L.A. Noire

Publisher: Rockstar
Year: 2011.

Genre: Detective/ Crime

Engine: RAGE

“

If it ain't broken don’t fix it!” this is a figure of speech to which I dub thee, a saying to wit I label this game. Truly speaking the first time that this phrase fell into my ears it made no-sense, and when I finally found the light of what they meant by it I was still in the dark, I mean for one who wouldn't want to improve on a formula that could bring in more customers. But then time would go by and I'd finally find a reason to conclude on my doubts. Thus by this I find Rockstar has carried itself, mimicking a a formula that has been present since the dawn of their flagship, Grand Theft Auto, they managed to put the same H.U.D almost throughout every title they have published  from "man hunt" to "red dead redemption", and hey who’s judging.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover they said.” when I saw the adverts prior to the launch date I pictured a game that would be mixing Stars from the silver era with today’s technology. And when I finally got a copy I’d find that L.A Noire’s H.U.D wasn't different from other Rockstar titles, in fact if I had seen the H.U.D only from adverts I would have not even bordered. What made me buy it, was the idea I got from seeing the promotional posters and from hear-say.

L.A. Noire's H.U.D

What I had imagined was a Max Payne come meet Humphrey Bogart, a game where Rockstars’ dark knight is introduced to the silver screen, but I was mistaken. I was disappointed at first but as I progressed from case to case it grew on me, the graphics wen't top notch but a plus is given in the direction of the facial expressions, a step in the uncanny valley as Jen-Hsun Huang says.

Most of the time you'll be questioning suspects and judge their 

answers based on their facial expressions if there is truth, lie or

doubt in the suspects answer.

The facial expressions were outstanding, for once you can finally see human emotions unlike the typical impassive faces you find in most games, and most of the game play is shaped behind this feature.The tech behind the facial features comes from a company called Team Bondi from Sydney, Australia using a process of setting the actors faces two an apparatus that would photograph every movement made by the actors face, to this me thinks 'tsk! it's must be an exhausting process'.

Anyway more about the game, you play as the main protagonist Cole Phelps, a World War hero who after his service to his country decides to further his carrier with the Los Angeles police department. You start off as an ordinary policeman, but trough and trough you get to advance to be a detective in the traffic department, investigating traffic incidents interviewing would be suspects and witnesses and progress to cases of arson .etc
all in all the game was a nice title to play, and I hope there will be more games that will take upon it's design and as for verdict here we go...

Playability: C
Graphics: B
Environment: B
shock&awe: B
Plot: C
Overall: B***, Awesome title.

NB* Be warned on first install the game wouldn't work until installing a patch obtainable from Rockstar which will set you back with a bandwidth of 67+ mb. Also don’t upgrade to windows 8 if you have installed it on a windows 7 machine, it gave me more problems on a windows 8 install no matter if I re-installed it and applied the patch again it still didn't work.