#oneaday Day 689: Noire Patterns

I’ve been playing L.A. Noire recently. I haven’t finished it yet — I’m partway through the Vice cases at present — but I feel it’s worth sharing some thoughts. I didn’t play the game when it first came out for various reasons, and always fully intended to grab the PC version, especially once it was rumoured to come with all the additional DLC which had been released for the console editions.

The first thing is that that facial animation tech is absolutely gobsmacking. I’ve never seen character faces that look quite so natural. Sure, the bodies are sometimes a bit wooden, and occasional non-motion captured animations make themselves glaringly obvious, but the nuances in the facial expressions make it a sight to behold. So kudos for that.

Next up, there is waaaaay too much driving. I looked at my stats in the options menu and found that I’d spent well over 2 hours driving from place to place. Sure, you can skip over these sequences, but then you miss out on some of the conversations between protagonist Cole and his partner, which help with characterisation.

This leads on to the whole question of whether or not this needed to be an open-world game. It’s cool to be able to drive around L.A. and see the sights, sure, but I tend to find myself ignoring the scenery and just trying to get to the destination as quickly as possible. I don’t know L.A., either, so I don’t have the benefit of being able to go “Ahhh, I recognise that!” along the way.

Further to the “open world” thing, there really doesn’t need to be all the extra achievement-whoring crap. I have precisely zero desire to drive around looking for film reels, police badges and hidden vehicles because it’s plainly obvious that is not what the game is about. It’s a police drama, about solving crimes. And it does that job pretty well — so why is all the other nonsense in there other than for padding? Who knows.

In terms of the game structure outside of this nonsense, it’s very good. I really like the idea of a game being structured as a set of “short stories” like L.A. Noire is. Each case stands by itself as a standalone story, but also fits into a bigger picture. In many ways, it’s kind of like a TV series, with each of the “desks” Cole works on being like a season on a show. There’s clearly some sort of overarching plot, too, though that hasn’t made itself hugely obvious as yet, except through the newspapers you occasionally find around the place. At least, I’m assuming all that becomes relevant at some point.

The investigation and interrogation gameplay is all right, but there’s a few flaws, particularly when it comes to the interrogation side of things. Sometimes you find yourself in a situation where you have an idea that a piece of evidence in your inventory would prove a suspect is lying, but upon pressing the “lie” button, Cole proceeds to make a completely different accusation. This is mildly annoying, but doesn’t seem to impact things too much.

Then there’s the glaring plot holes that come about if you do things in the wrong order. Trouble is, sometimes it’s not clear what order you should do things in. I ended one case with a one-star rating and I’m not sure how I could have done things differently to provide a different outcome. And yet in another case, the villain wound up dead and my “review” screen said that there was no evidence or witness testimony. Bizarre.

Despite these flaws, though, I’m enjoying the game. The story is interesting enough to keep me playing and while the characters aren’t necessarily what I’d call likeable, they’re certainly interesting. It is a little jarring to continually hear characters refer to Cole’s family and yet we never see them, however. Or perhaps that’s a plot point — I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out as I get towards the end.

So far as evolution of the adventure genre goes, I’m not sure L.A. Noire presents quite the right way to do it. It certainly does a lot of things right — I’d love to see that animation tech used in a more traditional adventure, for example — but there’s all this useless fluff in the middle. And stealth sequences are never fun, unless you’re playing Metal Gear Solid or Thief — games specifically designed around the mechanic. Everyone knows that. At least L.A. Noire has the good grace to allow you to skip them if you fail them three times — a nice throwback to the days of the awful arcade sequences in Dynamix’s adventure games such as Rise of the Dragon and Heart of China.

So I’ll play it through to its conclusion, for sure. Game of the Year? No way. But it’s certainly a solid offering that will be of interest if you enjoy adventure gaming or crime dramas.