L.A. Noire additional hands-on

Recently, GameSpot UK had a go at the recent preview build of the upcoming action adventure game L.A. Noire. More recently, GameSpot Asia had a go at the same preview build provided by a local representative at Rockstar; we won't go into any further detail about the Silk Stocking murder case, but we can talk more about the intuition points and the rank system.

We've covered the fact that L.A. Noire is built around interrogating suspects and choosing whether to use the good-cop or bad-cop approach. If you successfully interrogate someone, not only will your personal rank go up, but you will earn intuition points. These points can be used to assist gamers during cases by enabling them to whip out their in-game notebooks and select the preferred option on the intuition page. Using a point in a crime scene will let you highlight all the clues within the investigation area. Spending one point during an interrogation lets you eliminate one wrong option from the three choices presented to you. The catch is that you cannot use more than one point during a given segment.

You can also spend intuition points to ask questions on the Rockstar Social Club page. While details are still vague, the system works in-game and lets you get answers without having to visit those thoroughly detailed and spoiler-heavy FAQs from third-party sites. Think of these intuition points as Rockstar's version of hint coins from the Professor Layton series, it's a more direct way to speed up the investigation, and it helps players who aren't used to adventure-game-style mechanics.

Another incentive for successfully performing interrogations is that it shortens the time needed to finish a case. For example, we were told that in the Silk Stocking case, we were able to head to the El Dorado Bar earlier by properly interrogating landlord Ms. Lapenti instead of having to find the location from a matchbook in Angel Maldonado's house. Furthermore, there will be a score tally at the end of each completed case that shows how many interrogation questions you have used correctly as well as the amount of property damage and injuries you caused. Whether these will be highlighted through the Rockstar Social Club site has yet to be determined, but it's good to know that the option will be available for perfectionists who like to claim bragging rights online.

L.A. Noire will be out on May 20 internationally.