L.A. Noire

First and foremost, L.A. Noire should have been a movie, not a game.

I explained this to Sweeney a while ago immediately after finishing the game. He directed me to some website critiquing the game in which they basically pointed out the same flaw. Both movies and games have the amazing potential to entertain and enlighten us, but the true fact is that - at least at this point in history - they really don't crossover too well. (Scratch that. Mario Bros. the movie is amazing.) Examining L.A. Noire, the story was incredible (for a game, that is); however, I kept finding myself pissed off every time the narrative cut away and I was back to "playing" the actual game. Now, I feel most here are familiar enough with this game that won't waste time explaining the gameplay. You can really just summarize it as this: 1) Arrive at crime scene; 2) Scout location for evidence; 3) Question witnesses/suspects (sometimes this may involve a chase or shootout of some kind; 4) Get new leads; 5) Repeat steps 1 through 4 until the case is closed. While cool at first, this rigmarole gets old pretty fast - at least it did for me - and I found myself only caring about the storyline after a couple of hours of gameplay.

Before I rip into the game any further, I should say this: I do applaud this game's existence. Why? They tried something new. Never has there been a game (not to my knowledge, at least) that's paid attention to little nuances of being a detective. Looking for clues and evidence. Interrogating suspects and paying attention to their facial expressions (although there turned out to be an extremely simple method in winning this - always choose lie) even if their tells for lying or being truthful were obvious to spot. I still praise the developers for trying to branch out into something new. And if there was anything they did extremely well it was their attention to detail.

Living in L.A., I have the opportunity to cross-check their map design to see how authentic it actually is. Clearly, many things have change, but I set out one day to just cruise through Downtown and the south-east area to see how reality compared to the game. The south-east has changed... that's for sure. It wasn't long before I got some stares by the locals (a white kid in a Jetta really doesn't belong in that area) and retreated back to safer territories. However, Downtown sill contained many landmarks used in the game. From the city design to the cars to the radio commercials... these developers paid much attention to the authenticity of the environment and atmosphere in relation to the game's time period. For this I give the game much applause.

Now I'm left wondering... "Will this game be made into a movie?" At Sony, we already have Uncharted and Metal Gear slated to make their way to the big screen, which makes me cringe a bit. Aside from Mario Bros. (a situation where something is so bad that it's now good), there are no successful video game to film crossovers. I'm talking about the quality here, not Box Office revenue - the Tomb Raider series cleaned-up. But I might be eating my words if this guy ever got the chance to make the crossover.

Don't worry. I doubt that will ever happen.