L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files review - Virtual reality improves an intriguing and involving detective yarn

LA Noire’s VR Case Files proves so entertaining because it understands virtual reality and all the strengths and foibles it entails. It's in the inherent silliness of strapping a hunk of electronics to your face and waving your arms around in the middle of your living room. And it's in the genuine transportive quality of diving into a fully immersive world and interacting with it close up.

And my does LA Noire manage to conflate the two. By handing over almost full control of police detective Cole Phelps in 1940s Los Angeles, it allows you to be as silly or serious as you please. I have spent an undignified amount of time in Cole’s office, dancing in front of the mirror with my very fine hat, fingers bouncing in the air like a 90s rave while Cole’s face glares back with his grimace of mild annoyance.

I’ve been entirely unprofessional at crime scenes, picking up pieces of evidence and chucking them at my non-plussed partner. I’ve patted witnesses on the head during interrogations and struggled to resist the urge to stick a finger up their nose.

Rockstar facilitate all of this because, simply, virtual reality can be a good laugh and the developer is happy to let you interact with its world as you see fit. It doesn’t always react to you in the way you would expect, of course, VR worlds often don’t at this nascent stage of their evolution. But LA Noire also comes with the confidence that, when it comes to the more serious business of hunting out clues and taking down bad guys, Rockstar have provided an interesting, reactive and largely accomplished virtual reality adaption of their gumshoe adventure.

The VR Case Files, exclusive to HTC's Vive headset, provides seven, occasionally streamlined scenarios spanning Cole’s meteoric rise in the LAPD from the original game, with each case handpicked to demonstrate different aspects of virtual reality. Each chapter can feel somewhat disjointed as Phelps leaps from keen patrolman to traffic cop to homicide and vice without the context of the original overarching narrative.

But while some story details may pass by those who haven’t played LA Noire before, the episodic nature of the game means that each case is self-contained enough to follow from beginning to end. You hit the streets to investigate crime scenes, interrogate witnesses, get into fistfights, gun battles and the occassional car chase.

What makes all of this work is that you are given almost full control over Cole. Very little of LA Noire is automated unless you want it to be, with (the real) you crouching down to pick up evidence, turning it over in your hands using the Vive motion controllers to find a crucial clue.

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You can stroll around areas by swinging your arms in a walking motion (or, if you so choose, can click on hotspots to teleport over). This is particularly evident in The Silk Stocking Murder, a brutal slaying which has you crouched over a corpse before following a grisly treasure hunt left by the killer. In the regular game, these could be somewhat laborious, clicking on different clues until you have enough to progress. In VR, this exploration makes a great deal more sense, with you peering into bins, following blood trails and feeling more involved in the pursuit.

In essence, LA Noire’s gumshoe is the perfect fit for VR. While there are clear signs that this is an existing game adapted for the technology, with characters not reacting to some of your more eccentric behaviour, each aspect of LA Noire’s original goals are genuinely enhanced. Crime scene investigation is the most clear and present, while interrogation is a close second. The game’s facial motion-capture was extraordinary back in 2011 and still impresses today. Particularly when you get up close, carefully looking at tics and tells as you grill a witness, jabbing your pencil in their face if you fancy it.

The action is good too. Fistfights are a little clumsy but pleasingly physical, with Cole accurately mimicking your moves as you duck in and out and swing a right hook at your quarry. Or you can open your hand and give them a good slap.

Driving is perhaps the least successful aspect, with you mimicking a steering wheel with both hands and more likely to go barreling onto the sidewalk than keep in a straight line, But even this is laden with detail, with you getting in, turning the key and firing up the sirens yourself in a finely detailed 40s motor.

But perhaps surprisingly, it is in gunfights that the VR Case Files impresses most. Again it is down to that autonomy. The opening tutorial has a brief shootout in which you must retrieve your shotgun from the trunk of your patrol car before dashing behind cover. You then physically lean round to get a bead on your target, holding the shotgun in both hands using the Vive controllers, before firing off a shot. You then chamber a new shell manually by pumping the shotgun, pulling your lead arm back with an endlessly satisfying “ch-chk” and reloading by reaching into your pocket and clicking each shell in while your cover is peppered by gunfire.

The gunplay is expanded upon most in final vice case ‘A Different Kind of War’, but you do wish there was more. Shooting, that most video gamey of actions, is surprisingly underserved or undercooked in VR and LA Noire’s involving gunfights are some of the best examples there are.

And this, perhaps, is where The VR Case Files raison d’etre becomes a bit clearer. This adaption of LA Noire is terrific fun, with Rockstar putting a lot of work into its detail and implementation. This is a game perfectly suited and definably improved by virtual reality. Its fleeting and occasionally disjointed nature, however, betrays that this is essentially a testbed. Rockstar trying its hand with the technology and seeing what it can do with its existing property. And if the developer is looking to branch out with all new virtual reality experiences, the evidence tne The VR Case Files is rather compelling.