If LA Noire was actually a Noire film, it would have been directed by Michael Bay.

This 18-rated game from Rockstar (of Grand Theft Auto infamy) throws you into a richly drawn 1940s Los Angeles, and pits you against the appropriate gangsters to boot.

There are many criticisms to be made of this game, so I would like to preface by saying: I did actually enjoy it. The story was intriguing enough, and the score, thanks to Andrew Hale of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, was sensational. The technology used to capture the actors, while not brand new, was used in such a way that made cut-scenes dynamic and engaging, and made the interrogations, which could have been horribly mis-pitched, fun and accessible. It also allowed for the actors to actually act, something that is often overlooked in the video games industry. Aaron Staton has a few shaky moments, but otherwise produces an arresting (pun entirely intended) performance as the game’s main protagonist, Cole Phelps. The cast as a whole proves to be fairly strong, although an honourable mention also goes to Andrew Connolly for his charismatic performance as the Irish crusader Capt. James Donnelly. And it is worth noting that a video game is doing something very right if it give an actor a chance to be charismatic.

The game is richly drawn, and well shot, whether you’re playing in full Technicolour, or the dank eponymous Noire & Blanche. And the music is well suited, either fitting with the “Sunny California” vibe with some suitable ’40s tracks, or unleashing the ominous theme over piano and strings. The cars in particular are a treat to behold. The only thing to divert from this excellent representation of the City of Angels is that everyone seems to be having the same conversation. Maybe a few more background lines could’ve been recorded.

The only thing to give away that this is a Rockstar game is that distinctive circular mini-map, and that ‘triangle’ (or ‘Y’ on an XBox) gets you in and out of cars. The driving itself is very different from previous Rockstar games. This is no bad thing – you can feel the weight of the vehicles as you go around corners, and they crash with a thump, rather than bouncing and spinning off of every surface, like in the Grand Theft Auto games. When you get one of them in the air, you’re screaming the whole way down, and the landing always makes you flinch. They aren’t indestructible though – one chase sequence saw my quarry’s car do enough barrel rolls to qualify as a James Bond stunt. Another departure from Rockstar’s past is that you cannot kill pedestrians. Not that I tried deliberately – high-speed chases through the streets of LA are bound to render some collateral damage, or so I thought. The pedestrians jump magically and impossibly out of the way of your car. A warning pops up explaining that LA’s finest are sworn to protect the citizens, not turn them into street pancake, and that you may get fired if it happens. Frankly, I would rather have incurred a Game Over than have to watch the unlikely transportation of these innocents. It would certainly have made me drive safer in the future. On that note, there seem to be some pieces of foliage in California made out of sheets of steel. I encountered several hedgerows that would rather destroy the front of my car than give any ground. This is not true for all the hedges in LA Noire, and again, I found myself wishing that the game would make up its mind. I would have been fine with avoiding all hedges, it was just infuriating not knowing what to avoid and what not to worry about.

This sort of double standard about details is prevalent throughout the game. One of the little details that always brought me joy was the required detective’s trilby. It could be thrown off your head in the middle of a fist-fight, or it could be batted away by a stray bullet. But when the action was over, you could always walk over to it, and with a spin of the wrist, smoothly replace it on your head. I never tired of doing just that. Having said that, the game was full of little oversights. I couldn’t, for instance, take a bad guy alive by flanking him and coming in for a melee attack. I had to shoot him. I resented this especially when, in the cut-scene that followed, Phelps looked so sad and disappointed that lives had to be taken. Lives didn’t have to be taken, just a little more coding would have saved them. The same is true of crime scene investigations. What seems like such a vast and expansive world, in which you can explore, is in fact a pretty corridor game. An immersive corridor game, but still a corridor game. The places you can go are vastly limited, and often, you can’t continue until you find all the evidence on a crime scene. This mars the potential for even an illusion of openness. The same is true of the interrogation. I think the game would have been all the more intriguing, and the stakes would have felt higher, if you weren’t told then and there whether you dealt with a question correctly or not. I’m not asking for a massive, open-ended game-play – although that would’ve been nice; Heavy Rain managed it well enough – merely for the uncertainties to remain clouded. That way, sending all those people off to the gas chamber would’ve felt like a bigger decision.

And this betrays LA Noire‘s real problem – it is too aware that it’s a video game, and this creates an atmosphere that can feel very patronising and frustrating for the gamer. A potentially cracking set of stories is packaged in a series of regular and often superfluous action sequences, that are rarely creative, and usually involve shooting and killing bad guy after bad guy after bad guy. The last partner you work with, Hershel, mentions that he’d “never fired his weapon in the line of duty before”. After this line is spoken, he must’ve killed ten guys just by himself. Killing over a hundred and thirty perps, as I did, must be some kind of national record.

What it comes down to is lack of trust. No trust in their own stories, and no trust in their audience to endure a more reasonable (because realistic is never the word with video games) environment, have taken what could have been one of my all time favourite games, and turned it into a merely very good game. Nonetheless, worth a try, if you have the money and the inclination.

Entertainment – 8 Despite its gripes, LA Noire has a story worth listening to, with some great acting thrown in to taste.

Effort  – 9 The controls are very easy to pick up, and the actions sequences skippable if you’re struggling.

Expense – 4 £39.99 is a lot to pay for this game. Wait for a drop in price.

Endurance – 5 Unless you’re an insane completest, it’s good for one play-through. The DLCs seem overpriced to me.

EQUALS – 6.5 A good game, that should have been a classic.