L.A. Noire | Through the Shattered Lens

(This review is based on my experience replaying L.A. Noire. Be sure to reread Leonard Wilson’s review, from when the game was originally released.)

I recently replayed L.A. Noire, a game that I enjoyed when it was first released in 2011. I was curious to see if, after eight years, it still held up. The first time I played L.A. Noire, it was on the Xbox 360. For the replay, I used the version that was released for the PS4. This version included extra rewards and cases that were not originally included in the game.

L.A. Noire takes place in Los Angeles in the years immediately following World War II. For the majority of the game, you control the actions of Cole Phelps, a decorated USMC veteran who works his way up through the LAPD. He starts as a uniformed policeman before being promoted to detective. The game follows him through three different department until, as a result of a personal scandal, he ends up being demoted down to arson. Along the way, Phelps learns the truth about the Black Dahlia murderer and gets involved in the deadly aftereffects of a morphine heist. Through a series of flashbacks, we also discover that Phelps may not be the war hero that everyone thinks that he is. Cole’s an interesting hero because he’s so openly ambitious and judgmental that he is sometimes easy to dislike. Nearly everyone who works with Cole in the game either beings their partnership disliking him or grows to dislike him over time. Cole can be abrasive but he also has a strong moral sense and, when he says that he’s a better detective than his partners, he has a point. From the start, the games teases us about Cole’s inevitable downfall but, when it actually does happen, it catches both Cole and the player by surprise.

L.A. Noire is an open world game, meaning that Phelps can temporarily abandon a case and spend some time walking and driving around Los Angeles. The game’s recreation of 1947 Hollywood is impressive but, when compared to other open world games, there’s not much to do when you’re not actually on a mission. This isn’t like Grand Theft Auto, where you can spends weeks mugging people and stealing cars until deciding to return a phone call so that you can get your next task. L.A. Noire is a story-centered game so be prepared to spend most of your time searching crime scenes for clues, going back to the police station to pick up lab reports, and interrogating suspects.

When L.A. Noire first came out, it was the interrogation scenes that received the most attention. The game used MotionScan technology and 32 cameras to capture every possible facial expression of the actors appearing in the game. When you ask someone a question, you can watch their expressions while they answer and make the determination whether they’re lying or telling the truth, as well as whether to be a good cop or a bad cop. You can watch an liar refuses to make eye contact with you or as an innocent man sweats out an aggressive questioning. It puts you right in the world of the game, though I was disappointed to discover that wrongly accusing someone of lying doesn’t actually have much of an effect on how each case ends.

The main flaw with L.A. Noire‘s stoy is that, during the final fourth of the game, a new character is introduced. Jack Kelso served with Cole in the Marines and knows the truth about Cole’s wartime “heroism.” For the final few cases, Jack replaces Cole as the playable character and Cole is reduced to supporting him. Because Jack is written to be perfect and basically has none of Cole’s flaws, he’s also not a very interesting protagonist. Switching from playing Cole to Kelso bothered me the first time that I played L.A. Noire and it bothered me even more when I replayed it. A final cut scene, which revealed that Kelso knew more than he originally let on, did not help.

Fortunately, the rest of the game still held up very well. The cases are all challenging without being impossible to solve and the game does a great job of recreating the atmosphere of classic California noirs like Chinatown and L.A. Confidential. Cole, his partners, and all of the suspects are vividly written and voiced characters and the cases that Cole works for Homicide are just creepy enough to make this game appropriate for October playing. Be careful chasing the Black Dahlia killer into the catacombs. I didn’t bother to pay attention to where I was going and I spent an hour running around in circles before I finally found him and promptly got gunned down.

There are puzzles to be solved and suspects to be pursued. This game may mostly be about interrogating people and analyzing clues but it does have its share of car chases. Fortunately, if you fail to complete an action scene too many times in a row, the game will give you the option of just skipping it. When you’re working with a partner and heading to a crime scene, that game also give you the option of telling your partner to drive to the location. That’s something I, being among the directionally challenged, appreciated.

However, if you do enjoy driving through a video game, L.A. Noire‘s recreation of Los Angeles in the 40s has much to recommend it. Driving through the game’s version of Los Angeles, you’ll find plenty of evidence of America’s post-World War II optimism. New houses are being constructed. Innocent young women are hanging out on every street corner, looking to become a star. The theater marquees advertise movies like Odd Man Out. All of the famous Hollywood landmarks are lovingly recreated. An early case leads to you searching for clues behind the Hollywood sign. Another case actually leads to a firefight at the old Intolerance set while yet another case tests how much attention you’ve been paying by requiring you to solve a series of riddles that will lead you from one landmark to another. In the tradition of Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy, L.A. Noire challenges you to take a look at what’s happening underneath Los Angeles’s pleasing surface.

As a game, L.A. Noire holds up well. I won’t hold my breath for that sequel that was promised seven years ago but I did enjoy replaying it.

It was a dark and stormy night, the scent of blood in the rain, and I found myself huddled in front of my XBox.

In the gaming world, bringing out a new IP can be tricky. If you have a great design team and a fantastic story, sometimes players will gravitate to it. Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed and Rocksteady/Eidos/WB’s Batman: Arkham Asylum are great examples of a new IP that actually managed to stand on it’s own. EA’s Mirror’s Edge, though one of my favorite games, didn’t garner enough interest to keep EA/Dice from shelving any possible sequels. I believe the problem with Mirror’s Edge was that it was a niche game. If you loved parkour/freerunning and dealing with puzzles, it was a fantastic game. If you were nauseated by first person movement, you never touched it.

And this is the danger that Rockstar’s L.A. Noire faces. It’s a detective story, and it’s going to be hard pressed to pull the Halo and Call of Duty shooter crowd (myself included) into its web. Unlike other Rockstar Games, you don’t spend too much time trying to cause mayhem to the city or roaming around. You can play in the sandbox, sure, but you also have a purpose in trying to stop crime. In a sense, you could compare it to the Spider Man games, sans web shooters and sticky fingers/feet. Know this, if you don’t at least watch someone play this game or try it yourself, you are seriously missing out on something grand.

Let me repeat: “You are seriously missing out on something grand, if you don’t at least try it.”

In L.A. Noire, you play Cole Phelps, fresh out of WW II with a Silver Star and logically moving to a role of a officer in the L.A.P.D. Quick to make a name for himself, Cole takes the initiative to further his career by solving the crimes he comes across. This moves him through the ranks and brings him to some of the more high profile cases in LA during the 1940’s. You can move through five different styles of investigations, ranging from Homicide to Vice to Arson. The case system in L.A. Noire is very cool, and requires you to walk the perimeter of a crime scene to examine the clues that are around. The music in the game helps to let you know if you’re moving too far away from the crime scene (the music will stop playing), if you’ve stumbled onto a clue (a chime), or if you’ve managed to collect all of the clues in an area (an uplifting melody). What’s important to note is that gathering evidence isn’t as easy as picking up an object and adding it to your inventory. You have to sometimes turn the object around in Cole’s hands to make sure that he sees (he sees, not that you see) something of particular about it. It takes the Detective Mode of Batman: Arkham Asylum up a notch in that even you may find clues and info in both games, L.A. Noire lets you choose how to incorporate it in your interrogations. It would be interesting to see if Arkham City has a similar approach along the line. The Interrogation features of L.A. Noire introduces a new technology to Rockstar’s arsenal called MotionScan. This tech, similar to what was used in The Social Network allowed them to map the actors facial movements. This becomes a key part of the interrogations in that you can effectively ‘read’ a witness and tell if they are lying to you or possibly have some doubts to what they’re telling you. I haven’t seen anything like this since Intrigue! For the Commodore 64, so it’s pretty refreshing to encounter the system here.

The one problem I do have with L.A. Noire so far is that the Interrogation System (at least in one of the first 3 cases I handled) seemed to run in a loop. When I fouled up an Interrogation, I was forced to redo it until I got it right. I believe it was because of the case I was working on (it was literally the introduction to Interrogating), and that other cases may not do this. If all of the interrogations have that style, that could become a problem. The whole “do it until you get it right” is great in a game like Mirror’s Edge, but it would be nice to see a case slip from your fingers because you botched something.

You’ll also find a number of cameos from various actors in L.A. Noire. Keith Szarabajka (The Dark Knight) is the narrator of the story, and you’ll also run into Courtney Gains (Memphis Belle, The Burbs) and many others (including Fringe’s John Noble), which adds to this.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Rockstar Game without the Sandbox to play in. The Sandbox here is Los Angeles, 1947. I can’t comment on how realistic it looks, as I’ve never been to L.A., but for the purposes of this game, it makes sense. From what I’ve played so far, it’s not as rich and picturesque as Red Dead Redemption, but it does definitely fit the atmosphere of a noir story. Shadowy corners, dark alleys, it’s done quite well. Add to that the music of the story, a mixture of Jazz and action paced tunes, and you’re pretty much in a detective story all your own. Overall, L.A. Noire breaks a lot of new ground in what it achieves. You won’t get the Grand Theft Auto experience in that you’ll go crazy shooting and crashing through the city, and it might not be for every audience out there, but for those who love detective stories or crime dramas, it’s a definite gem.