L.A. Noire: First Impressions

"The Case of a Single-Player Co-Op Adventure"

I sat down on the couch last night after popping in my new copy of L.A. Noire on the PS3. Beside me sat my wife, who is brilliant at these detective type adventure games. We were excited about getting started because both of us have been anticipating a really good sleuth game ever since we finished Heavy Rain. The point-and-click experiences that we have had lately on our Wii have not satisfied us enough to continue to playing them through to the end. Hopefully L.A. Noire would be that game we have been waiting for that would provide the whole package - story, graphics, music, gameplay, controls, and character.

I'll start off by talking about character because out of the list of elements I just stated that make up a whole package, character is probably the one that made you go ‘huh?” I'm talking about the features of the game that make up its individual nature. In other words, what is it that sets this game apart from its competition? First, it's the setting of L.A. Noire that had us both intrigued. A game set in post-war Los Angeles in the year 1947 when a boom of crime in the city is at an all-time high. I started playing as the protagonist Cole Phelps in the LAPD trying to clean up the streets as a beat cop. Right out of the gate we noticed the difference between this title and others that we have played in the past, the graphics are nothing like we have seen before.

It was definitely refreshing to see L.A. re-created in the 1940's, but what really stood out to us was the character facial animation. This new facial animation technology that has been implemented by Rockstar Games and Team Bondi had a big role in one of the gameplay elements that also makes up the character of the game. Not only did I search crime scenes for clues, participate in shootouts, chase down criminals, get into fist fights, and drive vintage vehicles (which reminded me a lot of those in Mafia II), but I also got to interview witnesses or interrogate suspects having to analysis their behavior to make a decision on whether or not they were telling the truth or lying. That is where my wife came in handy as my couch co-op partner.

All of those gameplay elements were presented to us in the form of four cases that took up the first couple of hours of play acting as a tutorial Patrol crime desk to get familiar with the game. Once I successfully completed those cases, I was promoted to detective in the Traffic division. I also collected intuition points when I completed certain cases or interrogated a witness or suspect correctly. These intuition points can be spent to help me in investigations if I get stuck by removing incorrect answers in an interrogation, locating all remaining clues at crime scenes, or asking the Rockstar SocialClub community for assistance.

So far, we are really enjoying the challenge of trying to figure out each case that is presented to us. I'll need some time to get the shooting controls in the firefights down, but other than that only a couple of graphical glitches such as character models popping through closed doors in the background of cut scenes are the only issues I have with an exceptional start to a mystery-solving sandbox game. Seeing how we have only finished five cases out of the 21 (23 with the exclusive PS3 case and the pre-order bonus case), we have a long way to go, but are looking forward to every minute.