L.A. Noire is a disappointing game, but its ambitions and it’s level of technical expertise save it from being a complete failure.
The gameplay breaks down into three basic components: driving around post-war L.A, investigating crime scenes, and interrogating suspects.
Driving around LA works pretty much like any GTA game, except toned way down. You don’t get the rampant carnage of a GTA game. It takes a bit of effort to kill pedestrians, for example, and cars don’t explode with the abandon you’d expect from a Rockstar game. It’s much more of a straight forward driving sim. The only problem with it is, there isn’t really any place to go. I was really hoping (particularly given the great setting, and the attention to detail they used in re-creating it) for more of a “living city” vibe, like GTAIV. But there’s really nothing to do in LA that isn’t directly connected to a case you’re currently investigating. You can’t hang out in a bar, or go bowling, or shop for new clothes. You don’t even have a house or apartment. You’re just in an endless cycle of go to the station, go to the crime scene, investigate suspects, go back to the station.
I had the most fun during the investigations, but they’re not really challenging. You basically wander around the crime scene, waiting for the controller to vibrate, and listening for the musical cue that you’ve found all the clues in the area. I really enjoyed it, but I also enjoyed surveying planets in Mass Effect 2, so take that for what it’s worth.
The interrogations are the meat of the game. It’s here where LA Noire tries the hardest, and fails the worst. The interrogations are basically extended cut scenes of two people talking. In many ways, it’s a throw back to the first generation of CD-ROM games, except instead of watching faded porn stars and z-list celebrities demonstrate why they’ll never have a legitimate acting career, you get to watch some of the best animators in the industry do their thing, accompanied by some top-notch voice talent. It’s actually pretty entertaining. But you’re still, for the most part, sitting there and watching. The game play element to this part of the game is limited to occasionally guessing which of three responses is the “correct” response. And the problem here is, the game is very inconsistent over what sort of response is proper for a given situation.
Here’s an example from the early part of the game. Some minor spoilers for game puzzles follow, but nothing plot related. One of your first cases is a homicide. Guy gets gunned down in front of his shoe store. If you investigate, you can find the murder weapon in a trash can, and can use the serial number on the gun to find the owner. There’s also a shop girl who identifies the shooter, and it matches with the serial number on the gun. When you go to confront the guy, he claims he was nowhere near the store. He’s obviously lying, but what evidence do you use to prove it? I picked the gun - the eyewitness may be mistaken, or lying, but I know for a fact that the guy’s gun was at the crime scene.
And that turns out to be the wrong pick. You’re supposed to use the eyewitness to prove he’s lying. Okay, fair enough - I suppose the gun doesn’t really prove that this guy was there. Someone else might have stolen it from him and left it there. I make a mental note about what the game is looking for when it asks for evidence that someone is lying, and move on to the next case.
A couple cases later, you’re investigating a case where an under aged girl was drugged and raped by a movie producer. You find the sleazy back lot where the producer set up a phony audition. The owner of the lot claims he’s never met the rapist producer. But while investigating, you find a bottle of pills: the same drugs used on the girl when she was raped. And this time, the bottle of pills is proof that the suspect had been there, despite the fact that there’s no evidence connecting the guy to that specific bottle, or that specific bottle to the drugged girl.
It’s also often confusing what part of a witness’s statement is meant to be a lie. I’ve often gotten wrong answers, because I assumed I was supposed to be questioning one part of a witness’s statement, but when I picked one of the speech options, my guy starts talking about an entirely different part of the conversation.
Over all, the game has very little replay value. Mostly, you’re going to be watching the same canned conversations over again. And there’s only ever one correct path through a conversation tree. It’s not like you can go back and try different tactics. You either get the right answer, and a new clue, or the witness shuts you down, and you can’t get full marks for the investigation.
All that said, I’d be very interested in a sequel. This game feels very much like a test bed for their new technologies. Having proven that the animation engine they’re using works (and man, does it ever work!) I’d hope that, for the next one, they’ll put similar time and money into bringing up the game play. Done right - a more open world, a more nuanced dialogue tree for interrogations, and some other minor tweaks - and they could have one for the ages, here.