The Rockstar brand carries a lot of baggage with it, most of it stuffed with parts of dead pedestrians. Grand Theft Auto 3, for most people, meant killing as many innocent people as possible, getting five wanted stars, fighting off the cops until you died, and then doing it all over again. You could tell Rockstar was trying to branch out from this with GTA4, which had a much heavier emphasis on story than balls-out, completely nonsensical action. It even burdens players with some responsibilities that, while sometimes overwhelming, at least gave you a connection with some characters (though I never want to hear from that stupid cousin ever again).
The latest game carrying the Rockstar label (though NOT made by the same team, it should be noted) is L.A. Noire, a fantastic piece of fiction set in the 1940s. While it technically still takes place in an open world, this serves as more of a setting than your own destructible sandbox. Upon hearing this, a good portion of people won’t even give L.A. Noire a second look. GTA has become its own genre to them, and they won’t accept anything else. Those people are doing themselves a disservice.
LOL
L.A. Noire is more of an adventure game than anything else. You go to the scene of the crime, pick up some clues, question suspects, and close the case. Sometimes all of this happens with not even one bullet shot. It could be argued that the “minigames” of L.A. Noire are the action sequences; they are infrequent and typically end fairly quickly. You could actually go through this game without ever really driving, aside from a few car chases; just mark the point on your map, hold down the action button, and your partner will drive you there. It’s the equivalent of a cab from GTA, or a quick travel in larger games like Oblivion.
"I just don't get this 'Banksy' guy."
So, it has been established that this game is nothing like GTA. Why is that fine? Because it does so many other things right in its own genre that comparing it to another just isn’t fair. As far as adventure games go, L.A. Noire is a delight. There’s only so much you can do with the process of finding clues in any game (walk around and hit the “find” button, in most cases). So the game’s creative–and expensive–answer to delving deeper into clues comes into play with its conversation system, or “we put a shitload of HD cameras on this person’s face and then put it on a video game person” system.
In the future, we can see all your wrinkles.
While questioning (or interrogating) characters, some will look away, gulp, sweat, or subtly bite their lower lip. Creases in their forehead will show up when it looks like they’re straining, and, as creepy as this sounds, this game has the most realistic lips I’ve ever seen. Admittedly, this is a bit off-putting at first. The “real” face lined up with the “fake” body is an odd juxtaposition, and many characters do their best “4 year old that just took a cookie and has chocolate over his face, but completely denies it” impression immediately after lying. The more you play, the more cold-hearted people you run into, which serves the game well. Watching someone tell you they killed someone and knowing they don’t give a good goddamn shit about it is fairly chilling.
"Nope, nothing here."
Whether or not you should buy L.A. Noire really depends on how much you like adventure games. If Heavy Rain and Phoenix Wright are up your alley, this will probably have a good place on your game shelf (or drawer, or shoebox). It does still have its fair share of open world problems that are getting harder to ignore as video game technology advances: characters sometimes get caught up on certain pieces of the world and remain stuck, cars will inevitably get in your way, and there will likely be bugs in certain situations that will end up in humorous YouTube videos with “EPIC FAIL” written on them. But if you’re not buying it just because it’s not GTA, think about it this way: steak is awesome, but so are burgers. If you eat beef, you just don’t eat one of them, do you? What you consider the steak and what you consider the burger is purely subjective, but trust me when I say L.A. Noire is the best steak and/or burger it can be.
That was the worst analogy ever. I apologize.