Genre: Detective Thriller| Developer: Team Bondi | Publisher: Rockstar
Platform: Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 | Players: 1 | Rating: M (Mature)

Before we even begin, let me make one thing clear. This is not Grand Theft Auto: 1940′s Edition. Yes, I know you saw a big Rockstar logo and gracious amounts of shooting in the trailers. But that’s not what this game is about. At its essential core, L.A. Noire is Team Bondi/Rockstar‘s version of an Adventure game. This is by no means a negative aspect.

In fact, L.A. Noire greatly benefits from being the opposite of a GTA-like game. Team Bondi and Rockstar have come together to put out what is likely to be one of the great masterpieces in this decade.

L.A. Noire is set in late 1940s Los Angeles, a time period where the City of Angels was having a golden age amongst a dark and violent underworld. You play as Detective Cole Phelps, a former Marine who joined the LAPD after coming home a war hero. Over the course of the game, you rise through the ranks of the LAPD, taking on series of investigations and cases that show the vast and dark underbelly of Los Angeles.

When the game starts, Cole is just a regular beat cop. His experiences as a normal cop serve as the game’s tutorial, showing you the basics of investigating, combat, chasing, and interrogation. After you get your two pressed suits, you’ll progress through the ranks of the LAPD.

The core of the game is investigating and closing cases on each desk you’re assigned to. These desks have very specific jurisdictions, and working in each desk is different than the last. You’ll first start out in Traffic (crimes involving cars and such), and you’ll start getting to Homicide, Vice, and eventually Arson where the game’s story takes a very interesting turn which will genuinely surprise you.

Usually each case starts by going to a crime scene, and they all vary according to which desk you’re on. They range from naked dead women that have lipstick writing on their bodies to overdosed morphine addicts to hit-and-run victims. One of the crime scenes you go to actually has you climbing rooftops, following a trail of blood while acquiring items that may or may not pertain to the case at hand.

These segments of the game are where I get the “Adventure” vibe from. You’re basically going around in an environment looking for clues that help you progress to the next scene. There’s many a red herring at these scenes, as you’ll find a lot of empty bottles, boxes, and other normal objects that don’t pertain to the case at all. You’ll have to really comb through the area in a hawk-like manner to look for everything that will give you the next lead in the investigation.

Interrogation is another key part of the game. After gathering enough evidence, you can start questioning witnesses and persons of interest about the crime. Usually the questions will start out as the basic “What do you know about so and so?” “Where were you when this happened?” “Did you know the guy well?” etc etc.

After asking a question to a witness, you’ll have to watch their movements and listen to their words carefully. After they say their bit, you can pick three answers. You can pick “Truth” if you think their story is straight, “Doubt” if they’re holding something back, or “Lie” if you have the evidence proving that they’re lying.

Getting the right answers to these will open up new areas of investigation and persons of interest to talk to, but getting these wrong might shut you out on finding a good lead. Sometimes the person you’re question will straight up refuse to talk to you if you’re picking too many wrong answers. These interrogation sequences do a fantastic job at testing your deduction skills and hone them throughout the course of the game.

Of course if you really are stumped you can spend Intuition Points to remove a wrong answer or ask the community, which shows you the percentage of how many people picked each answer. You earn these points by completing cases, street crimes, and other side missions in the city.

The combat and melee brawling you’ll get into every now and then throughout these cases are pretty straightforward. The shootouts are standard taking cover and popping out to shoot. The weapons all range from Colt .45s to M1 Thompsons to BARs. Most of the time you’ll have these shootouts if you’re going after a bad guy who doesn’t want to give up or if you’re doing a street crime mission.

Brawling usually happens in the cases where the suspect you’re going after is too stubborn to be pacified, but not stupid enough to pull a gun on you. You can block attacks and punch like a normal melee system, but you can also use grapple attacks and eventually use “finisher” moves when your opponent is beaten up enough. All in all it’s a very standard melee system, but one that fits.

The side missions of L.A. Noire are not much. It’s really only three things, which are Street Crimes, Hidden Vehicles, and Landmarks. Street Crimes can be taken anytime while you’re working on a case. When you’re driving around the city, sometimes your police radio will chime in on an officer needing assistance with a bank robbery or a bad guy who broke parole needs to be tailed and arrested.

These side missions are usually quick 5 minute breaks from the investigation that involve a lot of shooting. Most of the ones I encountered were mostly about a couple of guys holed up somewhere with guns that need to be killed. I’m sure there’s more to it than that, however.

There are hidden vehicles all around the city that you can find and actually drive. Most of them are better than your standard detective-mobile you use most of them time, and all of them are actual cars from the 1940s period. No made up brands or knock-offs here. Landmarks are dotted throughout the city to find. These buildings were actual places in 1940′s L.A. Ranging from the Hall of Records, to the huge set of “Intolerance” (one of the biggest silent films ever produced), and even the La Brea Tar Pits which you’ll actually traverse in a certain case.

Even if the side missions are lacking in terms of size, they work with the atmosphere in the game. Quanity is not necessarily a needed thing. You’ll most likely be too sucked in with the case at hand then worrying about finding anything to do in the city.

Rockstar and Team Bondi’s vision of 1940′s L.A. is period perfect. Every single thing and every little detail in the city just screams 40′s. From shop signs, billboards, characters’ clothing, buildings, interiors, cars, street signs, traffic lights, EVERYTHING is 40′s. Even the radio stations have not only period-centric music, but also old timey radio shows like Jack Benny & Rochester. All these elements come together to create a unique and immersive atmosphere.

L.A. Noire’s story is very unique as far as stories in video games go. A lot of the cases, especially Homicide and Traffic, seem very self contained. Throughout the game (usually after you’ve completed a case) you’ll be treated with cutscenes detailing Cole’s past as a Marine Officer at OCS and Okinawa.

At first, these flashbacks just seem to build backstory to Cole’s character, but near the end of the game it starts to really meld into the main story itself. The various newspapers that you can find in the game also play little cutscenes that delve into backstory involving the various characters you meet in L.A.

There’s no sense of an overarching story until you get into the late-game cases. There’s clues to it in early/middle hours of the game, but you’ll obviously won’t pick up on those on your first playthrough. Overall the story and writing is a classic Noir. Team Bondi and Rockstar did a fantastic job of not only building one of the finest video game stories in gaming history, but also creating a plot that doesn’t make itself known until it silently dawns on you during those last few cases.

The acting in the game is truly phenomenal. The MotionScan technology that was so hyped up in the previews of this game not only delivers on said hype, but take facial animations in video games to the next level. Actually, scratch that. It takes it up by a million levels. Every actor and actress, both major role and minor NPC, bring fantastic and believable performances.

Interrogations are an especially great example of this, since the trick to nailing a great interrogation is to look for ticks and facial movements that give that person’s story away. If they’re shifty-eyed and swallowing a lot, that’s a cue to call them out on their B.S. If they’re giving you a straight face and looking right at you, it usually means they’re telling the truth (unless if you have the evidence to prove otherwise).

It’s gotten to the point where I will play a game with dialogue-filled cutscenes and end up not even playing it anymore because the facial animations are just plain dull compared to MotionScan. This really is the future of facial animations in the video game industry.

Coupled with the fact that this technology may possibly be able to capture actual body motions as well, and you have quite a potential bomb of technical progression. We may actually see rendered cutscenes that have not only the life-like faces of MotionScan but have life-like body movements from these actors as well. Without the use of FMV. Fully acted-out cutscenes rendered in the game engine with actual facial and body movement

Truly, the future is bright in the video game industry. All thanks to this clean diamond of a game.

Rockstar and Team Bondi have put out a juggernaut of a product that offers a one of a kind experience that everyone should partake in. Even if you’re that angry Grand Theft Auto fan that expected this game to be just that, you need to play this gem.

It’s not often that we get such a game where it brings in the potential to change the playing field on a technological level.

L.A. Noire, in short, is a cinematic masterpiece that sets the definition for every single player game out there. Every atmospheric single player-driven game should take this as an example of how to do it right.
 
- 9 / 10
 
Both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of this game were given to The Gaming Vault for review purposes.