L.A. Noire: Rockstar’s best game yet…
For the past week, I’ve been getting into Rockstar’s newest creation, L.A. Noire and, in my opinion, the company has outdone themselves with this piece of work.
About the Game
“Amid the post-war boom of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Cole Phelps is an LAPD detective thrown headfirst into a city drowning in its own success. Corruption is rampant, the drug trade is exploding, and murder rates are at an all-time high. In his fight to climb the ranks and do what’s right, Phelps must unravel the truth behind a string of arson attacks, racketeering conspiracies and brutal murders, battling the L.A. underworld and even members of his own department to uncover a secret that could shake the city to its rotten core.” Written by Rockstar Games
Graphics
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| Detailed Capture |
The games most noticeable new technology is the use of Facial Capture Technology. Key to the gameplay, players interrorgate their suspects and must be able to read the suspects facial expressions in order to ask the right questions and solve the case. The level of detail used by this type of Facial capture Technology is fairly new to the gaming world and very important to the progression of the story in L.A. Noire. It was an extremely realistic tool that allows for the actors to really put their talents to work in the development of the game and captures every detai of their preformance. Check the video out at the end for more information.
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| Facial Capture Room |
The game itself takes place in the golden age of Hollywood and players free roam in a to-scale replica of L.A. in post World War II complete with the interesting landmarks of the time.
Gameplay
The gameplay over all is fairly simple. The bulk of the game consists of combing through crimescenes and suspects’ property to gather clues that are useful during interrogations. There are car chases that prove to be entertaining, as well as on foot pursuits, and the occasional shootouts. L.A. Noire perfectly balances all aspects of the game to give you an entertaining experience as you progress through the story without having you spend too much time in one specific area.
Overall, I am enjoying this game. The soundtrack is heaven (I’m a huge classic Jazz fan) so I often find myself just sitting at the title screen for a few minutes before playing the game. The story is very intriguing (Hints to so real life classic cases… unsolved cases). Interrogation is the best: using the evidence you’ve found to show that a person is lying or shaking things up a bit when you have some doubt that the suspect is being honest with you. It was actually interesting to go through that interrogation bit with your friends their. So in most cases it’s only a one player game, but going through interrogations with a group also proves to be fun.
Definitely buy this, add it to your library, and see how good of a detective you are 😉 Happy Sluething!