OXCGN’s L.A. Noire Review

A Landmark of Interactive Entertainment

by exterminat

©2011 Nicholas Laborde

To say we at OXCGN have been anticipating L.A. Noire would be quite the understatement.

You may be familiar with the countdown articles we did, chronicling the best in film noir and crime thrillers.

After what seems an eternity, Rockstar and Team Bondi‘s revolutionary L.A. Noire has finally arrived.

Does it live up to the hype? Or is it a victim of being too ahead of its time?

Let’s also not get into the ‘which platform performs best rubbish’ etc . . . this is about ‘the game’ – not a platform.

NB:- This review contains NO SPOILERS. So feel free to read freely, friends.

I’m Detective Cole Phelps, badge 1247

Rockstar’s new L.A. Noire takes place in 1947 Los Angeles, California, post-World War II. A returning ‘hero’ of sorts, Cole Phelps, is the focal point of this wild tale of grit and gallantry.

Phelps fought on Okinawa from early 1945, which saw him lead a campaign there and was returned home after being wounded during combat. During his time there, his actions earned him the Silver Star, one of the United States’ highest military honors (during that time, the second highest honor available, whereas today it is the third highest).

Returning home to Los Angeles, Phelps decided to join the Los Angeles Police Department as a ‘rookie cop’, and that’s where our story really begins. He suffers from various flashbacks to his time on Okinawa throughout the game, giving you a sort of backstory on what has happened to Phelps prior to him returning home, and at times, from events earlier in his life. All of which helps you understand Cole Phelps better, helping you get a better grasp on what has happened, and where it might affect him.

Working a typical day as a ‘beat cop‘, Phelps stumbles upon a murder and takes it into his hands when detectives seem dismissive of the crime. After solving it and being commended for his work by Captain James Donnelly of Homicide, he does yet another case outside of his department revolving around the murder of a man found in an alleyway, which leads to interrogating several people in the process, and ultimately reigning victorious after a chase where he apprehends the perpetrator.

His skill and aptitude earn him a promotion to Detective, working first on the Traffic desk. This is where the nitty-gritty of L.A. Noire really begins: solving cases and uncovering human wrongdoing in a meticulous process, slowly escalating from desk to desk with the stakes raising each time.

Each level of promotion and crime investigation in L.A. Noire is divided into ‘desks’, with each one bringing a unique partner for Cole, its own cases, and an assortment of side activities. These come in the form of various radio calls for assistance, which you can accept or decline at your leisure. But accepting them does help you gain ranking, intuition points, and help unravel certain aspects of the game, some of which become more apparent later on in the game.

The ‘desks’ in ascending order are Patrol, Traffic, Homicide, Administrative Vice, and finally, the much sought after Arson division. As stated earlier, each brings with it a new partner for Cole to work with, new street crimes and fresh cases different from the previous desk. His previous and future partners are also part-n-parcel of the game throughout the entire game.

It’s not as if a new character suddenly appears; you simply get assigned to the new partner as you move up the ranks. You still interact with other ‘cast members’ throughout the game, but on a different, natural level.

• L.A. Noire screenshot slideshow

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In L.A. Noire, the gameplay largely revolves around receiving a case at a briefing or over the radio, investigating the initial crime-scene (CSI style – san the modern-day forensics) or report, collecting evidence from said scene and interrogating people at the scene, as well as later on when they are uncovered, with the latter two occurring multiple times throughout each particular case. It plays and feels very similar to Grand Theft Auto IV, but these notions are purely superficial.

And please, make no mistake: L.A. Noire couldn’t be farther from the style and tone of the GTA series; shooter fans looking for a run-n-gun fun-feast will not find a gun-haven here. Move along people, nothing to see here…

In fact, you can’t even pull out a gun until the game deems it time! The odd times that you can, you’ll find that the penalty for using it is not favorable to you. This is a game from the perspective of a law enforcement officer, not a criminal hell-bent on success by any means necessary, or a bent-cop who believes in shooting first, asking questions later and extracting goods, money or privileges where possible.

The investigative method is in full swing in L.A. Noire, and part of it involves interrogating suspects, or anyone related to an investigation who could have information for you that could lead you to more witnesses, evidence, or ideally, new suspects. At crime scenes, evidence is scattered all over for you to manually pick up and manipulate. It’s quite intuitive, and the level of detail within the game, especially on smaller things, is astounding.

Mind you, not everything that you can interact with is in fact evidence, and Detective Cole Phelps will usually remark as much when inspecting it, but the thing is, you never know IF that packet of cigarets, or gum-wrapper is evidence – or not, until you check it out. Which really helps put you in the space of a real-world detective for the game.

Cases are solved with investigation

& good-old ‘Cop’s Intuition’

When questioning someone, you have a ‘case-book’ that will display questions that you can ask. Cole asks the question, and then the player has one of three choices after the suspect responds: Truth, Doubt or Lie. Truth is when you believe the person involved is telling you the truth and can branch the interrogation from a right answer.

Most of the time, though, you’ll find yourself hitting Doubt as a response to the answers you’re given. Doubting someone is essentially saying that you know a person is lying, but have no evidence to prove so.

Lie, on the other hand, is when you purposely call the person out on their lie and have evidence to prove so. It can be quite hazy when you have multiple clues, though, and sometimes the obvious choices to prove their lies are not the ones you need to pick. But be warned, often the most obvious response is not always the most – well – obvious one to pick. This is where your ‘cop’s intuition’ comes in.

In fact, L.A. Noire in general can be a tad hazy! Thankfully, you have ‘intuition’ points that can assist with your case. In an interrogation, players can choose to use an intuition point which can remove one of the three responses, and will remove any completely wrong evidence if you picked to call out a Lie. You can also choose to “Ask the community”, and data is collected which will show you the percentage of players who picked each of the three choices. The former is the more helpful.

Apart from that, intuition points can be used to reveal the location of all clues in an area of investigation if you get particularly stumped (which you will – trust me on that one). How do you get these points, you might ask?

Accomplishing interrogations, investigating cases and street crimes in L.A. Noire nets you experience which enables you to ‘rank up’. There are twenty total levels to be achieved throughout the game, and each time a level is achieved, an intuition point is added.

Cases are only a small part of the immersive world of L.A. Noire. When not solving cases, it’s enjoyable to just roam the wonderful recreation of 1947 Los Angeles, taking in the sights and solving street crimes as they come up. And surprisingly, these side crimes never get boring. Driving in a cop car (which you’ll be doing for much of your Noire experience) nets you access to a police radio.

Known as Car 11 King [regardless of what police car you're in], you become attached to your police transport and the extras it can provide. Any time when driving around, your police radio will send out a message regarding one of forty different street crimes that you can respond to.

If you choose to, each one is different and provides a welcome break from the intense mood set by the main storyline.

If police vehicles aren’t your thing, there are 95 total vehicles for players to find, several of which are hidden. In the area of hidden things, thirteen newspapers can be found throughout the main cases that tell a backstory regarding a Dr. Fontaine, a major character involved in events outside of the main storyline, which eventually come into play at the very end of the game.

Each newspaper shows a lengthy cutscene telling one small aspect of this overarching conspiracy. Along with these tid-bits, there are also fifty ‘film reels’ to be found which open up new cutscenes and story exposition for you.

Breathing life into gaming

By this point, you may be saying, “Well, this seems rather cool, but what does it really accomplish, and what’s so ‘new’ about it all?” Well, my friend, L.A. Noire is the flagship product of Australia’s Team Bondi, using a brand new technology called MotionScan.

MotionScan is a new innovation that involves recording ‘real actors’ faces during voice work recordings of the various scripts throughout the game, so as to capture every aspect of human emotion with real facial expressions.

Think about it; gaming has never really had well-done, true facial animations in real-time (not CGI). And in a game where you have to call out people who aren’t telling the truth, using the characters expressions to determine what avenue you will take with further questioning and investigations. It’s very much required to complete the experience of L.A. Noire to its fullest extent.

Everything is captured from simple eyebrow raises, nose twitches, eye contact, or lack there-of, evasive reactions, mannerisms and more, and it creates one of the most unique experiences available in the field of interactive entertainment thus far. What L.A. Noire really nails down is creating human characters; 400 of them to be exact.

No other game has even had a casting roll that large for an entire cast of interactive characters in a game, from simple shop keepers to numerous villains, bank tellers and gun merchants, to the doctor at the L.A Morgue.

It’s a bit like being part of the TV series, Lie To Me, which  relies on just such things to solve cases others would normally miss. Think of yourself as a sudo Dr. Cal Lightman, who is played by the brilliant Tim Roth, people either love him or hate him, but either way, he plays the role superbly, and so will you in L.A. Noire.

Nathan Drake is a good example of a ‘human’ character in gaming, and we all know we need more Drakes in the gaming world. L.A. Noire is a game full of Drakes, but much, much better. Remember, we’re “talking” with 400 + actors here, not one actor playing a voice roll or a simple MoCap character like Nathan, as good as he is, he’s no Cole Phelps and cast.

It’s extremely  difficult to put into words at times, but every single character in L.A. Noire feels alive. You’re not talking to a bunch of pixels with a voice; you’re interacting quite literally with a living, breathing character that will respond to your actions in very realistic ways. Surprisingly they also react to events that occur within the game world as they unfold, even without your direct interaction. Much like a movie, so L.A. Noire is basically an interactive game-movie as it were.

Australia’s Team Bondi are geniuses for creating and employing this amazing technology and will most certainly reap the rewards of what it will do for gaming. It has taken them a total of 8 years to bring L.A Noire to fruition, from initial conception, when it was just a pencil-n-paper adventure, through to the development of the MotionScan technology prior to the release of the current generation of consoles, and then to where we are see it today. Rockstar have mumbled that the technology will see use in future Rockstar games, and there does look like a definite possibility that there will be a follow-up to L.A. Noire.

L.A. Noire tells one of the most powerful stories in gaming, and when it was all said and done, the game struck an emotional chord with me like no other has in the past. I’ve never cried in a game or as a result of actions that occurred within a game, but the end of L.A. Noire was a moving moment that I will never forget. If more games could engender such reactions, then the difference between game and movie will narrow even further still.

Remarkably, L.A. Noire is the ONLY game to have ever been featured at a movie festival, appearing just before release at the Tribeca Film Festival which took place between April 20 – May 1 2011. Rockstar released a 60min ‘Feature’ film using footage from the game at the festival, a landmark feat for a video game. They say that Rockstar will release an ‘L.A. Noire film’ in several months much along the lines of the Red Dead Redemption one. This of course is a brilliant achievement for gaming in general, and even more so for Australia’s Sydney based Team Bondi and Rockstar Games.

It’s a compelling, paramount tale of crime, murder, nonsense, conspiracy, violence, morality, and most importantly, humanity.

Similar to how Harper Lee‘s classic American novel To Kill A Mockingbird inspired its readers to become lawyers, L.A. Noire is inspiration to become a member of law enforcement; for others, it’s inspiring them to join the ranks of the gaming world, and help take the medium even further.

If nothing else, you will finish this title with a renewed respect for your local police officers and what they do for a living.

A landmark of interactive entertainment

L.A. Noire is, in the most justified way, a landmark of interactive entertainment and the new standard for video game narrative.

Never before has a game done something on this scale or the method of execution that L.A. Noire imposes. [Ed.: In fact, it has already set up a 'precedent' which one studio is already following. Ubisoft have already embarked on their own 'style' of Motion-Scan facial technology called "MoCam".]

While this technology is not based on real-world actors playing roles to elicit various emotions such as you see here in L.A. Noire, it does however use a set of expressions that they pre-record, which are then tweaked via computer to generate various expressions into the various characters at set times within set-pieces in the next Assassin’s Creed: Revelations game.

Perhaps we’ll see more detailed use of Ubisoft’s ‘MoCam’ technology in the next Assassin’s Creed 3, and will most definitely see Rockstar Games using Team Bondi’s revolutionary MotionScan Technology in the next Grand Theft Auto 5 when it ships sometime late 2012, if all goes to plan at Rockstar Games, as well as many other games Rockstar have earmarked for the technology – Max Payne 3 anyone?.

Not a perfect 10′

Of course L.A. Noire is in no way is it a perfect title. It has its own faults and inaccuracies that make it far from perfect, but it’s light years away from ‘just being a typical game’, and that alone sets it well above many others vying for shelf space on the ‘high-street’ market.

Not all games need to have the best graphics, best realistic representations of cityscapes, or best smoke, debris and particle disbursement, or even perfect game mechanics for that matter.

What a great ‘standout game’ needs is something that sets it well above others, something that breaks the pre-existing moulds, something that sets new standards others need to rise to, and raises the bar in gaming even higher.

Anyone that plays L.A. Noire would have to agree, that this game definitely does that in spades, which rightfully deserves top marks. But while it can’t score a ‘perfect’ 10 for its obvious flaws, it sure as hell can get the OXCGN Platinum Award – (9.5 – 10), and most importantly, the Editors Choice Award for May 2011, and ideally be center stage at the GOTY awards in December 2011.

However, we ask you to be the judge. Go grab the game on either 360 or PS3, it doesn’t matter which, as each will deliver an exceptional game for you to experience, and play the game through to its entirety. We ask you to do so for what it’s meant to be: a fun, enjoyable gaming experience all rolled up in a sense of adventure like no other.

And that is why L.A. Noire is different. It’s not a game; it’s the first true piece of interactive entertainment, setting its self above others, and starting a new sub-genre for the 21st century.

OXCGN Platinum Award

`9.5/10

©2011 Nicholas Laborde

• Other L.A. Noire articles, & media blowouts to explore

• Week 7: Sin City
  
• Week 6: Max Payne
• Week 5: Media Blowout
• Week 4: JFK Assassination
• Week 3: Dark City
• Week 2: The CSI Effect
• Week 1: The Untouchables

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• Noire Screenshot gallery

Filed under: 3rd Party Games, Console gaming, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 3rd Party Games, Xbox 360 Game Reviews, Xbox 360 News Tagged: | "grand theft Auto IV", Australian Team Bondi, Captain James Donnelly, Cole Phelps, Gordon Leary, Grand Theft Auto (series), LA Noire, Lachlan McKelty, Lazarus Cafarelli, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Police Department, MotionScan, MotionScan technology, R*, R* games, Rockstar Game, Silver Star medal, Team Bondi, Team Bondi Sydney Australia, Team Bondi's MotionScan, United States, World War II