A New Way To Play (that doesn't involve tennis)
It’s rare in the videogame industry to see an idea so radical it requires new technology to be created from scratch. It’s even rarer to see a situation where the money to fund that whole concept comes to fruition and the resulting game is actually a great experience as a result. Enter LA Noire, a title that carries the Rockstar banner but, when considering the publishers other projects, goes in an entirely different way.
Despite being set in an open world there are few car chases or shoot-outs to be had, even though both aspects are competently executed here. Driving is simply used as a way of engaging the player with the setting, while shooting is relegated mostly to side missions or select key moments. The core gameplay is a split between ‘investigation’ and ‘interrogation/conversation’ phases. The former has you looking at a crime scene and picking up evidence, allowing you to manipulate certain objects to gather more details. It’s certainly interesting as you slowly pick up more evidence to piece together what happened but the game makes it clear what things you need to find and it can become a little tedious later on. The interrogation phases are much more dynamic and difficult and require you to understand who you’re dealing with and have a good knowledge of the evidence you’ve gathered so far.
The oft mentioned new facial recording technology is by far the most impressive part of the game. Not only does allowed performers to actually act in the title immersive in itself, allowing you the player to respond to that acting is nothing short of a landmark in the videogame medium. Being able to decide if characters are lying or hiding things isn’t exactly new but responding to real, fully captured performances is. During interrogations you’ll start to get a handle on characters, figure out when to push them and when to hold back and perhaps even care about the fate of certain people. The feeling that you’re interacting with a person extends to your partners, bosses and the antagonists and you’ll warm to some and grow to dislike others, rarely with the game forcing your hand. In a nutshell the cast and the players’ reaction to them feels very organic.
It should be noted however that despite unparalleled acting the game is laboured with a script that’s merely decent. To its credit it maintains a mature tone throughout, never using its rating for anything other than serving the plot. In the videogame world a decent story is enough to put it near the top of the pack (perhaps even at the top) but compared to similar efforts in television and film, it falls short of brilliance.
For an experience that models itself after noire films it’s certainly odd that it features such an erratic pace at the start. A slow build up is sacrificed in favour of quick fire tutorial cases, sudden flashbacks and oddly placed gunfights. For the first hour or so your just told what to think of Cole Phelps and it’s only later that your allowed to make your own assumptions based on his actions and the performance of his portrayer. Relaying information on how to play the game could have been done in a more succinct way; one that allowed a more appropriate introduction.
In fact the layout of the game on the whole is detrimental to the players’ enjoyment as you’re forced to go work though each case desk in order. That means you’ll play all the traffic cases before moving on to the entirety of the homicide cases and so on; it eventually only serves to add a feeling of repetition to the proceedings. Had Team Bondi mixed things up a little it could have made starting a new case a little more exciting and unpredictable.
In years to come LA Noire will be looked at as one of the turning points for videogame narratives. It isn’t perfect and there certainly isn’t anything particularly special about the story it’s telling but the way it is executed is so fresh that it doesn’t matter. Repetition in the investigation gameplay or slight issues with choices not being clear in interviews can only go so far to dampen a superb experience. The people and setting in this story feel real and you’re allowed to influence and be a part of it, an experience little to no videogames have offered before.
