It’s been five months since the release of Rockstar Games’ L.A. Noire in Europe, but only now have I got round to playing it. Noire lives up to what one would expect from Rockstar and provides a really enjoyable gaming experience. Set in Los Angeles in 1947, the player is introduced to Cole Phelps – an LAPD police officer (later, detective) and ex-US Marine who served in Okinawa during the War. Phelps is an ambitious policeman who wants to work his way up to the top and, as the game progresses, he is promoted through different desks – from walking the beat, to traffic, homicide and later vice. The game, unsurprisingly given its title, makes heavy use of film noire elements and jazz and blues music so typically associated with late 40s, post-War America.
Much of the gameplay revolves around investigating crime scenes and interviewing witnesses and suspects. The player must watch the character’s facial expressions and eye movements, as well as cross-referencing statements against collected evidence, to determine if the character is telling the truth, lying or if Cole should doubt what they’re saying. To make this possible, let alone believable, the developers had to make use of a new motion capture technology – MotionScan – which uses 32 HD cameras to capture the facial expressions of actors. This worked brilliantly and really adds to the game’s feel. With the inclusion of some famous Hollywood actors lending their faces (quite literally) and voices to the main characters, the game plays more like an interactive film. It must also be mentioned, however, that the game does enjoy several fast-paced action elements at points throughout the story, although some people have complained that there weren’t enough of these shoot-ups or car chases. I disagree, partly because I think it would have spoiled the investigative side – the main element – of the game.
The game engine does justice to all the other organs of the game. The graphics engine provides a stunning and wonderfully convincing LA to explore and NPC’s exhibit a comprehensive AI. The Havok Physics engine also provides a very responsive environment, if not sometimes a little exaggerated as is often the case with Havok. However, the ragdoll physics is not as over the top as one finds in many games and I don’t remember a single model flying through the air as a result of being shot or getting caught in an explosion.
The thing that really makes the game, however, is not the wonderful use of innovative technology or the beauty of the game’s graphical environment. It is the game’s story. This game was a masterpiece of story-telling, both in individual cases (where an entire mystery had to be created) but also in the way that they wove elements of the story together to form the final set of cases. The characterisation is excellent and the player really feels attached to certain characters throughout – particularly Phelps. The game is ‘more real life than virtual’ because the characters are complex and rich – just like real humans. Phelps, for example, is an upstanding as well as outstanding policeman who, unlike some of his colleagues and many of his superiors, is not corrupt but believes in upholding the law. He pursues a case vehemently, like a dog with a bone, regardless of who is implicated in the crime – something that later brings about his fall from grace in the LAPD. He is kind and compassionate and also strongly believes in withholding judgement on a suspect until he has collected sufficient evidence – something his colleagues find irritating on occasion. And yet, for all that Phelps is the protagonist, he harbours deeper secrets. He is, in himself, ambitious. But he is also desperate to prove himself – a result of his experience from the War where he displayed cowardice and yet, through confusion of events, was awarded a medal for gallantry behaviour. He was not popular with the men he led, partly for displaying a sympathetic trait towards the Japanese. Yet this does not stop him from, it has to be said rather unintentionally, ordering the massacre (by flamethrower) of Japanese women and children held up in a make-shift hospital cave. And, later on during the events of the game, he falls in love with a German singer whom he has an affair with, ultimately resulting in his separation from his wife and two children. Phelps is a good man and yet, like all men, he has temptations and traits which are not so attractive. And this is why he is so appealing to the player. He is not the comic-book super hero – he is a real man. This is also why his death at the end of the game is all the more difficult to accept, especially as it was the result of saving someone else. His funeral was one at which many of the corrupt people he was trying to expose spoke of him favourably whilst really they were heavily involved in his downfall. It is so like reality – the good guy, no matter what he does, doesn’t always win. And, whilst we play videogames, read books and watch films, to escape from reality, just like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, it doesn’t hurt to have the odd one bring us back down to Earth again.