L.A. Noire

Team Bondi's 2011 detective game bet on faces. Its MotionScan capture recorded actors' performances in thirty-two cameras, and the result was a game where interrogation worked as a mechanic: you read the suspect, decide whether they are telling the truth, doubting or lying, and present evidence to prove it. In 1947 Los Angeles, that produces something no other game has quite attempted - twenty-one cases across Traffic, Homicide, Vice and Arson desks, each a self-contained procedural with crime scenes to comb, notebooks to fill and misjudgements that let a guilty man walk without ending the game. The open city is a backdrop rather than a playground, which disappointed players expecting Rockstar's usual sandbox, and the driving and shooting are merely adequate. The Homicide desk in particular, a serial-killer arc drawing on the real Black Dahlia investigation, is among the strongest writing in a Rockstar-published game. The studio collapsed shortly after release. The 2017 remaster added 4K and, on Switch, motion controls.