Video Game Review

So I know that most of you guys don't care about video games at all, but I finished playing L.A. Noire and I want to review it here because I think it's a really good game. I'll try to be brief.

Synopsis

In L.A. Noire you play a ex-Marine and war hero turned detective Cole Phelps. You work on cases, trying to solve mysterious that involve arson, murder, and even drug smuggling. Along the way, you have to come face to face with corruption in both the city and police department while struggling with your own conflicted feelings about your armed service as well as the darkness within yourself.

Gameplay

Simply put, I love playing this game. It's not just a Grand Theft Auto knockoff (it's made by the same company, Rockstar Games). You actually can't kill random civilians or you lose the case. Most of your time is spent your time finding clues and interviewing witnesses. They shot the motion capture for this game twice, once for movement and once for faces, so facial expressions are hyper-realistic and really cool. This is especially great because your witnesses can lie to you, and you have to be able to spot it either from the evidence you've gathered or just based on their expressions alone.

Story

I have conflicted feelings about the overarching story line. L.A. Noire has three discs, and the story really only starts coming together in the last one. The rest of the time you get pieces of your past delivered to you a la wavy green flasbacks which I'm not a fan of because they're so spaced out it's hard to keep them together. You also pick up newspapers to get cut scenes which show you the story line. These take FOREVER to load and, once again, don't make much sense until way late in the game. The ending of this game is also kind of unsatisfying.

Drawbacks

Once again, I love playing this game. It's so much fun. However, I don't love the loading screens which I think are more prominent than usual because of the aforementioned motion capture.

I hate to harp on this all the time, but there are very few female characters. Yes there are women you investigate in the cases, but aside from that there is only one female character in the whole game. On the flip side, there's a lot of domestic abuse in the game (one serial killer strips woman naked and writes derogatory things on them in lipstick). For a time you have this fat, alcoholic asshole for a partner and every time you come across one of these murders he says, "The husband probably did it because the wife drank too much. I know I've taken a swing at one or all of my ex-wives." It gets old really fast.

One other drawback is that it's an expensive game and you can really only play through it once. I mean, you can play the cases again, but you know the answers and how they end.

Sequel?

This is one game where I really hope they make another one. Partly because it was really imaginative and a real departure from most third person shooters set in the city, but also because I think there's a lot of room for improvement in the story telling and loading screen ratio.

Final Word

I love this game. I might actually dish out some money to download new cases, and I never do that. Make me another one. Go universe, go!