When life permits, I've been playing "L.A. Noire" on Xbox. This game
is about three years old but I bought it on a whim a few weeks ago and
almost immediately became obsessed. The whole vibe of the game is
amazing. It's set in 1940's Los Angeles, around the time of the still
unsolved Black Dahlia murder. You play a detective named Cole Phelps as
he works his way up from being a uniform officer and rises through the
ranks of detective. Once a detective, Phelps, a war hero who has trouble
accepting such a label, does time in a number of areas within the LAPD;
Traffic, Homicide, Vice and Arson. Each department brings its own
unique challenges and drama. Interspersed throughout the game are calls
that come in on the radio for various minor and major offenses that you
can choose to respond to. This game has everything; 1940's Los Angeles
in gorgeous detail (including the Hollywoodland sign), some sweet
vehicles from the time period (and I'm not even into cars), shootouts,
interrogations, drug busts and car chases. It also incorporates a number
of cinematic elements that serve to both advance the overall story and
give you clues in the cases you're working to solve. It's part movie,
part video game and totally enthralling.
One of the neater parts
of the game is the music. There's the typical noir type music you'd
expect to hear, but when you're in a car driving to your next
destination you can hear radio shows and commercials and music from the
1940's. And what you hear depends on which care you're in (as an LAPD
officer, you can commandeer any car you want). Sometimes I pay close
attention to the radio and other times I'm more focused on what I have
to do next in a case, but I couldn't help but listen closely when my ear
caught the lyric, "Last night I went out drinking, came home and gave
her a beating". All of a sudden, I turned into a Minion, "Whaaaaaat?".
Then, I pulled the car over and listened to the rest of the song and
caught another line, "His family, they're swearing to kill me, and if I
killed him, he had it coming". It. Was. Hilarious. So much so that I
resolved to find the full song and lyrics. And I was in luck because the
awesome developers of the game included all of the credits for the
music in the game's manual. It turns out that it's an Ella Fitzgerald
song called, "Stone Cold Dead In The Market"
and in its entirety, it's even more glorious that originally thought.
This woman's husband goes out drinking, comes home and beats her and she
takes a rolling pin to his abusive ass and kills him. And she says to
his family, she says, she'd do it again and she don't care if she gets
the electric chair for having done it. Hell, the husband even sings a
verse after she kills him. Obviously, the subject matter isn't what's
funny per se. It's more the happy tone they sing the entire song in.
Like, "Yeah, he was abusive and I killed him for it but don't worry, be
happy ya'll!". Tis the only song from the 40's that graces my iPod now.
Thank you "L.A. Noire" for enriching my life in more ways than one.
