~L.A. Noire – The Pretty and Shitty, by Awoozl~
The 1940’s, I remember it like it was yesterday. No matter how much I wish I was in my 70’s there is no way I could ever experience the glamour of that era. There’s just something about the suits, the jazz and the old cars that just makes me want to time travel. This was partially the reason L.A. Noire seemed so fascinating to me. But should you judge a book by it’s cover?
Straight from the menu screen the atmosphere hits you. With your pants suddenly tightening below your waste you get the feeling that is EXACTLY what all detective games should be like. The smooth jazz on a dark alleyway with a yet unknown detective digging through the trash on the background leaves you in no hurry to begin the game. The style is perfect.
As you start the game you are introduced to the game mechanics with a series of short “cases”. The tutorials teach you all you need to know from shooting to interrogating a suspect. They also build up a short story of Cole Phelps’ journey from a field cop to the detective’s desk. After this the actual game is ready to begin.
The game sucks you right in. You get the awesome feeling of “I KNEW IT!” whenever you hear that little jingle from choosing the right interrogation option. The first chase scenes both on foot and in a car make you intensively try and do your best to stay on the bad guy, eventually catch him and not kill any innocent people in the process. The more you play the game though, the more annoying all of this awesomeness gets.
A few hours into the game the repetition starts to get to you. You get a case, go to the crime scene, look at the evidence that’s already been looked up for you, go interrogate witnesses/suspects, chase someone down and end up killing him or interrogating him again for a case closure. The stories and motives of the cases vary obviously, but the mechanics of what you are doing start to annoy you more and more as the game progresses.
Interrogation lacks logic at times. You can’t really tell the difference between a “Lie” and a “Doubt” most of the time. You look at your evidence only to see that you have nothing to call the suspect out on a lie with, so you choose doubt. Doubt is the wrong choice! You go back and play the mission again, get to the same question and choose “Lie” this time. Suddenly Mr. Phelps starts talking about something completely different than what the original question was. Should have expected that, eh?
All the chase scenes are heavily scripted. On foot you might take a short cut and get right on the runaways heels only to see the game boost his speed by 200% so he’s able to get to the where you are “allowed” to catch him. In a car it’s impossible to ram anyone over until the chase has gone on for long enough. So why even try? It takes away all the fun of the chase when you know you should just hang in there, keep the suspect in sight and only ram into him when he suddenly slows down for no apparent reason. On one case I hit the suspect right to the side of his car in a crossroads at full speed. My car broke down, his didn’t even tilt.
The shooting scenes are pretty solid. Probably the most fun the game has to offer gameplay wise, even if they are a complete rip off from the Uncharted series or any other game with similar shooting scenes.
The story of the game is good, nothing amazing. It only seems to be of any importance towards the end of the game. You find newspapers throughout the game which give you some background information about what’s going on in the game. Not much of it makes too much sense until the very end of the game, as you wont even meet the characters appearing in the cut scenes until then. Also at the beginning of each case you get a short flashback to Phelps’ army times. These scenes reveal what happened in the past and eventually explain why certain characters in the game feel like they do towards each other.
Being the achievement whore that I am I had to keep playing the game to get the 100% completion out of it. This may have been one of the most tedious tasks in any game I have ever played. Case related achievements were fine but everything else seemed like it was put there just to make you play forever..and ever…….and ever. Finding hidden film reels, badges and famous sites of the city of L.A. did not only seem irrelevant to the game but granted you NO prize for the effort you put into finding them all. Not to mention the goddamn achievement you had to drive EVERY one of the 95 cars in the game to get. They could have at least made some cool car unlock after you went through all that trouble.
As a summary, the game looks and sounds great. Even if the console port on Steam was glitchy and laggy as hell, it still was a joy to the eye and ear. That doesn’t make up for the bad game mechanics though. No matter how much fun drunk driving a Phantom Corsair into a trolly ramming it off it’s tracks while jazz is playing on the background is, the game is still pretty bad. The idea of the game was nice, execution was not. I would probably have enjoyed a movie of this game a lot more than I enjoyed the game.
P.S. The name sucks. There is little to none of film noire style narration.
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