L.A. Snore?

Along with many I waited patiently for L.A. Noire to be released, anticipation grew to a point where I actually pre-orderd the game, something I never do. After first stumbling across a few early production stills over a year ago I was hooked. Could Rockstar actually deliver what they were promising? A game set in an exciting era with the openess of the previous Grand Theft Auto games, the player taking on the role of a detective having to work crime scenes to solve the murders which had taken place, a sandbox game with radom street crimes to keep you on your toes whilst working the bigger cases? It was also boasting about a new technology which was able to, for the first time, fully capture people's face motions enabling the use of emotions to help detect whether a person is lying or telling the truth - a fantastic achievemnt if they can actually pull it off.

As time passed actual gameplay trailers were released. They looked stunning and seemed to confirm what was promised; the faces look spectacular, Los Angeles looked impeccable and the game play seemed to fit.

Then the day came, the letter box flapped as my new favourite postie pushed through my copy of L.A. Noire. The box art was very good, it made me want to know more. Popping open the case I found the game was spread over three discs, something I was unaware of but further boosted my excitment by making me think this game is huge! I fired up my ever trusty xbox360 and popped in disc one...

After unlocking my pre-order outfit with no issues I took a peek in the social club menu to find I'd been given a second outfit. Cool, I thought, I like extras! I started up the main story wanting to have a piece of this revouloutionary game. The first case finds you as a normal beat cop, answering a call to a shooting - straight off it looked stunning, usual controls for this type of game, all good. Spent the next ten to fifteen minutes searching a dark alley hunting for clues to unravel what had taken place... where was the murder weapon!? So far so good, very impressed. But then for me it tailed off...

Instead of being this big open world filled with crime that needed me, the big new detective on the scene, it turned into a very linear restricted game, the "random" street crimes consisted of pre-scripted events with their own cutscenes and always in the same location on the map. There are only fourty of them some only taking less than a minute to complete, that's not what I was expecting at all. The main story was kind of what I was expecting but after three cases you already knew the angles to take, you know that when you "solve" this case; the next one will be exactly the same. A friend described it as "Groundhog Day, but less funny." Couldn't agree more.

The game has many flaws - the biggest one and the biggest gripe of mine is it isn't based on free roam like I feel I was led to believe. Then you have the character you "play". I put play in quotation marks as you dont really. You dont choose what to say, it's all prescripted. You cant beat a confession out of somone like one of the other game characters suggests and you certainly cant arrest anyone or solve the case off your own back as you have to follow the script filling in the blanks made up of quite obvious clues dotted about the various locations. It's like playing out a TV episode of Columbo, but with less cigars.

Interregations happen a lot, of course they do, it's their main selling point, though time and time again even though you know the person is lying you will fail the question unless you choose the right evidence from a list you compile as your working the scenes. Which brings me back to the lack of being able to beat a confession. This is 1947, they wanted accurate, let me be the bad cop. Don't have all the evidence? Let me pound his head against the bonnet of my car and let's see who's guilty then. This was a feature I, now wrongly, assumed you could experience.

Going back to the character you play, Detective Cole Phelps, you end up not giving a damn about him or his flashbacks to the war. The game unfortunately got so mundane, it was a pleasure to skip the cutscenes when you were allowed.

Another big, very annoying bug I've found is the art of the dissapearing cars! One of the achievements is to drive all of the 90 plus cars in the game, however it's made all the more diffucult by the fact that cars can and will randomly disappear right next to you if you dare to turn your camera away from them even for a split second. Flaw or feature? Also, only a very small amount of the cars have locked spawn positions making it more luck than judgment in finding them all - the film reels were in set positions, why not cars?

Free roam can be played but only once you finish the second desk (traffic), this lets you drive around in L.A. gathering all the collectables and generally to have a break from the story (you'll need it) but thats all you can do, drive around. Sure you can access a small portion of the street crimes that are available on that disc but thats all the action you can get because you cannot draw your weapon. Nope! No going postal here! Disappointing, as that reduces the fun factor by about a million.

Despite its many flaws and misgivings, L.A. Noire is still enjoyable (in small doses that is). The style and gameplay isn't what I was expecting at all (GTA with gangsters and interrogation) but is still somewhat rewarding. Graphically it's stunning and the face capture technology used really adds to the game.

All in all IMHO gives L.A Noire 7/10