by Natasa Shepherd

Created on: August 17, 2011

Set in a post WWII Los Angeles, LA Noire puts the player in the well polished shoes of Cole Phelps, a WWII veteran who has recently joined the LAPD and quickly makes a name for himself. It’s not long before Phelps finds himself investigating grizzly murders that take place across the city of angels.

LA Noire is a one of a kind in terms of genre and something that most would no expect to be published by Rockstar games. Rockstar are known for their lush, open world shooters in which the player can go anywhere and do anything, LA Noire is unfortunately not the same type of dog. Instead the game keeps a focus directly on the storyline and as a officer of the LAPD you can’t go around shooting people and taking cars. Instead you can commandeer vehicles while drawing your pistol is only available when completing a mission.

Fans of the Grand Theft Auto series that were hoping for a “more of the same” vibe with LA Noire would be highly disappointed that this isn’t the open world they were hoping for. But while LA Noire isn’t Grand Theft Auto, it does an amazing job of what it has set out to do. Engrossing the player in a seedy underworld where murderers walk the streets and cops take a blind eye for a payout, you’ll find yourself heavily invested in every case you take up.

Helping you crack each case is the facial capture technology which is able to take an actors face and put it directly into the game. This is a big part of the game as it’s heavily relied upon on telling whether the suspect is telling the truth or not. You’ve to watch for facial ticks, seeming anxiety or an all round feeling of being uncomfortable to seek the truth from the facade.

For the most part your stuck in corridor and are constantly being forced down a single, story driven path. But on route to said investigations you can also pick up side missions in the form of an APB (all-points bulletin). These little distractions usually take no longer than 5-10 minutes to complete and for the most part feel almost unnecessary. You’ll rarely find yourself invested in the nutjob that just killed someone right in front of you or the two gangs that decided to have a war in the middle of the town.

Overall LA Noire does a good job of engrossing players into the world, but with so little else to be done in LA, the re-playability is almost a zero. LA Noire gets 3.8/5

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