and not-so-easy of getting XP, but it’s the lesser of two evils, where the other option for extra XP outside the main cases consist of finding landmarks, which give the player 5+ XP, and with thirty monuments and forty street crimes, the smart player will take the street crimes over anything else. Alas, these are contrived and boring; with no differentiation from a plain old shoot out to chasing a perp.

There are many collectibles in L.A. Noire, from a whopping ninety-five cars to golden film reels and newspapers. And you’ll only ever find the newspapers, because they’re part of the plot, apparently. The cars are nice, but they don’t really warrant a search for all of them, as you’ll simply stick with the default cop-cruiser no matter what, as the siren makes travelling the city that much easier. So really, the collectibles are only far die-hard fans, and won’t really be a concern to the average player.

L.A. Noire is a good game that suffers from a serious case of neglect. Most of the simple mechanics are sloppy and frustrating, and the mechanics that it centers itself on are half-baked and could have been given more time. The story is strong in the first half of the game, but slowly slips into monotony and repetition as the game goes on, far past where it should have ended. Coupled with a disappointing end and more than a few issues with graphics, L.A. Noire falls far short of any expectations that were built up for it. A charming game; and one that I would recommend simply because of its out-of-the-box ideas, it seems rushed and unfinished, an unpolished game that could have, and should have been much more than what was given.

Pros:

• Excellent Voice acting
• Amazing facial animations
• Interesting cases in the first half of the game
• Clue finding system is solid and engaging
• Beautifully crafted city
  

Cons:

• Graphics are very poor
• Interrogation system does not work correctly
• Game begins to drag as time goes on
• Story feels rushed and unnecessary at times
• Lack of variety in side missions wastes potential of the city

The Verdict:

3/5

An average game, with some solid ideas and poor execution, recommendable, but flawed overall. Five years of development time, and this is what is created? Not a good show at all.

WTF? Moment: So much dead lady vag…seriously, shoudn’t they at least cover her? Pervy necrophiliacs…