Currently Playing: L.A. Noire Is A Bumbling Detective
Once upon a time, in the far off distant reaches of time, I owned a copy of L.A Noire on Steam. And I can't really remember exactly what happened - whether it glitched, or I broke it doing something stupid (I had a habit at the time of snooping through the run files to see if I could figure out anything about how the game worked) or quite what really, but I didn't ever actually complete it. This, for me, is quite unusual. I'm not a trophy hunter or completionist, but I do normally see a game through from start to finish in terms of the story and core gameplay. Yet, L.A Noire, for whatever reason, didn't get done. So when I saw it had been released onto my current favourite toy, the Nintendo Switch, I decided to get myself a copy and tick it off my To Do list once and for all!
So far, it's not been an entirely enjoyable experience...
This game has aged poorly. This is, admittedly, probably not helped by me going from (at the time) high end gaming PC to portable games console, but even with that caveat, it's still tough going. The textures are flat, the draw distance measured in microns, and everything is stupidly dark. Finding clues is near impossible with no light sources on a screen the size of the back of a fag packet. I'm also struggling with the controls. Both the standard cop car and the unmarked police car steer like milkfloats, and I cannot for the life of me get Phelps to run in a straight line. During on-foot pursuits he zigzags wildly like a meth-raddled raccoon, and in car chases, well, you might as well give up before you've started, because it takes quite a while to execute a 17-point turn even in a virtual world.
But perhaps these are not entirely game design and/or hardware related issues. There is almost certainly a layer of player ineptitude going on here too. But - and this is a big but - there is also a layer of player bafflement, which is slightly more troubling.
So many of the core concepts in the game are obscure to me. I don't understand whether shooting a fleeing suspect is good, bad or neutral. I don't always actually understand the slang and aphorisms the characters are using in their conversions. Does Phelps have a good relationship with his current detecting partner? I honestly don't know. What do the Good Cop, Bad Cop, Accuse options actually mean? They rarely do what I was anticipating. Where are the edges of a crime scene; how near, or far, should I be searching for clues? If I take a car in a parking lot, have I stolen it? Does that make me a bad policeman? Does it matter? There are so many questions like this, and it doesn't take long before they pile up into a heap that really undermines a detective game which is meant to be about logical deduction and clarity of thought.
Because of these problems, I'm playing L.A Noire in quite a radically different mindset that I would a "normal" (to me) story-based game. And by changing my approach, I'm bringing a lot of the enjoyment back into it.
I'm treating it like a book.
Normally, when I play a game with a strong narrative element, I get really into it. I might even start role-playing along a bit, trying to get inside the mind and motivation of my character, whether they are a predetermined personality or an RPG blank slate. With L.A Noire though, I'm experiencing it passively. This is Phelp's story, not mine, and if we screw bits of it up along the way, then that's just one version of the telling. I'm not interested in doing this game "well," or getting sympathetic to my character and trying to keep them out of harm's way. My Phelps is himself. Sometimes he just accidentally murders people, or has a bit of an off day and misses a bunch of clues and that's just what happens. One thing that is for certain is he's a bloody awful driver.
I've stopped trying to be good at L.A Noire, and taken a much more back-seat role, not just in the driving sections, but in the whole game overall. If I can't find a clue, I'll stop searching after a while. Phelps didn't find it that day. If I can't do an action sequence, I'll skip it. Phelps can do it without me and I'll come back when we're ready to move on. I never drive anywhere, I get Phelps chauffeured around by the rest of the LAPD. My Phelps has no interest in cars or bars or guns. He doesn't get dressed up, and he doesn't go sightseeing. Collectables of all stripes remain uncollected, and, unlike my normal game-playing behaviour, I can go weeks between cases. L.A Noire has become my bedtime reading. Rather than marathon sessions, I pick it up and put it down on a case-by-case basis, treating each one as a miniature interactive novel, rather than as a "proper game." And by changing my own mindset, and actually reducing the degree of interactivity I engage in, I've made L.A Noire fun again.
