New “L.A. Noire” Trailer

I know, I know, the trailers just keep rolling in today. But honestly, who’s complaining? “L.A. Noire?” I’m not tired of watching this stuff yet, and if you are, you’re a Godless communist. There, I said it.

One of the things that “Noire” is really going to have its hands full trying to pull off is this Detective Mode thing. Games like “Condemned” and “Arkham Asylum” have toyed extensively with the gumshoe angle, and at best they break even. Both settle for you putting on special goggles and following a splatter pattern that an intern to the art department probably drew with “Microsoft Paint” while the rest of the team was on a coffee break. You always sense they would have liked to do more, but I think hitting the magic number between challenging enough to be rewarding, and accessible enough to be playable is exceedingly difficult. To be honest, what’s available in “Arkham Asylum” is less like a real detective mode, and more like the game backing slowly away from the concept, palms outward, saying “I don’t want no trouble.”

So here comes “Noire,” guns (figuratively) blazing, claiming you’re going to look into someone’s eyes and know the truth. Is it as simple as watching to see if they look in another direction? Because I don’t see how that would be particularly thrilling. The satisfaction of discovering a tell in Poker is derived almost exclusively from you discovering what the tell is for yourself. If Rockstar pats you on the butt, nudges you through the door, and says “when he blinks hard, he’s lying,” then I don’t quite get where the thrill will come in.

The good news is, these guys are committed to this thing, so if anyone’s going to pull it off, it’s them. Detective modes are afterthoughts in most games, but “L.A. Noire” is betting the farm on them. If it is possible to do, I think these guys will do it. Here’s hoping.

-AA

Just cause you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there