By Sam Coles:
There are those one off games that you really want a
sequel to but unfortunately it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. L.A
Noire is one of those games that got a lot of praise with its fantastic story
with a new twist on the point and click adventure genre with action segments to
the interrogation scenes as you evaluate the evidence. Due to the expensive
production Team Bondi had to close its doors and a sequel doesn’t look hopeful.
L.A Noire takes place during the late 1940’s during
the golden age of Hollywood with society trying to rebuild itself after the
horrors of the Second World War. You play as Cole Phelps a fresh face in the
L.A.P.D he is a war veteran who trying to make a fresh start in society with
the classic American dream with his wife and the quite literal white picket
fence. He is recognised for his investigation skills and it’s not long before
he is promoted to detective and is working in Traffic.
The gameplay is what you would expect in a Rockstar
production where you traverse an open world to get to your next missions while
completing side activities and looking for secrets. The open world just serves
as the aesthetic more than anything you’ll be focusing on the crime scenes you
travel to where you are examining evidence whether it is burn out cars or to
mangled and deformed corpses. The pacing is great in this game because it is
varied with different segments from investigating crime scenes, shootouts with
criminals, car chases and crimes in progress it breaks up the game and keeps
you invested. In terms of the gunplay it will be very familiar if you have
played Red Dead Redemption and GTA IV as it basically has the same control
scheme.
The great aspect in this game is that you’re not investigating
the same thing all the time because as you progress through the story you’ll be
promoted to different branches in the department from Traffic, Homicide, Vice
and then you’re demoted to Arson in the story which I will not spoil. This game
does stretch across three discs on 360 because the scale of the game and the
visuals.
The presentation is amazing! Even for a game that
came out on the Xbox 360 and PS3 5 years ago it still holds up with a great
recreation of 1940’s Los Angles. They used a great technique called motion
scanning where they got the actor and recorded his or her face when he or she
were reading their dialogue and at the time it was the most convincing visual
performance. You see each detail of their face from a subtle eye brow raise to
a grimace. The detail in crime scenes is insane especially with the corpses
this game is not for the squeamish because it very graphic with the bodies with
detailed lacerations and bruising.
The only problem I have with this game applies to
most games from Rockstar from this period and that is controlling someone on
foot is a pain because it can feel like you turning a wheelbarrow filled with
depleted uranium and you end up getting stuck in doorways a lot.
LA Noire is a dark and grim tale with great investigation
gameplay and is a definitely not for children, it shows that video games have
evolved to an adult medium with an intelligent and mature story with great
gameplay. It’s a shame that there won’t be a sequel anytime soon but the one
hit wonders are generally the best.
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