For the folks wondering why I haven’t created any games recently. I am working on some tough titles. And with the money of my bonus in January, I bought an Xbox 360, with Kinect, which is the my first game computer since the 1990’s (Amiga). And the rule of thumb is ofcourse, those who like to create games, should also like to play games. That’s what I did. My most recent purchase is “LA Noire”. Yes, got hooked into the hype. I bought it on the 19th of May, while most stores provide it on the 20th. And I got a discount, only paying about 2/3 of the price. I guess it’s a stunt to attract early bird buyers.
Anyway, I love LA Noire. You play the character of Cole Phelps. You work your way up from simple policeman to detective, investigating homicide cases. Although driving through LA can be a bit boring at times, the best part of the game certainly is when you have to interview characters for your case. Rockstar, the producer of the game, used motion capture techniques, to capture facial expressions. And these facial expressions help you to judge whether a character is telling the truth, or is lying. At times you distrust a person’s statement because he does not look you straight into the eyes, but you don’t have any evidence to back up, and then you can “doubt “ the person´s statement.
I am very impressed with the facial expression part of the game. Where other games provide characters with much more rough facial expression, LA Noire is outstanding in capturing the tiny details of a facial expression. In one word: awesome.
You do need to read the manual to help you recognize the body language though. In the beginning, I got all questions to suspects wrong. But when you get to learn the game more and more, you’ll advance your skills to read facial expressions, helping you to solve your cases.
The game comes with an incredible 3 discs. Currently I am playing the first disc, only spending four hours of my time to get through the first tutorial cases. It looks like many hours ahead. LA Noire does not only give an incredible view of Los Angelos in 1947, the details are astounding. It seems that great effort is spend on the details of documents, the political reality – you hear the news on the car-radio, the music which you also hear from the car radio. And there is lots of stuff to do. Sometimes you hear messages on your policeradio, ad hoc situations which you can solve if you want to.
Anyone who likes adventure games or quests will probably adore LA Noire. Certainly a must-have title. And no, nobody is paying me to write the above.
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