Criminal Flaws Don't Lock Up L. A. Noire

     Calls rain in from all over the city, like drops of blood running through a dying man’s fingers, clutching at his newfound chest wound. In Central, a hit-and-run leaves the victim splattered across the road, bloody skidmarks as his life comes to a screeching halt. A few blocks away, a hopeful Hollywood starlet is found battered, bloodied, and beaten in a park, her dreams having bled dry long before the warm dawn sun found her cool dead body. Across town, a family of four burned alive in their house overnight. The American Dream, up in smoke. Somewhere in Hollywood, two jazz musicians overdosed on some smuggled drugs. Cool cats getting colder by the second.

     All these modern horror stories are the pulp on the pages of L. A. Noire, Rockstar’s new crime-themed sandbox game. In this twist to Rockstar’s usual gameplay formula, you play on the law’s side of the law, assuming the role of Detective Cole Phelps, a Pacific Theater World War II veteran come back to police the streets of Los Angeles. Starting out as a beat-cop, you quickly move up to detective work, taking cases at four desks: traffic, arson, vice, and homicide. At each desk, the aforementioned stories start only half-told, and it’s up to you and some keen, if sometimes questionable, detective work to fill in the gaps and make the partial stories whole.


     Through good, or sloppy, detective work, you can cut through the half-truths and lies to find, in theory, the real truth. Most cases open with Cole being handed an assignment, followed by Phelps and his currently assigned partner heading to the crime scene to gather clues and to occasional testimony. The gathering of clues is simplified to walking around and hitting “A” when a chime tells you you’re next to one, another chime and change of music telling you when you’ve found every meaningful clue. The chime can be disabled, but considering how arbitrary or hard to spot some of the clues are, I’d advise keeping Spidey Sense turned on, regardless of any immersion breaking it does. Realistically, not every clue is a valuable one either. Empty soda bottles and irons routinely produce the chime for a clue, despite being utterly useless. The clues that actually are useful vary wildly, sometimes being registered the instant you find them, others requiring you to turn them over or open them before credit for finding them is given. Rarer still are puzzle clues, which require puzzle solving almost too light to warrant having included in the game. Most of the time when you pick up a meaningful clue, Cole will make a long-winded comment that you’ll have to wait through before you can further investigate. If a clue can be examined closer or opened up, the appropriate time is always indicated with a highly annoying every-single-damn-time instructional pop up box, which, by its lonesome, makes it worth keeping these exceedingly annoying tool tips turned on. Imagine if GTA popped up the driving controls every single time you got in a car or the shooting controls every single time you pulled a gun out. L. A. Noire routinely puts up information you already know and have seen at least fifty times prior on the screen. Apart from the physical clues you gather, some are gathered from talking to witnesses, most of which use the interrogation gameplay to mixed results.

     As far as the interrogation mini-game goes, the setup is fairly simple. Cole enters a conversation with someone and after a brief question-answer part, you’re presented with three button options, “Truth,” for when you believe someone, “Doubt,” for when you don’t but don’t have any proof, and “Lie,” for when you know someone’s lying to you and have proof, at which time you’re taken to a list of found clues and have to select one in order to present proof. As with the investigation mini-game, a happy chord tells you when you’re right, while a few sour notes indicate you’re wrong, either by having selected the wrong answer, or the wrong piece of evidence. Tying the investigating and interrogating together can be difficult, depending on how thorough you are. You may know a person is lying, but lack the sufficient evidence to get the correct answer. It can be frustrating when such a situation arises, and the rub-it-in manner of the right or wrong chimes make the situation even more so. When a sizable case is going real well only to be blown by misreading facial expressions, it can be maddening, especially when a case has only three questions. And as far as reading those facial expressions, L. A. Noire takes it to a whole new level.

     Using new technology that consists of pointing over a trillion HD cameras at an actor’s face, Rockstar captured every individual pore on their face and mapped their movements to create an ultra-realistic emotional performance for every character’s face. For such a huge technological investment, the results are a wildly mixed bag. The fidelity the performances are captured with make them incredibly credible and convincing, and any “I’m super not lying right now!” tells are either due to bad direction, or intentionally done to make the player feel smart. On the more convincing performances, calling someone out on a lie and being correct feels good, like you’ve correctly read someone’s poker bluff. The downside to that is that reading a very subtle bluff is rare, and most are done through a very obvious, “I’m lying!” gesture, such as a huge nervous position shift or eyes darting about the room like they’re watching Wimbledon. To be fair, that’s not a detriment, because it’s oftentimes difficult enough to read facial expressions without trying to pick up on better acting or micro-hints. The ability to exactly replicate an actor’s facial performance is where this new technology really shines, which is good considering that’s what it was designed for.

     But investing in new technology often carries that early-adoption risk, like people buying 3D TVs when water-loaded 4D TVs are due out late next year. It definitely is a step towards capturing a more humanlike performance, with what the actors do captured in minute, exacting detail. But in terms of crossing the Uncanny Valley, it jumps headfirst to the bottom. For those that don’t know, the Uncanny Valley is a point where a computer generated human likeness becomes highly unnatural. Up to a point, the more realistic a representation is, the better. But after that point, the likeness takes a dive and becomes creepy, and highly unnatural. And the new facial capturing system Rockstar employed in L.A. Noire puts all the characters right in that valley. While the performances themselves are great, both believable and, more importantly, readable, it’s the characters and their faces that the problem stems from. To put it in technical terms, the faces look exactly like what they are: three dimensional data extrapolated onto a model’s animated head. It doesn’t look like bones and muscles and tendons moving around, so much as it looks like a video projected on to a blank face. To use a more simple analogy, imagine walking around with a paper plate on your face. On the plate, one of those incredibly talented artists capable of painting believable depth paints your face’s every little move. Regardless of their talent or how good the painting is at capturing an expression, or how convincing the depth is, your face is still a flat paper plate with a highly detailed painting on it. Reading it is more akin to looking at flashcards of emotions instead of real emotions. And while the emotions and performances are as legible as they need to be, it’s still a creepy puppet. This is due in part to the fact that, unlike traditional techniques of modeling a character’s head and face, this method relies on the data interpreted from the array of HD cameras. This creates artifacts like crawling skin, where the skin of a character seems to have come detached from the muscle underneath and starts to just move around. Other oddities are from the lack of modeled teeth and a tongue, causing those teeth to appear as if they’re bursting out of the lips or entirely non-existent. Those nitpicking complaints about the side-effects of using this technology aside, it does work wonders in this game. It allows for an actor’s performance to be captured with the utmost fidelity, and transported into the game, where it is helpful beyond words at allowing a player to judge another character’s intent. However, I don’t see it being utilized outside of L. A. Noire, or at least I pray that it won’t be. It doesn’t seem to create a more believable character in the game, but instead just enhances a gameplay mechanic.

     This admirable attention to detail could have been more evenly distributed on the other gameplay mechanics, as they tend to fall frustratingly flat. With Phelps being on the right side of the law, you have to follow said law as best as you possibly can. That means that hitting civilians, or civilian cars, earns Phelps a penalty to his performance on any given case. While that makes plenty of sense in the context of story, in the context of gameplay, it’s a huge annoyance. Several cases end up in a high speed vehicle chase. Often times I would be closing on a suspect and they would turn down an alleyway or cut through a park or other place crowded by civilians. While they would be smart enough to jump out of the way of the truck speeding towards them, they would immediately resume their route, not giving two damns about the speeding police car right behind said truck. Even without suicidal civilians, L. A. Noire features Rockstar’s patented Really Bad Traffic AI. Even with the siren blaring, cars tend to turn out in front of you, or even in to you. Several cars that are already near a stop, such as a traffic light, will use their last ounce of momentum to try and pull over, effectively closing off that entire side of the road. Eighty percent of the time you can avoid the cars, but that remaining twenty percent of the time is rather frustrating, especially in a chase.

     And the issues with the mechanics continue on foot. There are plenty of chases in the game where Phelps is hot on the heels of a suspect who doesn’t trust these newfangled automobiles. In several of these, Phelps is able to aim his gun at the suspect and, after the reticule fills up, Cole will fire a shot into the air, and the suspect will stop and put their hands in the air. The problem with this is that it makes no sense when you can fire shots inches from the suspect’s head without them so much as flinching. Compounding this is the fact that when you shoot them in the leg thinking it will slow them down or stop them for the half-second you need to catch up, it ends up killing them and you fail the case, having to restart the chase over again. And the chases themselves feel artificially drawn out. While being a super cop who catches the suspect within twenty feet of the starting point wouldn’t be fun, making suspects faster than Cole for all but the last segment of the chase feels like a contrived way to make sure chases don’t end “too early,” when most of them seem to go on too long. Admirably, despite the fact that “shoot” and “run” are both mapped to the left trigger, due to a smart control scheme, you probably will never accidentally fire your gun while trying to chase someone down.

     And as far as gunplay is concerned, L. A. Noire gets the basics down really well. Cole Phelps, despite being a military man, isn’t near the gunslinger John Marston was or the grunt soldier Niko was. The aiming lock-on mechanic from Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption is still present, but it’s much looser, and the aiming feels fat and inflated. The cover system received some welcome upgrades, such as the ability to stay in cover while going around corners, and the ability to move across a gap while remaining in cover. These additions make getting off of cover a little trickier, but I’d prefer that over a cheap death due to accidentally popping off of some cover or being unable to get to some. Most of the gunplay takes place in the mid-mission side quests you can complete around the town are where, a welcome relief for Cole’s lesser combat skills. As an aside, the wording of the objectives were at first a little confusing when the objective was, “Subdue the suspect(s).” Using a modern interpretation, I was under the impression I was to shoot them in the leg or to try and shoot them in the arm to knock their weapon away. The objective actually means you are to kill them stone cold dead, something I came to terms with during my first hostage situation, where, when presented with this objective, I shot the perpetrator in the arm, attempting to remove his gun. The result was that he staggered for a second before recovering, and shooting her dead, failing the case. It was a startling wakeup call that the era of L. A. Noire is one where shooting first and asking questions later is a legitimate option.

     For the driving, the cars control really well, and handle very tightly, almost too tightly. For the realistic (read: like a piece of crap) way that the cars in GTA IV handled, the cars in L. A. Noire handle exceedingly well for the most part. Trying to stop on a dime isn’t going to happen, but they often stop a lot shorter than cars in GTA IV might have. For the turning, they also handle way too well for the period. Playing through Mafia II, set roughly ten years after L. A. Noire, the cars control a lot worse, and more realistically. Considering the nature of the chases, what with their sudden turns and quick dives into alleyways, it’s a welcome relief the cars control as well as they do, but it sticks out in an otherwise fairly realistic atmosphere. That realistic atmosphere also costs you a GPS, in the one Rockstar game where it’s arguably needed most. With a city much more detailed and complicated than what Rockstar has built in the past, you’re left without a GPS, which is inexplicable considering every horse John Marston grabbed in Red Dead Redemption somehow came with as a standard feature. Instead you’re left to pause the game, pull up the map, note when you need to turn and your route to where you’re going (completely breaking the flow) or worse, ask your partner for directions. Often times you’ll hit the button to get them to tell you which direction to go, and by the time they respond you’re in the middle of the intersection. Worse still, if Cole and his partner are in the middle of dialogue, they’ll finish a line before they give you directions, putting you even further from where such help would have been useful. It’s a painfully glaring omission that could have easily saved the driving from being a chore.

     Overall, aside from a few frustrating and annoying nitpicks, the gameplay is solid. The investigating is fun, interrogating is well executed, and the gunplay, driving, and running around, are mostly pretty entertaining. In actuality, the weakest part of the L. A. Noire is the story and the characters, a sizable disappointment considering how well written Red Dead Redemption was. Cole Phelps defies the grand Rockstar tradition of having an antihero who did horrible things that he regrets and now is trying to atone for. Despite the lack of a dark past, he’s still shoehorned into having some skeletons in his closet which are revealed throughout the story. Though the traffic desk’s cases are all independent, the other three desks each have their own overarching stories that lay on top of another overarching story that lasts the entire game. Add a wartime flashback layer under all of this and the story could have easily become convoluted and hard to follow, but never actually did. But while it never lost quality due to confusion, it was never very good to begin with. The desk stories are alright, serial killers and insurance fraud being easy enough to piece together and create believable cases with, but the overarching story is poorly told and poorly written. Cole Phelps’ attempt at a troubled past makes him seem like an asshole, something his character in the gameplay segments only reinforces. Often times an interview will go from “We’d like to ask you a few questions,” to, “You’re a lying sack of shit who isn’t worth a damn! You’re lying, I hate you, I hope your mother dies of cancer, and if you don’t tell me what I want you to tell me, I’m going to shoot your God damn dog!” with a single button press. This is also a noted attitude when Phelps hits civilians with, and without a partner in the car. When the partner is present, he’ll yell at Phelps and call him varying levels of insane. When Phelps is alone, he’ll simply blame the civilian he just manslaughtered, often calling him something him something untoward. Another storyline involving Phelps plays out over the course of the game, however it’s kind of just sprung on you at some point, poorly executed considering you’ve been playing the character the whole game and would know about. Cole’s family is often mentioned, but to no effect because you only ever see them once in the game, serving as a poor mechanic to forward the poorly written story. When the end of the game arrives and Phelps’ painfully imposed journey of “redemption” is played out, the game’s ending feels hollow and empty, completely devoid of any closure or satisfying resolution. Rockstar is great at making characters you hate. I hated most of the cast of Red Dead Redemption and GTA IV, not because they were poorly written, but because they were so well written I legitimately felt they were horrible human beings fully deserving of the murder I brought down upon them. The heroes of both tales, while considerably terrible people in their own rights, were antiheroes you could get behind and were glad to see them trying to right their wrongs, and change their ways. With Cole Phelps, I couldn’t care less whether or not he got gunned down or not. I hated his character because he was a complete and total asshole with no redeeming qualities, other than his keen detective skills. The other characters are forgettable, and for the most part don’t play much of a role in most of the stories aside from delivering lines. The ones that do play a meaningful part in the story tend to forecast their “I’m super evil!” party quirk immediately. The few betrayals that happen don’t feel like legitimate betrayal because you see them coming from the first five hours of the game. The only characters I really found myself liking were Jack Kelso, one of Cole’s WWII buddies, and the coroner, simply because he was sane, rational, smart, and detached from the story.

     Compared to the story, L. A. Noire’s other faults are superficial and cosmetic, easily forgiven. Cole controls awkwardly when investigating a crime scene, often times forcing you to step a few feet away from something you were trying to look at in order to orient properly to it. At one point during a segment in which you’re asked to tale a suspect’s car, the traffic messed up so bad that it wasn’t moving and for ten minutes I repeatedly drove as far away from the suspect as I could without losing them in effort to “jump start” the traffic into moving. That eventually worked, but not without several attempts. It also only happened ONCE, and was probably a one-in-a-thousand chance based on how the traffic is random. The game desperately needs an ability to skip cutscenes. It’s great that you can’t accidentally skip dialogue during an interview, but the five minute opening vignette to a case doesn’t need to be seen more than once. The game features a nice film noir homage with a black and white mode, but I would never recommend playing the game through with it on, only testing it out and seeing how it looks.

     The complete package of L. A. Noire is a pretty solid one. Overall the game is fun, and on a case by case basis, it’s well done. If you tune out the underlying story and just take it for the adventure game that it is, it’s a highly entertaining game. It doesn’t shoot as well, drive as well, or read as well as Rockstar’s other games, but in the end, it’s almost as fun as them.