With the PS store closing down soon, I decided to get back into the PS3 games I'd either put off finishing, or finished but not fully completed. One of the games in the latter category was L.A. Noire.
I originally got the game around release time, but bounced off because of my weird expectation of it being a GTA-like game. Imagine my surprise when you couldn't shoot a gun in the open world, or even run over pedestrians (how dare they!?). I stopped playing the game a few hours in.
Flash forward to five(ish) years later. I was itching for a narrative-driven game and found L.A. Noire sitting neatly in my backlog.
I immediately fell in love with the game. The game heavily relies on and believes in its atmosphere. It takes cues from film noir of the 40s and 50s and is riddled with collectibles and references to these movies. The game even has a black-and-white mode (alas, not on par with Ghost of Tsushima's Kurosawa mode). As someone who hasn't really watched any of the movies the game tips its hat to, I can't really form an opinion on it relative to those movies. It still manages to capture that feel really well.
You play as Cole Phelps (not the internet's favourite character), an "war-hero" turned detective in 1947 Los Angeles. He fits right in with the rest of the characters, all of whom are acted very well (and you can tell because we recorded their every pore). I've just finished one of the DLC cases, and honestly really enjoyed the back-and-forth between Phelps and his partner. The dialogue is sharp and to the point (when you're not yelling at people out of the blue), and the cinematography really helps nail the vibe they're going for. They also fished out a bunch of actors from similar media (i.e. Mad Men) and they all nail their roles.
The facial tracking technology was one of the game's bigger selling points. Every small movement, every blink, wince and tick, captured with way too many cameras. To a lot of people, this produced an sense of uncanny valley, and it definitely does to me as well, but there's something just really cool and immersive about accurately portraying faces like that. Some of the uncanny valley, for me, came from the big discrepancy in facial vs body animation. They were mocapped separately, and it shows.
It's also the source of a bunch of the doubt meme, and a bunch of good gifs, such as:
"I swear officer! I ain't lying."
The gameplay services the atmosphere and story they're going for. The cases all feature clues that you can pick up and inspect, people you can yell at, and a whole buncha driving around (or fast travel via your trusty partner). I'm not the biggest fan of the clunky player movement, but was used to it having come off of other Rockstar games (though it does get real annoying). The game features a big open world with an accurate (AFAIK) representation of 1940's LA. A lot of people criticise the open world and state that the game could've been linear and ditched the open world and not have lost anything for it, but I'd argue that the driving between waypoints, the people walking about and the atmosphere all contribute to a grander sense of atmosphere that made the game for me. The cars don't feel like modern sports cars, but like actual cars of their time, and driving them to-and-fro with the 1940's radio on in the background summarises what I love about this game.
All in all, this game thrives on its atmosphere, and I really wish we'd get more games like it. Team Bondi closed down while working on their next game. The team was known for having awful working conditions, and it closing down wasn't really unexpected. The latest we've gotten from the IP was the remastered version a few years ago, but besides that, I think L.A. Noire is pretty much done for.
I originally got the game around release time, but bounced off because of my weird expectation of it being a GTA-like game. Imagine my surprise when you couldn't shoot a gun in the open world, or even run over pedestrians (how dare they!?). I stopped playing the game a few hours in.
Flash forward to five(ish) years later. I was itching for a narrative-driven game and found L.A. Noire sitting neatly in my backlog.
I immediately fell in love with the game. The game heavily relies on and believes in its atmosphere. It takes cues from film noir of the 40s and 50s and is riddled with collectibles and references to these movies. The game even has a black-and-white mode (alas, not on par with Ghost of Tsushima's Kurosawa mode). As someone who hasn't really watched any of the movies the game tips its hat to, I can't really form an opinion on it relative to those movies. It still manages to capture that feel really well.
You play as Cole Phelps (not the internet's favourite character), an "war-hero" turned detective in 1947 Los Angeles. He fits right in with the rest of the characters, all of whom are acted very well (and you can tell because we recorded their every pore). I've just finished one of the DLC cases, and honestly really enjoyed the back-and-forth between Phelps and his partner. The dialogue is sharp and to the point (when you're not yelling at people out of the blue), and the cinematography really helps nail the vibe they're going for. They also fished out a bunch of actors from similar media (i.e. Mad Men) and they all nail their roles.
The facial tracking technology was one of the game's bigger selling points. Every small movement, every blink, wince and tick, captured with way too many cameras. To a lot of people, this produced an sense of uncanny valley, and it definitely does to me as well, but there's something just really cool and immersive about accurately portraying faces like that. Some of the uncanny valley, for me, came from the big discrepancy in facial vs body animation. They were mocapped separately, and it shows.
It's also the source of a bunch of the doubt meme, and a bunch of good gifs, such as:
"I swear officer! I ain't lying."
The gameplay services the atmosphere and story they're going for. The cases all feature clues that you can pick up and inspect, people you can yell at, and a whole buncha driving around (or fast travel via your trusty partner). I'm not the biggest fan of the clunky player movement, but was used to it having come off of other Rockstar games (though it does get real annoying). The game features a big open world with an accurate (AFAIK) representation of 1940's LA. A lot of people criticise the open world and state that the game could've been linear and ditched the open world and not have lost anything for it, but I'd argue that the driving between waypoints, the people walking about and the atmosphere all contribute to a grander sense of atmosphere that made the game for me. The cars don't feel like modern sports cars, but like actual cars of their time, and driving them to-and-fro with the 1940's radio on in the background summarises what I love about this game.
All in all, this game thrives on its atmosphere, and I really wish we'd get more games like it. Team Bondi closed down while working on their next game. The team was known for having awful working conditions, and it closing down wasn't really unexpected. The latest we've gotten from the IP was the remastered version a few years ago, but besides that, I think L.A. Noire is pretty much done for.
