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Rockstar Games Takes Aim at L.A. Noir

5:30 PM PST on January 26, 2011

Blasting at rival gangbangers next to Watts Towers and murdering random citizens in Beverly Hills was pretty dope in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and speeding away from LAPD in a custom muscle car in Midnight Club: Los Angeles had its thrills. But now RockStar Games is coming back to L.A. for Philip Marlowe fans. Launching May 17th, 2011, L.A. Noire is an ambitious new detective game based in our city of dirty angels in which players control a gumshoe named Cole Phelps as he climbs through the ranks of LAPD solving crimes, tracking a serial killer, and hopefully, kicking a lot of scumbag ass and guzzling gimlets along the way. The game's key selling point is a photo-realistic capture system that is supposed to mark a new line for how emotions and faces are displayed in video games, with interrogations hinging on your effort to tell whether your suspects are lying to you or not. It's a long way from CJ spraying the crowd, but given Rock Star's successful record of killer games, we'll predict this one won't be a big sleep. See the trailer below and let us know what you think.

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