Knights of the Cardboard Castle

As with movies, I like to go into games cold these days. I pay attention to the word on the street about whether they’re good or not but I stay away from reviews until after I’m done with the game. I knew that this was a detective game made in the vein of the Grand Theft Auto series but not much else. Boy, was I surprised by what it really is.

• This is not an open world game in any way, shape or form. It just pretends to be. Instead, it’s an adventure game in which you need to drive around a lot to get from one point of interest to the next. Yes, there are car chase and shooting sequences but they’re not the point at all. In fact, by default the game allows you to skip them if you’ve failed them a certain number of times. The real meat of the gameplay is in combing an area for clues and choosing just the right thing to say to people.

• I really loved this aspect of the game. It felt so fresh to need to carefully examine an area and decide what’s an important clue and what isn’t, and all that in a realistic, 3d environment. I loved how all persons of interest and all clues are automatically recorded in your notebook and how it’s often necessary to bring it up to remind yourself of who’s who and what’s what. It’s such a natural evolution of the adventure game genre that I’m surprised no one has done this before.

• People complain that the game is linear to a fault and that’s certainly true. There is only one correct way to solve each case, even if this means accusing someone that the player knows is actually innocent. But this is true of every game in the adventure game genre. This isn’t an open-world action game or an RPG. It’s a narrative-driven adventure game.
• The overall story arc is fantastic and inspired me to spend a couple of hours reading up on the history of Los Angeles from that period. Many of the characters from the game were inspired by real historical personalities and I really dug how the game tries hard to feel true to the period and the noir genre. Cole Phelps is such an engaging character that I wonder if Aaron Staton is prouder of his work here than in Mad Men. For once, the evil conspiracy ends in a surprising twist, is more complex than I initially expected and makes complete sense given the politics and situation of that time and place. I even liked how the writer managed to differentiate between Cole Phelps and Jack Kelso. The gameplay mechanics for both are exactly the same but that doesn’t prevent the differences in their investigative style from showing through.
• That said, the designers could have been a little more deft in laying out their story. Tom Chick commented that L.A. Noir has so much story that it doesn’t know what to do with it. I also thought that it was odd how key cut-scenes could only be viewed if the player managed to collect the newspapers. I disliked how the player experience is closely tied to Cole Phelps’ point of view early on but as the game goes on, the perspective moves from Phelps’ viewpoint to a more third-person omniscient view as we are shown scenes that Phelps could have no access to. Surely there is a better way to convey the required information?

• The shooting in this game feels terribly out of place. I get that this is a Rockstar game and people expect some action and to tell the truth, the shooting isn’t bad. It’s nothing special, but it’s not bad. The real problem is that it feels terribly implausible in a game that tries so hard to make everything feel just right. One of Phelps’ partners who is nearing retirement age comments that he has never used his gun on duty and that makes perfect sense. They’re detectives, not soldiers. But he partners up with Phelps and suddenly they need to gun down ten goons everyday? This happens in the Nicholson Electroplating case too. It has a great set-up, cool references to Howard Hughes and industrial espionage but then ends in a badly conceived shoot-out against Military Police! How can the LAPD gun down innocent MPs with no consequences? It makes no sense!
• Similarly the GTA-style collectibles are terrible too. They distract you from the narrative and reminds you that this is just a game. Because why else would Cole Phelps care about running around the city finding hidden vehicle or film reels? I guess the street crimes are okay to flesh out the city somewhat but they still focus too much on the action. And really, forcing you to drive all the way across town to respond to an emergency is just a cheap way of padding out the length of the game. A smarter way to do it would be to have the event pop up only when you just happen to be near the area.

I often berate Rockstar for making games as if they were making films. Yet in the case of L.A. Noire, this is exactly the right approach to take. Each case feels like an episode of a television series and if the result is more like interactive fiction than an action game, so what? This is the new way to do adventure games and I wish there are more games like it.