Game Review: L. A. Noire

Well guys, the time has come. It’s time for my very first game review on the OMBG site. I know I originally said that I would post reviews at the end of the month, but I lost track of time. : / Sorry. So lets just have me post a review on the start of each month! Sound better? Cool! Well, lets get going!

Short Summary:

L.A. Noire is Rockstar’s latest release and takes place in 1947 Los Angeles. You play as Cole Phelps, a WWII veteran who returns home to his wife and family and becomes a police officer in the LAPD. Throughout the story, you work your way through the ranks from a street cop to a detective in the LAPD’s Vice desk by gathering evidence, interviewing suspects, and making arrests.

Score:

L. A. Noire was an amazingly fun game to play. With a compelling story and a revolutionary new 3D character model creation, it’s certainly one of my picks for game of the year. With that said, L.A. Noire receives the score of a 4.5 out of 5.

Body of Review:

Game Play:
L. A. Noire pretty much plays like any other Rockstar game. So basically, if you are familiar with the game engine of Red Dead Redemption or GTA 4, you’ll catch on to L. A. Noire pretty fast.

Look of the Game:
The game featured state of the art motion capturing cameras that filmed the voice actors faces while they did their lines to capture the actor’s facial expressions. So for the first time that I’ve ever seen in a game, the character models in the game are actually based off of the actors who play them. This is easily the coolest thing in a video game that I have ever seen. Like I said earlier, your character is a police detective and the main objective is to interrogate suspects in order to arrest the culprit. In order to do so, you have to be able to tell if a suspect is lying or telling the truth. This is where the 3D motion capture comes into play. With this new technique, you can see facial expressions, shifty eyes, and uncertain looks on the suspects faces. All of which can be used to determine if the person being questioned is telling the truth or not. To be completely honest, it can be a little creepy because it’s so lifelike.

But perhaps L. A. Noire’s biggest star is the city of Los Angeles itself. It’s almost like Rockstar went back in time to 1947 L.A. and copied every part of the city and put it in the game. The landscape is awesome to say the least. One part of the story requires you to go around to famous landmarks in the city and each one is found exactly where they actually exist in real life. Rockstar really went out of their way to ensure the players were actually in Los Angeles.

Overall Game and Story:
The overall story of the game was really good. You start out as a street cop working traffic and eventually work your way up in the ranks by solving crimes until you get to the homicide desk. Then you solve murders until you get promoted to the Vice desk, which deals primarily with narcotics. Then at the end of the second act Cole Phelps goes through a character downfall in which you get demoted to the arson desk where you spend act three trying to redeem yourself as a police detective and a person. All the while you see flashbacks from when you were in WWII and find out what happened to Cole Phelps in the war and how he becomes a decorated war hero.

The game was very fun to play, especially the parts where you are looking through crime scenes gathering evidence, examining murder victim’s bodies and interrogating suspects. The amount of detail the bodies had when gathering evidence was pretty cool if you ask me.

Each desk you get assigned to will give you a different partner. Which comes in pretty handy when you need to go somewhere in the city. Unlike GTA or Red Dead, LA Noire won’t allow you to set a way point to your destination, and the city streets of LA can be pretty confusing. Luckily, your partner always know which way to got. You can either drive the car yourself and ask your partner for directions or you can just hold down the Y button, which is used to get in and out of cars, and your partner will drive to the destination. If there is some dialogue that needs to be said during the ride, it will be said and then you will skip to your destination. I really liked this option because I’m a horrible driver in both real life and in video games. The only time you can have your partner drive is when you are in a high speed car chase though.

Something that was really different about this game compared to other Rockstar games is that it’s not as open as Red Dead or GTA. It’s a very linear game. A mission, or case in the matter of LA Noire, goes like this: get your orders from your CO, go to a crime scene, gather evidence, determine person(s) of interest, interrogate said person(s) of interest, and finally make an arrest based on the evidence you’ve gathered. That’s pretty much it. You can choose to solve a street crime during the main case if you want to, but if you don’t, it won’t change anything about the outcome of the game. Another thing is that you can’t harm civilians. You are a good guy the entire game. You can’t even hit pedestrians with your car, they will just run or dive out of the way. That actually kinda bums me out, because I thought that was one of the better parts of Red Dead and GTA. But what can you do?

Conclusion:
All in all, LA Noire was an amazing game. The new motion capture technique along with the story that was told was wonderful. I would not be surprised at all it LA Noire ends up being named game of the year by one the video game outlets.

Well that’s it for my first game review. If you have suggestions for my next review, please let me know. If not, I’ll let ya’ll know what next months game will be. Thanks guys!!