I can only describe this game as lovingly opulent. L.A. Noire is overstuffed and buckles under its own ambition, but also shows focus and restraint uncommon for productions of this scope. It gives so much, and unlike other games that feel incomplete, I have the inkling that with enough time, they might have been able to pull everything off.
L.A. Noire is a detective game centered around reading faces as a game mechanic. The models may not have aged gracefully, but the mo-cap, acting, and animation are spectacular. The phrase “no small parts, only small actors” fully applies, and made me realize again how few games, (even in the modern age!), are even trying. Secretaries and post men delivered their single lines with such authenticity, personality, and impact as to continually blindside me in the way only interacting with the public can. These were not performances of comfortable and familiar acting styles, but recreations of people I’ve met in real life. Vocal inflections at once familiar when spoken, but so mundane as to have never been remembered or imagined. Gestures and glances so natural and specific the TV felt like a one-way mirror. If the only means of gameplay in L.A. Noire had been multiple choice selections during detective interviews, the quality of acting would have been worth the price of admission alone. But for L.A. Noire, that’s only the foundation.
I absolutely adored the first desk of cases after finishing the tutorial sequence. So rarely has a game so consistently dropped my jaw open with excitement and possibility. There was a real tension in realizing how I would have to un-learn so many habits from playing other games with different goals to succeed in this one. As a human who wants to be a good person, in games I’m inclined to pick pleasant dialog options when talking to NPCs. In L.A. Noire, sometimes in order to get good information from good people, you have to press them in a way that makes everyone uncomfortable. And sometimes you have to put on a polite face when dealing with assholes. L.A. Noire wanted me to navigate human motivations to arrive at the truth at the expense of decorum, and its dedication to this perspective impressed me.
But equally impressive was the immense flexibility the game had for my spectacular miscalculations and failures. In an early case, I missed the murder weapon, a gun that had been thrown out in a garbage can right next to where I assumed control of the detective, and the game still let me progress through the entire case without ever having to go back and find it! In another, I missed so much evidence that the motivation of the perpetrator made no sense. Playing through the case again with a guide, I learned not only was he reacting to another man’s unwanted sexual advances, but the dialog of other characters describing the situation had been just subtle enough to work with or without that subtext.
Here is where I explain why L.A. Noire is bounteous while being restrained. As a detective, you look for evidence in 3D spaces. You drive around. There are tailing missions. You chase after suspects, up ladders and across rooftops, in encounters that can end with a first fight or a shoot-out. You break up illegal street races and run from the mafia. And you can skip absolutely all of it, without even affecting your score! The only thing the game cares about, and forces you to do yourself, is collect evidence, conduct interviews, and press charges. Everything else is treated as set dressing.
Which blows my mind, because the level of detail is astounding. There are a half dozen guns with different rates of fire, clip sizes, and accuracy ranges. There are 95 models of cars, each of which control differently, with different top speeds and turning radii. Each where you can shoot out individual headlights. Each of which you can crash spectacularly. Multiple times did I get in a wreck, only to step out and watch an individual car tire roll down a city block or two. Buildings took an astounding variety of cosmetic damage depending on how hard cars crashed into them. It was all so consistent it was difficult to notice, because the moment to moment action flowed so naturally.
All of this effort, and you can choose to have your partner detective drive you everywhere automatically!
If there is one element of the game that brings down the mood, it is the game’s overarching plot. Early cases have a light and fun “case of the day” type feel that makes it easy to replay for the joy of detective work. Later cases delve more into the player character’s personal life and drama, which become interconnected and less fun. It is obvious not as much time was available to develop the space and pacing necessary for the later developments to feel natural. (And the tone becomes more self-serious and somber, which disappointed me after the domestic absurdity of the opening.) I respect the ambition, and the foundations of what I can see on paper look solid. In execution, Cole Phelp's story rips the focus away from the game’s strengths as an adventure game, as player choice can no longer matter as it did when the stakes were lower.
In my rating system, 2 stars represents an average, C rank game, and L.A. Noire is definitely an A+ rank game. It’s so generous, so conscientious, so luxurious, so extra that I heartily recommend it even with its obvious flaws. For how rich and rewarding replaying cases can be, it is an absolute war crime that the console version of this game does not have a “skip cutscene” button. The convoluted saving system can make it difficult to drop in and out of a case within a single session, but most are doable within a movie length amount of time.
More subjectively, there are some elements that I could see turning someone away. I would have been perfectly happy if the entire game had taken place on the Traffic desk, catching fraudsters and tracking down stolen cars. Unfortunately, a good portion of the game is with Homicide and Arson cases. Depending on one’s squeamishness level, you do see dead bodies, awful wounds, and burnt corpses. There is more than one naked dead woman in this game, and the callousness of the depiction walked the line between feeling realistic or tasteless.
While the player character Cole Phelps is framed as better matching the sensibilities of the modern player, the culture of the time has been uncomfortably recreated with period-accurate flavors of misogyny and racism. On the one hand, I understand the desire to depict the reality of the city in a vibrant and believable way, while on the other, I wish the game could have fudged in the favor of a fun time.
Overall, excellent, fantastic, the best open world game of all time, because it lets you opt out of playing an open world game at any moment.
L.A. Noire is a detective game centered around reading faces as a game mechanic. The models may not have aged gracefully, but the mo-cap, acting, and animation are spectacular. The phrase “no small parts, only small actors” fully applies, and made me realize again how few games, (even in the modern age!), are even trying. Secretaries and post men delivered their single lines with such authenticity, personality, and impact as to continually blindside me in the way only interacting with the public can. These were not performances of comfortable and familiar acting styles, but recreations of people I’ve met in real life. Vocal inflections at once familiar when spoken, but so mundane as to have never been remembered or imagined. Gestures and glances so natural and specific the TV felt like a one-way mirror. If the only means of gameplay in L.A. Noire had been multiple choice selections during detective interviews, the quality of acting would have been worth the price of admission alone. But for L.A. Noire, that’s only the foundation.
I absolutely adored the first desk of cases after finishing the tutorial sequence. So rarely has a game so consistently dropped my jaw open with excitement and possibility. There was a real tension in realizing how I would have to un-learn so many habits from playing other games with different goals to succeed in this one. As a human who wants to be a good person, in games I’m inclined to pick pleasant dialog options when talking to NPCs. In L.A. Noire, sometimes in order to get good information from good people, you have to press them in a way that makes everyone uncomfortable. And sometimes you have to put on a polite face when dealing with assholes. L.A. Noire wanted me to navigate human motivations to arrive at the truth at the expense of decorum, and its dedication to this perspective impressed me.
But equally impressive was the immense flexibility the game had for my spectacular miscalculations and failures. In an early case, I missed the murder weapon, a gun that had been thrown out in a garbage can right next to where I assumed control of the detective, and the game still let me progress through the entire case without ever having to go back and find it! In another, I missed so much evidence that the motivation of the perpetrator made no sense. Playing through the case again with a guide, I learned not only was he reacting to another man’s unwanted sexual advances, but the dialog of other characters describing the situation had been just subtle enough to work with or without that subtext.
Here is where I explain why L.A. Noire is bounteous while being restrained. As a detective, you look for evidence in 3D spaces. You drive around. There are tailing missions. You chase after suspects, up ladders and across rooftops, in encounters that can end with a first fight or a shoot-out. You break up illegal street races and run from the mafia. And you can skip absolutely all of it, without even affecting your score! The only thing the game cares about, and forces you to do yourself, is collect evidence, conduct interviews, and press charges. Everything else is treated as set dressing.
Which blows my mind, because the level of detail is astounding. There are a half dozen guns with different rates of fire, clip sizes, and accuracy ranges. There are 95 models of cars, each of which control differently, with different top speeds and turning radii. Each where you can shoot out individual headlights. Each of which you can crash spectacularly. Multiple times did I get in a wreck, only to step out and watch an individual car tire roll down a city block or two. Buildings took an astounding variety of cosmetic damage depending on how hard cars crashed into them. It was all so consistent it was difficult to notice, because the moment to moment action flowed so naturally.
All of this effort, and you can choose to have your partner detective drive you everywhere automatically!
If there is one element of the game that brings down the mood, it is the game’s overarching plot. Early cases have a light and fun “case of the day” type feel that makes it easy to replay for the joy of detective work. Later cases delve more into the player character’s personal life and drama, which become interconnected and less fun. It is obvious not as much time was available to develop the space and pacing necessary for the later developments to feel natural. (And the tone becomes more self-serious and somber, which disappointed me after the domestic absurdity of the opening.) I respect the ambition, and the foundations of what I can see on paper look solid. In execution, Cole Phelp's story rips the focus away from the game’s strengths as an adventure game, as player choice can no longer matter as it did when the stakes were lower.
In my rating system, 2 stars represents an average, C rank game, and L.A. Noire is definitely an A+ rank game. It’s so generous, so conscientious, so luxurious, so extra that I heartily recommend it even with its obvious flaws. For how rich and rewarding replaying cases can be, it is an absolute war crime that the console version of this game does not have a “skip cutscene” button. The convoluted saving system can make it difficult to drop in and out of a case within a single session, but most are doable within a movie length amount of time.
More subjectively, there are some elements that I could see turning someone away. I would have been perfectly happy if the entire game had taken place on the Traffic desk, catching fraudsters and tracking down stolen cars. Unfortunately, a good portion of the game is with Homicide and Arson cases. Depending on one’s squeamishness level, you do see dead bodies, awful wounds, and burnt corpses. There is more than one naked dead woman in this game, and the callousness of the depiction walked the line between feeling realistic or tasteless.
While the player character Cole Phelps is framed as better matching the sensibilities of the modern player, the culture of the time has been uncomfortably recreated with period-accurate flavors of misogyny and racism. On the one hand, I understand the desire to depict the reality of the city in a vibrant and believable way, while on the other, I wish the game could have fudged in the favor of a fun time.
Overall, excellent, fantastic, the best open world game of all time, because it lets you opt out of playing an open world game at any moment.
Reviewed on Jan 16, 2023