L.A. Noire is almost everything I hoped it would be, and very little of what I thought it was. Judging by trailers and gameplay footage alone,
I expected it to be a Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney game wrapped within Grand Theft Auto IV‘s game engine, with some femme fatales and fedora-wearing gangsters thrown in to fulfill the “noire” element. In actuality, this has very little to do with the GTA games, and is probably more closely related to graphic adventure games and movies. The relative lack of free-form gameplay and driving-over-prostitutes is most certainly going to turn off some gamers — the real draw here is the story, and how the game forms the mechanics around that.
You star as Cole Phelps, a decorated Marine and veteran of the Pacific campaign in World War II, and now a rising star in the Los Angeles Police Department. When the game starts, Phelps is a rookie cop working the beat on the streets of L.A. By the time the game ends, Phelps will have worked cases involving arson, stolen drugs, and of course murder. Investigating these crimes represents the bulk of what you do.
