Let me say this upfront, I’m not a huge Rockstar fan, sandbox games, in general, bore me, I haven’t enjoyed a GTA game since the 2D top down ones. I only checked out Red Dead Redemption after some friends online insisted how brilliant it was and I ended up kind of enjoying it. So when it came to L.A. Noire I wasn’t thinking of touching it at all until I started hearing how it wasn’t a typical sandbox game and although it was an open world it was very structured, and then I saw the facial animations and how they relate to the game play and that piqued my interest.

L.A. Noire is in many ways the anti-GTA, of course you play a cop as opposed to a criminal but that’s not why. First off you get told off by your partner for driving recklessly, your rating at the end of missions is diminished for all the damage you do while driving around. The plot is tightly focused on solving your current case and although there are side missions, street crimes, to solve they are limited and basically are just there as a means of getting your XP up so you have more intuition points to spend when stuck in the real cases.

The story starts out with you as Cole Phelps, a marine returned from World War 2 who’s entered the police force. You start out on the beat and get drawn in to a series of cases that see you promoted through different sections coving crimes from Patrol cop, Traffic, Homicide, Vice and Arson, and along the way you meet any number shady characters, innocent folk caught up in things beyond their control, killers, paedophiles, movie producers and all manner of corrupt and greedy people looking to get away with things. This is where the new facial capture system comes in, you have to interview people and from their responses tell whether they’re telling you the truth, doubt what they’re saying but have no proof of it or accuse them of lying and produce the evidence. This works pretty well, but as they’re actors told to act like they’re lying all too often this comes across as subtly as a brick to the face and unless you look through all your evidence regularly it can be difficult to tell whether you should doubt or accuse of lying.

As for the plot, well it’s very contrived, as a cop rising through the ranks so quickly as to rise through so many assignments and solve so many cases in less than 1 year, seems a bit of a push to believe that, not to mention the contrived ways you’re forced to arrest someone even if you think the case is flimsy and you don’t believe either did it. And here lies a major problem with the game, you have to catch someone in the end, even if that leads to you being shouted at in the very next scene for getting the wrong guy, you may have known that when you accused him, but you’re forced to do it otherwise you can’t move on. Also there’s a series of crimes where it’s obvious they’re all connected, yet your partner tells you all along there’s no connection and you go along arresting a string of people for the crimes only to be told later they were all innocent and it was all connected. This is annoying and frustrating, that may be how it’s supposed to feel, trying to mimic Cole’s own emotions in the cases, but it doesn’t really make for a satisfying gaming experience.

L.A. Noire is vast, at least from the map which is huge and you could drive around for days trying to find all the landmarks and hidden items. From start to finish just doing the story cases you can probably do it in the space of about 15-20 hours, perhaps less if you skip the driving as much as possible and stick to solving crime. I think I clocked up about 25 hours and managed around 73% completion. Now this may not seem big compared to games like GTA, Red Dead or any RPGs but for me even this seemed a bit long for the game to sustain my interest. Around the Vice cases I began to get bored with the driving, with the repetitive mechanics and crimes, the story is stretched and is artificially long for the sake of having a conspiracy that connects cases from most if not all of the desks you worked. The fact you’re limited in your interrogations to 3 responses, responses you’re not even sure of. A bit of doubt on your part can lead to Cole basically accusing the innocent witness of being a murder and you’ll lay the blame on them if they don’t give you answers. So it becomes a bit limiting in what you feel you’re able to accomplish.

There’s a bit of a twist towards the end, which might have served the game better if it were introduced a little earlier, and the ending doesn’t really suit the game. For a game that’s predicated on finding clues, reading faces and interrogating suspects, an action scene ending seems at least a little out of place for me.

Now after all those faults I’ve pointed out I want to say this is still a good game. Probably my favourite Rockstar release ever, and well worth playing if you don’t mind games with story, that are slower paced and need you to pay attention to detail. The facial animations and the actors involve do a good job of conveying what needs to be conveyed, the fact they hired over 400 actors for the game shows how much effort went in to making the city feel populated by real people. There are interesting cases and the city is beautifully rendered and interesting to just drive around and see sights, at least until you get sick of the driving and being stuck in traffic. So while it may not be my personal favourite for game of the year it’s still one of the better games you’ll play this year.