L.A. Noire

I'm always ashamed when I have to say something that betrays my nerd cred.  Like when I had to fess up that I never actually played Portal.  So, to add another log to that fire: I've never played a Rockstar game.  No Grand Theft Auto, no Red Dead Redemption, and no Bully.  I feel appropriate levels of shame, and am happy to announce that it is no longer true, for I've polished off my swapped copy of L.A. Noire this past weekend.

Title Screen, rocking the Noire Neon Treatment.

L.A. Noire tells the story of Cole Phelps, a returned war hero serving as a cop circa 1947 in the growing city of Los Angeles.  Phelps begins as a patrol officer and then works his way up (and then, down) the complicated command chain of detectives in the LAPD.  For the gameplay, the game is much more Heavy Rain than Fallout 3 - you have a firearm, but rarely resort to using it.  For the most part, you are in an interactive fiction, instead of being in a shooter game.  A happy surprise!

More happiness, and review; after the jump!

You do shoot bad guys, though - I mean, you really have to when they are shooting at you.  You also do car chases, and a couple of other action sequences, like trying to escape through a decaying movie set. 

Truth, doubt, or lie?

For the rest of the gameplay, you are pulling some Phoenix Wright action, combing crime scenes and questioning sometimes unscrupulous witnesses.  During every interaction with suspects and witnesses, you have the opportunity to Trust, Doubt, or accuse the person of a Lie (the Objection! equivalent, requiring evidence to back up your claim).  The decision is based on the information you've collected and the mannerisms of the person you are interviewing.  In your second playthrough, a strategy guide.  Seriously.

Catching the subtlety of the interactions you have is hard, but it makes success that much more worth it.

There are 21 standard crimes as part of the story, with 40 street crimes (read: side quests) available.  The game took a solid 20 hours to complete without even trying to 100%.  The game does that statistics stuff I love so much, like telling me how much I suck at shooting, or how many times I commandeered a civilian's vehicle.  I enjoy that, because everything should be able to be boiled down into a quantitative measurement.

Dying is (sadly) not uncommon for me, so I'm happy to report that L.A. Noire is very forgiving in its failures, reloading the game to a predictable point without much to-do (the load screen is minimal, and rarely even seen). 

The controls are finely tuned, and continue to reflect that I learned to drive on video games from MarioKart and will never be able to understand the mechanics of a "brake" feature.  Usually, a game is unable to account for my own idiocy, but L.A. Noire gives it a shot by allowing my partner to drive to and from locations for me!  I really appreciate this because I'm not a very good driver in real life, let alone when trying to chase down bank robbers in a '46 Chevy Pickup.

It's Greg Grunberg!  I love him!

I found the story of L.A. Noire to be engagingly deep, and I cared about the characters, which is always a homerun in game writing.  You are taking on the role of Phelps, so there isn't much customization, besides making him wear other ugly, period clothes.

L.A. Noire is certainly worth a pickup, and has sparked my interest in perhaps grabbing Grand Theft Auto IV which had great reviews and promises similar play concepts, except set in "Liberty City" in modern times.

Which brings me to this: well done, Rockstar for having a pair and calling Los Angeles by its name.  This damn Freedom City, Liberty City, Empire City crap for New York drives me crazy.  So there, I said it.