New Review: Night in the Woods is as unforgettable as it is understated and beautiful

A truly evocative narrative-driven sidescroller, Night in the Woods is as unforgettable as it is understated and beautiful.

The game begins with main character Mae Borowski, stranded inside a bus station, her parents having forgotten that she was arriving in town that night. From the minute Mae begins chatting with the station repairman, the dialogue grabbed me, coming across as both true to life and incredibly genuine. Night in the Woods is an adventure game, with its dialogue and narrative ultimately taking center stage, and they’re both thankfully more than up to the task.

After dropping out of college in her sophomore year, Mae returns her hometown of Possum Springs, a working-class municipality surrounded by a dense wilderness, to move back in with her parents. Her friends, who have remained in town and mostly work retail jobs, seem pleasantly surprised, though clearly caught off guard, by her return. Much of Mae’s backstory is communicated slowly as the game progresses; the interactions Mae has with those around her, including her friends and parents, all seem to contain their own little secrets and in-jokes. Though Night in the Woods opts to slowly introduce its characters to you, it isn’t done in a gimmicky way. Everything has a natural flow to it, and the game’s revelations are handled in a manner that somehow feels real, as if these characters were people we know in our own various existences.

This is despite Night in the Woods’ characters being, well, animals. Mae Borowski takes the form of a cat, and all the other residents of Possum Springs are given animal appearances as well. The world is styled like a comic book, its artsy visuals somehow juxtaposing wonderfully with its incredibly realistic story, which dabbles quite easily into serious topics such as mental illness, sexual identity, the death of the middle class town, and much more. Night in the Woods is also, at other times, an incredibly funny game, and the way in which it so effortlessly walks the tightrope between its different tones is something to behold. The gorgeously simple but compelling visuals help hold everything together as well; though the framerate does struggle when running through parts of town, and the load times are a little long for what's on display, Night in the Woods otherwise presents itself beautifully.

Each day you’re given the freedom to wander the town. Visiting and making plans with either one of two friends ultimately advances the plot, taking you to some sort of event which propels the narrative forward, allowing you to sleep before once again repeating the proceedings. Each day those who live in Possum Springs are available to talk to as you pass by, all offering new things to say and insight into the world in which these animals inhabit. Gradually a storyline emerges, with townspeople going missing in bizarre ways, and Mae and her friends begin to take an interest in getting to the bottom of the mystery. It winds up being incredibly compelling stuff.

What Night in the Woods though sadly doesn’t do as well is allow you to know exactly what it is you’re doing that will advance the plot. I eventually realized that visiting either Bae or Gregg and accepting their respective invitations will propel the story forward, but due to the game’s determined lack of interface and therefore a lack of an explanation of its systems, something all too common in games today, there are early on some frustrations when I wanted to continue exploring but the plot advanced before I intended it to. This is especially evident in the game’s final act, where I’d had no idea that advancing to the evening would be taking me to, essentially, the point of no return towards the end of the game. Given how great the storytelling of Night in the Woods otherwise is, its abruptly-arriving final chapters aren’t a huge flaw in the grand scheme of things, but the unexpected realization that I might suddenly be experiencing the final 30 minutes of a game is always is bit of a bummer for me, as I usually like to do some last-minute exploring, especially in a world I love as much as this one, and to be more mentally prepared for its impending conclusion.

Night in the Woods, though primarily focused on exploratory sidescrolling and its storyline and dialogue, does include some platforming and mini-game aspects as well. These segments pop up throughout the adventure and while they do shake things up, it isn’t always to the game’s benefit. Similarly to how other aspects of Night in the Woods suffer from its interface-less interface, it’s at first confusing when platforming to know what you’re able to jump off of or onto and what you aren’t. The mini-games that often crop up, including a Guitar Hero-styled rhythm game and other story-driven ones such as a knife war between Mae and Gregg, are amusing and add character to the story but ultimately are a mixed bag to play, as they all have a tendency to go on for a bit too long.

But it’s easy to see why the developer felt the need to include these “gameplay” aspects, even if I don’t feel that the game necessarily needed them. (Or at least not as much of them.) The mini-games and platforming aren’t bad, it’s just that they’re merely serviceable when compared to others in their respective genres, and the addition of “serviceable” into a game that’s otherwise fantastic doesn’t help it so much as distract from it.

Afterall, Night in the Woods is in many ways an unforgettable little adventure. The above-described gameplay elements feel almost unnecessary, and the game’s abrupt dive into its conclusion may surprise those hoping to explore Possum Springs a little more before reaching the end credits. I’ll add that some less-than-subtle political undertones do present themselves towards the end of the game, something I was a little taken aback by, even as someone who happens to agree with the game’s politics. It’s really the only time I think Night in the Woods becomes slightly overbearing in its message, and I hope that it doesn’t alienate anyone who’s otherwise fully immersed in the compelling world and its narrative, because I think in a lot of other ways the game’s characters and many of its themes are so universal. Mae’s journey, her and her friends’ imperfections and all, is something truly worth experiencing. It’s one that ends maybe a little bit too soon, and a part of me wishes it had gone for an M-rating instead of Teen, just so that the themes it bravely chooses to tackle could have been presented even just a little bit more fully. But what it offers is something that I think could stay in my mind for years to come. Definitely a worthwhile download for those who enjoy artsy games and great stories.

4/5

Note; this review is based on the Nintendo Switch version. 

New Review: Though it has its many flaws, there to this day remains nothing else like LA Noire, a game whose setting is still as alluring as ever

 This review is based off the Nintendo Switch remaster

In the midst of a console generation that seemed focused on presenting linear, cinematic experiences, Rockstar’s open world games stood out as products which, while containing strong narrative elements, still focused on gameplay and exploration first and foremost in a style they arguably helped to invent.

LA Noire is so interesting in part because it turns out to be something a bit in between those two types of experiences. Created by the troubled and now-defunct Australian studio Team Bondi, this remains their only game, a project that spent years in apparent development hell until Rockstar signed on as publisher and, by several accounts, helped guide it to completion. LA Noire, then, due not only to these reasons but also to its emphasis on cinematic detective interviews and investigations, manages to stand out amongst Rockstar’s lineup and most other open world games in general. At times LA Noire can feel almost unapologetically guided, more than you’d expect from its open world setting, but the explorable world nevertheless provides just enough of a taste of 1940s Los Angeles to pull you in, which, this being a remaster, looks better than it ever did, while the flawed and yet incredibly compelling suspect interviews continue to be a unique breath of fresh air all these years later.

The Switch version bumps the native resolution from the 720p that it was on the PS3/360 to 1080p, making it the only open world game so far on Nintendo’s new hybrid console to be presented in native 1080p resolution (Skyrim and Breath of the Wild max out at 900p.) It’s an impressive result for the Switch given the detailed and bustling environments, especially taking into account the constant movement of things like traffic. LA Noire has always been a great-looking game, but the extra clarity brought on by the jump in resolution makes a pretty big difference in how the world looks. When docked, certain graphical additions to the PS4/XBO versions of this Remaster, such as ambient occlusion, also make their appearance. In portable mode you lose some of these details but the game still looks great and performs more or less the same portably, though I’d recommend upping the brightness a little when playing on the go. It isn’t quite as fancy graphically as the PS4/XBO versions, but the Switch version still presents a notable enough upgrade over its 7th gen release to make it worthwhile. Some framerate drops unique to this version do present themselves on occasion and are fairly noticeable, which is a little unfortunate; they don’t take place all the time and by no means ruin the game, as LA Noire was never an especially fast game to begin with, but there are several instances here and there where I wished Rockstar would have maybe sacrificed a little bit of that 1080p resolution to help save the framerate, especially in certain action scenes towards the end of the game.

Moving on from visuals though, LA Noire still holds its own in a variety of different ways, including a somewhat gutsy focus on investigating crime scenes and interviewing suspects in place of things like fight sequences and shooting mechanics, which, while they still exist here, are not intended to be the meat of the game. You play as Cole Phelps, a cop with WWII history, as he makes his way up through the LAPD case by case. Though I still don’t feel he stacks up with some of the characters who have headlined titles from Rockstar games proper, I liked him a lot more in this remaster than I remember liking him back in the original. As very much a “duty first” cop, his personality quirks are subtle, but over the course of the game I found myself liking him more and more this time around. The remaster notably takes all the Cases that were sold separately as DLC on the PS3/360 versions and re-instates them into the story itself; these add a surprising number of hours to the game, and though I wished the Nicholson Electroplating case for example remained optional, for the most part their addition helps fill out the experience, especially when doing cases for the Vice Desk, and it’s somewhat surprising how much of this was removed from the original version to be sold separately, providing an interesting perspective on the increasingly present advent of DLC in the gaming industry.

LA Noire’s story presents itself on a case-by-case basis, with each desk Cole is promoted to having a series of cases, with a narrative thread often developing between them as you dig deeper and deeper. Each desk begins with a meeting in the police briefing room, at which point you then drive to where the game tells you to, investigate a crime scene for clues, and then, with the information gained from the investigation, you’re pointed to your next destination. Sometimes your investigation brings you to action scenes such as car chases, fistfights, and shootouts, all of which feel a little too cinematic and automated, but they help to shake things up and are generally exciting and fun to play.

Interviewing suspects though is where LA Noire truly tries to leave its mark, and these interviews are often show-stopping, as you study the motion captured facial expressions of your suspects and try to piece together the clues you’ve found to figure out how to best respond. The game lets you know with a rumble of the controller whether you’ve chosen the right conversation choice, so while some may say that this takes away from the realism a bit, I think the gratification from immediately knowing when I asked the right question and how many per interview I got right proves to be worth it. As the first of its kind, however, this was never exactly a perfect system, and its weaknesses begin to rear their heads as the game goes on and the interviews become more complex. All too often Cole’s resulting dialogue is not what I expected my choice to bring about, making it hard, even when flipping through my notebook of clues, to really understand the choices that the game is presenting me with. Playing LA Noire at times feels like exercise in guessing which choice I thought the game wanted me to pick, as opposed to going with the leads that I felt would have truly been the best way to proceed; likely not the developers’ intention. Simply put, it becomes clear how “scripted” the interviews are, which can be discouraging as you make what the game deems to be “the wrong choice” again and again with little idea as to why. The remaster does make an effort to fix this; it changes your response options from the “Truth,” “Lie” and “Accuse” from the original to “Good Cop,” “Bad Cop,” and “Accuse,” here. It’s a slight improvement which helps make the proper choice at times easier to figure out, but I think that, were there ever to be a sequel, question choices unique to each interview at hand would be the best way forward, as opposed to this general template that’s supposed to somehow apply to every interview.

But while its centerpiece mechanic is certainly flawed, there’s no denying its appeal when it does work the way you expect it to; similarly appealing is driving through a fairly large re-creation of 1940s Los Angeles, hearing the chirping of the birds as you wander through 1940s MacArthur Park in the bright California sun, or as you investigate a crime scene at the old railyard, the sound of car horns on the nearby roads echoing in the distance; LA Noire has a great sense of both place and atmosphere. Plenty of NPC activity dominates the bars, clubs, and other locations you may enter, and although the day and night system is unfortunately scripted, the environment does take on a very different look and feel at night, which is a cool thing. LA Noire’s setting and its sense of time and place both prove to be among its greatest assets, and go a long way in helping me to forgive its imperfections in its other areas.

The game is somewhat repetitive; the cases usually involve some minor variation of its “drive-investigate-interview-drive-shootout” formula, and it becomes tiring as LA Noire nears its end. I will say that it bothered me much less when playing this remaster than I remember it bothering me while playing the original. I’m honestly unsure of why that is; maybe my gaming tastes have changed, maybe the now-included DLC missions added variety that wasn’t there previously, maybe it’s because I did more of the optional dispatch missions as I explored LA than I had back in 2011, at a time when I generally hated sidequests. But for whatever reason, the game on this playthrough overcame its feelings of repetition more than my previous experience with it, so I give it credit for that, even if I’m not sure what, if anything, this remaster did to make that the case. Still, other issues from the original continue to hang around; heading from point A to B can occasionally feel like a slog due to how big the map is, especially if trying to complete the dispatch missions, so an option for faster travel would have been appreciated. LA Noire also often gives you choices of where to go next but almost never lets you tackle objectives outside of its predetermined order, and, on a final note, it would have been nice if the game somehow let you know that you were heading to a location that would bring about the end the case. Far too often I found myself completing a case accidentally before getting to explore all the angles I wanted to beforehand, which is always frustrating.

Though structured as a series of Desks and cases, each with their own storylines and resolutions, there is a narrative woven through LA Noire that does eventually manage to make itself apparent. Throughout the game there are various newspapers you can find which trigger flashback cutscenes, depicting the slowly-developing story of a corrupted psychiatrist seemingly more interested in drug dealing than in helping his patients, a story which of course evolves as the game goes on. LA Noire also delivers flashback scenes to you between cases, focusing on Cole and his fellow troops during World War II, which also form into a narrative thread. The storyline that finally develops would have been a better fit for a much smaller game; instead, LA Noire’s plot remains mostly in the background until the last several hours, and while I found much of it to be compelling, ultimately I wished the game had focused on a strong central narrative instead of teasing you with it during and between individual cases for much of the game before (eventually) bringing it to the forefront.

But LA Noire, despite its numerous issues, was worth playing almost seven years ago and remains worth playing to this day. Its portrayal of Los Angeles makes for an incredibly alluring setting, and though there isn’t too much to do in it besides landmarks to spot and the dispatch missions to complete, the open world is a fun one to experience as you make your way through the game’s numerous (and often compelling) cases. Despite some unfortunate framerate issues in places, the Switch version looks noticeably sharper than it did on the PS3/360, and the changes made to the Interview system result in a slight improvement, even if the issues with it and the somewhat repetitive mission structure remain. LA Noire still feels very much like its own thing, and with the DLC missions now added (back) into the main story, even replaying it often felt like a new experience for me. It’s a game I recommend to those who haven’t tried it before, and while Switch owners should note the hefty install size (even if purchasing physically) on the system’s relatively limited storage space, it’s something I think is worth it for one of the quirkier Rockstar-published open world games.

4/5

Note; This review is based on the Nintendo Switch version.