Today, I finally finished the game, “L.A. Noire” and it’s a pretty long game too. It’s the latest game the company, Rockstar made. The same makers who did the “Grand Theft Auto” series, and “Red Dead Redemption”.

The story is set in Los Angeles in 1947. You play an LAPD police officer named, Det. Cole Phelps (who is voiced by actor, Aaron Staton). You start off as a regular police officer with a black uniform at first, then you get promoted to Detective later. You must solve cases through the departments of: Traffic, Homicide, Vice, and Arson. You must look for all clues around a certain crime scene. While you’re looking for clues, music will play, and the music will stop letting you know all the clues are found. Then you must interview witnesses and catch suspects. After you catch the suspect, you must interview the suspect while he/she is in custody.

The only thing when you’re interviewing witnesses or suspect, you have to carefully choose whether he/she is telling the “Truth”, maybe in “Doubt’, “Lying”. You must carefully watch their facial expressions to see if you can tell if they’re telling “Truth, in “Doubt”, or “Lying”. If you pick “Lying”, you must go through the clues in your notebook to prove it. This is the hardest part of the whole game and I got plenty of answers wrong during the interviews. I got some right though.

There are action sequences for the game play. Yes, you get to chase cars, run after the bad guys on foot, and shoot enemies, but you don’t do much of that in the game. The game wants to see if you can solve crime yourself. It’s strictly a Detective and Mystery game.

As the word in the title says, “Noire”, the game is heavily inspired by actual, film noir. You have the choice to play this game in either color or black & white. I played it in color, but next time I play this again, I’ll play it in black & white so it can give it a realistic, film noir feeling. The musical score and the acting of the voice overs did a great job on making it feel like, film noir. The game can get nasty and graphic at times though. There is a lot of profanity as well.

When you’re playing this game, keep in mind this isn’t “Grand Theft Auto”. Yes, there is free roam, you can go where ever you please, but the problem is, you can’t do anything you want. You’re a police officer, so you must follow the laws. If you run over people with your car in the streets or try to steal cars, you get penalties.

There are references of famous actors that got a mention in the game, when there was a part where Cole had to look up names in a Hotel scene. Marilyn Monroe, Shirley Temple, Orsen Welles, Clark Gable, etc. I thought that was pretty cool.

I thought this was an incredible game. It’s the best game I’ve played in 2011 so far. Everything about the game was perfect. No complaints. I wish the video game industry would make more Detective games like this, we need more. I’m sure there will be a sequel to, “L.A. Noire”, ’cause the ending left open for one, I think. If you enjoy classic movies and film noir, yourself. Get this game.

I’m not much into classic film noir, but after playing this game, makes me want to start seeing some of those films.

Kev