What do you think can do people who consider movies and video games an equal form of art, drawing their inspiration from such gangster masterpieces as the “secrets of Los Angeles” and adore dramatic plots? Do not know? I will answer – you will get a game, which is an original mixture of action and detective quest, whose name is L.A. Noire. But about everything in order.
The city of vices
So, this time, the developers became America in 1947, or rather, the city of Los Angeles in the south of the state of California, where, in fact, our adventures begin. In the yard, at that time, industry working at a shock pace, whose labor force is constantly fed by more and more refugees and various emigrants, Hollywood freely spreads their broad shoulders, and the young, unknown heroes of the war are returning to the soaked blood and horror of Okinawa. One of these heroes is just our future protagonist – Cole Felps. I must admit that it was here that the scriptwriters tried to fame: everyone, at least any significant character, turned out to be truly bright and memorable, hardly you do not remember any of them at least a glimpse. Our protege is simultaneously a loving husband, a caring father and a simple policeman, in which formalism and vanity are closely adjacent to a strong sense of justice. And what are his partners stand! A seasoned wolf, a straightforward simpleton, a drunk warrior and a cynical bastard, each of which poor felps will have to find his own, individual approach, and this despite the fact that colleagues themselves do not really want to make contact during work. In addition, the situation is not always complicated by the responsive bosses and the military past of Cole, which pursues him on the heels. Games, where the characters of the heroes are shown so convex and contrast, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. And it will remain.
The life of the detective
Cole Felps only recently returned from the war and entered the service in local law enforcement agencies. To start, as it happened, you have to. Naturally, the captain will not immediately give you, so first you have to try on the shape of the patrol. However, this is not for long – very soon the main character will fall out a chance to prove himself and gain the approval of the authorities, after which you can boldly consider yourself the new Sherlock Holmes. In total, there are five departments in the game for the court: the patrol service itself, the transport police, the department of murders, morals and the department of arson, where Cole will have to move up the service ladder. But back to the beginning.
Felps with a partner patrolling the night streets of the city, suddenly receive a challenge of the dispatcher and rush to the scene. The first thing that catches the eye is an openly wretched automobile control. The car on the way brings this way and this way, the feeling is created that our ward took superfluous to the chest in the bar. I don’t know if the gamepad saves from this misfortune, I was tormented for about an hour before I could learn how to collect less than one road pillar. Grinding my teeth, I immediately handed the steering wheel to my partner.
Finally, with grief in half, we fall into the place of street tragedy and proceed to collect evidence. “Pixelhanting in 3D. "-the luminaries of quests are exclaiming and will be right in their own way, as well as the world game press, not ashamed to use this phrase in many of its reviews. Yes, something like this looks like that. Our Glaverorea is at the scene of the crime, exchanges a few words with a partner and begins to inspect the objects scattered according to the location. The mysterious music sounds, next to the suspicious objects in the corner of the screen appears a magnifying glass icon, a short sound signal is heard, and now felps turns a piece of a bloodied pipe in all planes. For identification, we carefully suggest the spot itself, after which the detective logically concludes that the blood supposedly belongs to the corpse lying nearby, and the data about this is entered into a notebook that performs the role of a kind of CPC in the game. It only upset me that such a monotonous work will have to be done in the game in each investigated case, and only occasionally we are thrown as evidence of some puzzle.
Fortunately or not, the creators decided not to limit themselves to this, giving a side by the main dish, dynamic episodes. It turned out, softly, three plus. Firstly, self-assholed opponents love to substitute for bullets and categorically refuse to change shelters. Secondly, already mentioned above the notorious transport control often distracts from the chase itself, making narrow alleges with a real test, and thirdly, your rustle can be heard for a kilometer when surveillance. Lord, was it really impossible to save us from these children’s blunders? Fortunately, after three unsuccessful attempts, an active scene can be missed without violating the investigation course. The only thing that is done well is the grease with criminals and run on the roofs, but you won’t go far.
There will still be worthwhile here a few words about the game world with which we will have to interact. He is conditionally discovered here, which means that you cannot take and go where you want. No, no, do not be afraid at right away-if you wish, you can leave Los Angeles along and across, if you have enough strength, but sooner or later you will have to return to the location fixed for the investigation, otherwise you will not move off the dead point. Preventing the emerging question, I will say that this is largely due to the plot of the game, which is inherently – attention is completely linear, that is, to change current events or to influence them you are not able. This, if you want, is a small curtsy towards the cinema, where the action is predetermined in advance and is written to the smallest detail. Nevertheless, the creators of the game guessed to fill out the resulting gap and add several classes for true collectors. So if you are bored with the work of the detective, you can well do something else: assemble police badges, open cars hidden in different parts of the city or find bobbins with film. As they say, everyone is his own, and without this in modern games today, it is necessary to please everyone and everyone. The market, in the end, dictates its own rules.
The last movie hero
Now we will talk separately about the main feature of the game – the system of interrogation of the suspects, or rather, about the personal animation of characters, praised by developers long before the official release. The Australian company Depth Analysis, which developed a unique Motionscan technology, which allows you to read the facial expressions of actors with particular accuracy, took responsibility for this. As a result, the most, in my opinion, realistic animation of human faces in video games today. Probably, the virtual heroes have never seemed so alive and believable, attracting all the attention of the player. Sometimes, I really can’t get rid of the thought that I have not just a game, but a gangster action movie in the best traditions of the American noir, but, unfortunately, there were no curios. Often during interrogations, when the brave detective felps asks the next question, the person of the detainee manages to accept such a ambiguous expression that you won’t even understand where to doubt, and where to catch on a frank lies, using one of the found evidence that, incidentally, is not always the most obvious and logical, which, undoubtedly, the recovery. Of course, all this could be attributed to the so far not space technologies and a special deductive mindset of the authors of dialogs, but at times it still clearly catches the eye.
History in history
As you know, everything in the world begins with an idea, because without it a primitive man could not create even a stone ax. We need something more abstract and a little more complex, namely a rich, worked out plot, without which such a serious project as l.A. Noire, you just can’t do. I will say right away that cases for investigation (including those who have been released in the form of separate DLC) in general turned out to be quite interesting and fascinating. Not “ten” Agatha Christie, of course, but nevertheless. They dreamed from childhood to catch an elusive maniac – please. Want to press a corrupt official to the nail – no problem. What about the shadow side of show business in half with drugs? Also not enough? Not at all – here and there they are trying to surprise us all and everyone, literally at every turn. Well, you must admit, it’s nice when the developers show such care for us players. During the passage, you will never have a feeling that you already know everything, because the tension in each investigation remains from the beginning to the interchange. The killer, as always, turns out to be a gardener.
But the main storyline, on the contrary, turned out to be completely contradictory – a vivid example of how a standing idea can ruin the bad implementation. During the passage, the events are served too abruptly and fragmentedly in the form of numerous black and white memories and incomprehensible videos from the newspapers found in the world, visually breaking the structure of the story: the plot is sagging, then it rushes ahead, and even intrigue even violated in one of the moments ahead of time. Honestly, as if they smeared porridge on a plate, and if a competent presentation was in the game, everything would be completely different. Eh, the idea was good, … thank God that at the very end we will get an exhaustive answer to all our questions.
Here, in fact, are those lines, the dear reader, for which you read this review, and therefore we will not pull the rubber and immediately say that the game turned out to be bold and ingenious exactly as raw and unsent. Dumb artificial intelligence, uncontrollable cars and unpretentious action coupled with amazing quest gameplay, fantastic front animation, carefully worked out setting and torn, although not devoid of charm. Obviously, the advantages are clearly balanced, and in some places they outweigh the shortcomings that look not very significant against the general background. Perhaps Team Bondi was not able to surpass such a monster like Heavy Rain, but she at least tried. And if so, then why not check it yourself in practice?
