L.A. Noire (Video Game Review 5)

L.A. Noire is a video game that tries its best to be different, and new age, and succeeds, but at the expense of letting other aspects of the game fall short. Here's what I mean:

L.A. Noire is a 2011 action-adventure 3rd person shooter developed by Team Bondi and produced by Rockstar Games. L.A. Noire is set in Los Angeles in 1947 and challenges the player, controlling a Los Angeles Police Deptartment detective Cole Phelps (WWII War hero), to solve a range of crimes. Players must investigate crime scenes for clues, follow up leads, and interrogate suspects.

This game while not 100% developed by Rockstar Games, still has a semi Rockstar feel. With mediocre Rockstar graphics, the controls, etc. So anyone who has played other Rockstar titles such as GTA IV will be able to pick up this game with ease, control wise. I found no fault with the controls in this game, nor the music. I am a huge fan of jazz, and it is throughout the game. And as the title of the game suggests, it has a very film noir feel to it, which is good because that is what they were going for. Morals, sex, crime, etc. Are all apart of this game, but don't quite play out very well. The environment in this game is very cool, the coloring used in this game is beautiful and certainly plays homage to the stark blacks and whites of film noire. Driving around L.A. is fun because there are no sky scrapers, therefore, you can see lots of the blue sky. There is a new feature in this game never before seen that is pretty awesome. And that is a little tool called MotionScan. This device scans the actors faces for scenes they are acting, and when all is said and done, each characters face in this video game is astonishing. The best graphics in this game are the characters faces. Never before have I been able to see a characters facial expressions so well, a characters emotion, their anger, their sadness, frustration, nervousness. It all shows in their facial expressions and you can see it all, which is amazing. I can definitely see MotionScan being used in the future of video games. MotionScan was primarily used in this game so that the you the player can read peoples faces while interrogating them, then you can tell whether they are lying or not.

Now for those of you expecting to buy hookers, go to strip clubs, kill random pedestrians, go to the comedy club with your best bud, etc. You will be disappointed, or not, I don't know. What I do know, is that this game should not be compared to GTA games, except for some of the graphics, and the controls. It is not very open world, L.A. Noire is extremely linear. However, you can still take anybody's car only now it's legal, because you're commandeering their vehicle. And while you do get fined for hitting people with your car, damaging your car, or damaging property, it doesn't mean you can't do it. I still drove wrecklessly as ever, I just accepted that my score at the end of each case would not be as good as a result, which was fine with me considering I was able to drive how I wanted, even so it did kind of suck that I was penalized for doing so, but it makes sense for your character, being a good cop and all. The story in this game is say-so, you play Cole Phelps who was a war hero from WWII, he has a wife and kids, and now he's trying to work his way up through the legal system from Traffic to Homicide, to chief of police. There is not much to the story in this game, at first. But there are certain points where it feels as though the game is trying to present to you little bits and pieces of certain things that may or may not come back later into a huge grand scheme of things, but you never can really tell because it is all just way too vague. Furthermore, there are times when it feels as though the developers of the game are trying to pull conflict out of their 'you know what' to add to the otherwise somewhat empty plot, and it was that moment that I knew this game was not well planned. It begins to feel a little rushed towards the end like the developers were getting tired of making the game. I could divide this game into 5 parts. Part 1: Pretty awesome, part 2: AWESOME, part 3: WTF?! That's lame!, part 4: BORING, part 5: woah that just happened way too fast. The game only having a pretty awesome, and an awesome (2/5 of the the game) is not good, in my opinion. It was like the developers started strong, but then they didn't know where to go with it so they struggled to throw in plot devices that just made for a pretty boring game story wise.

This game is quite linear in that you go to a crime scene, find clues, question people, then either interrogate someone and charge them, or just charge someone else for the crime, with a chase scene or shootout thrown in there at some point. Rinse, repeat, for each and every case, it got to be a pretty predictable sequence of events. Going into this game, I was under the impression I would have certain choices, and based off my choices there would be different consequences, this was not the case. When interrogating or questioning individuals you are given 3 options after every question and response, you can either believe what they're saying "truth," you can doubt what they're saying "doubt," or you can flat out not believe what they are saying "lie," in which you have to present some evidence you found earlier to prove that they are lying. First off, I just have to say, the "doubt," option is not doubt at all. Beware, when you choose doubt, your character will not say "I don't know if I like what you're saying, we'll come back to you later," no instead your character will be enraged and go hulk on their ass saying things like "LISTEN HERE PUNK! WE DON'T LIKE UNCOOPERATIVE PUNKS! NOW GIVE ME SOME ANSWERS OR I'LL BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF!!!!!" So that may have been exaggerated a BIT, but seriously, the 'doubt' option was labeled wrong. It should have been labeled 'flip your shit.' I would have been happy with the options 'truth,' 'lie,' and 'flip your shit.' Also, when you select the wrong option, or accuse someone wrongly, there are no consequences. I did not feel obligated by any means to think through my accusations, or choose my options of truth lie or flip your shit. Because I knew that in the end everything was predetermined, no matter what you did as a character, this was going to happen nothing else. The developers don't allow for any choices of your own. It is like playing a game as a little kid with your friends and your friend is controlling everything that happens, that isn't fun! And with today's day and age of open world, open decision, choices lead to consequences game era, I expected a bit more. But alas, the developers did not feel this way. They wanted everything THEIR way. It was impossible to lose this game, unless you got shot to death. Even if you yourself, the person knew you were accusing the wrong person, that they had been framed, it didn't matter. You just had to sit back and watch in agony as the dull character you controlled accused wrongly one after another, when it was obvious that you were after the wrong person. Enough of my ranting though, let's do to it!

Story: 6/10
This story starts out to seem pretty intriguing. It tricks the player into thinking there will be an awesome story. However, as events unfold, the story gets revealed as being a very shallow, not so interesting story, that you otherwise would expect from a Noire styled game.

Sound: 9/10
The sound in this game very well done. The soundtrack is very fitting with jazz playing over the radio as you drive, and eerie trumpets playing as you investigate a crime scene etc. It all fit very well into the jazz of 1947 as well as the noire feel of the game. The voice acting was also awesome, due to every character in the game being acted out by actual actors. The only thing keeping the sound from getting a 10/10 was the redundancy. Every crime scene had the SAME. EXACT. SONG. playing while you investigated. And every car chase, every foot chase, every shootout, had the SAME. EXACT. SONG. playing.

Gameplay: 5/10
The only thing earning this category a 5, are the decent controls, and the MotionScan graphics. Otherwise I was very disappointed with a game that had so much hype. The lack of consequences, the predictable nature, the linear gameplay in combination with no choices you yourself get to make, made for a not so great game for me. On top of that there were various glitches I ran into, that just made no sense to me. None were game ending, two were really weird. And one was just frustrating and made me laugh at how stupid it was that it could happen. First off, I was investigating a scene, when my partner comes up behind me. I turn around, and he won't move, so now I am trapped in a corner of this room, and it takes me close to 15 minutes to get out of the corner, and I was only able to move when he finally decided to move. Normally in a game, you could punch someone to get them to move, but with being a goody two shoes cop, you can't do that, to ANYone, unless designated at the right time by the developers. So I was stuck with having to wait for my partner to move out of the way on his own. Another glitch was when I was having to blend in, I was supposed to sit down at a table and read a newspaper, but instead my character crouched next to the chair, and the newspaper was held open at the table as if a ghost was reading it, and I was trying to sniff the ghosts butt. And lastly, there was one cut scene where one guy was talking to another, but you could not hear anything the other guy was saying, the other guy wasn't even moving his mouth. At first I thought it was supposed to be that way. But then at the end of the cut scene a hat was floating away, where a person should have been walking, wearing the hat, that was bizarre, and caused me to not get anything out of the cut scene itself. One last thing tarnishing this category's score were the crime scenes. You don't ever look at stuff YOU think is suspicious, you just walk around, and wait for the game to sound off a chime, and for your controller to vibrate, then hit a button to investigate whatever made that chime and vibration. What makes this aspect of the game even more dull is the fact that they will do the chime on objects that are irrelevent. You pick it up then say "it'll take a smarter man then ME to link this piece of evidence!" That's when you're thinking "WHY WAS THERE A CHIMEY VIBRATION THINGY THEN???!?!?!!!" I could deal with this when I was in the homicide division, when things were interesting. But when it got to vice it just got boring, and then when I had to investigate arson, that just blew my mind with how boring that was. Everything is burnt to a crisp so you yourself have NO idea what you are looking for, so you are forced to walk around blindly waiting to run into a chimey vibration thingy to hit the button to investigate further. Alright I should stop complaining, and get on with it.

Final Verdict: 6.7/10.......

Should you get this game?

No. Just, in short, no. Okay maybe that's a little harsh. If you are okay with being spoon fed your evidence, and not being a detective yourself, and letting your character decide everything for you, and not facing any consequences, and repetitive music, in combination with linear predictable gameplay. Then hooray, this is JUST the game for you! Otherwise, don't bother. The 1-3 hours of playtime it takes to get through homicide is not even worth the rental of the game.

The game is rated mature for blood and gore, nudity, sexual themes, strong language, use of drugs, and violence. (This game is quite graphic, I do not recommend this game to anyone under the age of 17. Okay, maybe 16 is okay, but definitely not 15. Maybe 15 and a half? No, on second thought, I don't recommend this game to anyone, unless you are one of the few that the last paragraph may pertain to.)