L.A. Noire is slow but quietly engrossing; its mechanics are suspect, but you can't fault the ambition, attention to detail and commitment that went into its making. It risks stumbling over its own earnestness at times, but it's saved by its star – and I don't mean Staton, who does his best with a dry character.

That star is Los Angeles: as bizarre, threatening and fascinating in this virtual 1947 as it is in the real world today. L.A. Noire may owe its vision of the city to Ellroy and others, but as a game, it can depict it in a way those others can't. McNamara, Team Bondi and Rockstar have taken that responsibility seriously, convincingly peeling away the layers of a sick society over the game's length. That – not the curse words or the grim subject matter or the naked corpses – is what makes L.A. Noire a genuinely mature game.