Customer Reviews

L.A. Noire

5 star:		(132)
4 star:		(78)
3 star:		(45)
2 star:		(29)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

L.A. Noire is a very good game for the gamer that likes to be analytical, gather clues, and figure things out. It's slow paced, as police work usually is, but it's also very rewarding. The Motion Scan technology in this game is fantastic, and I see it being built upon for future releases of completely different games. The ability to read an actors expression is certainly pushing a new paradigm in games that just hasn't been executed before with any success. Team Bondi delivers here.

The story in this game isn't something new. Allowing the user to be the police officer, and a good one, is for the most part new. There is almost an RPG like feel to the game, with long dialog while you're interrogating people. This may come off as boring to some, but I assure you the scenes aren't just fillers. They're fun, interesting, integral parts of the whole story.

The game is still an open world concept, so you can move around and explore the beautiful old L.A. city that Team Bondi laid out. There are also a number of side missions that you can do.

I gave it a 4 out of 5 because the game can get a bit redundant at times. Don't worry, the story does get varied, but a few of the cases are too similar. The other reason I took a bit off the final score is that there just isn't much room for replay value here. Short of the inevitable game add-on's that you can purchase from the XBox Live Marketplace, there's not going to be much reason to come back once you beat it. I'd put the gameplay at about 15-25 hours. This doesn't take into account how much time you spend exploring away from the main story line and side missions.

L.A. Noire is definitely worthy of your collection. I hope we see more Team Bondi developments produced by Rockstar.

Thank you for reading!

Before I begin, I just want to say I have a feeling people are going to vote down this review without reading it or taking in the arguments just because it doesn't fit the popular view of this game. However If I can convince just one person to not buy into the hype and consider both the deserved praise and, more importantly, the legitimate criticisms against this game, I'll be happy. This review isn't for the fans, its for potential players who want an honest review.

Something about LA Noire captured my imagination months before it was released. It featured a new technology called "motion scan" which allowed for it to have the most realistic facial animations I'd ever seen. When I saw the motion scan demonstration, I was floored. I saw it as a huge step forward for narratives in games and if it was done right could make games rival or even surpass movies in terms of emotional investment.

And what a seemingly great way to show it off! A game about a detective who has to read people's intentions through their facial cues? It has all the makings of an incredible game. It also takes place in my hometown and in one of my favorite time periods. And its Rockstar! There's no way they could screw this up!

I was (and still am) so tired of games with immature and underdeveloped stories. I was ready for a game with a mature story not just for its own sake, but one that integrated itself with gameplay in such a way that it couldn't have been done in any other medium. Finally a game that understands that interactivity is the key to making games into a unique art form.

And then the game pretty much ruined everything it had going for it. Motion scan ruined by having a boring and unlikeable protagonist. Integration of gameplay and narrative ruined by making the player's choices mean absolutely nothing. The prospect of at least having an interesting plot was ruined by having an unremarkable story with a bad ending.

After the initial sparkle of everything wore off, I realized nothing about the game is fun to play at all. Investigations are boring and repetitive. Interrogations look nice thanks to motion scan but I might as well have been watching a movie due to the limited gameplay involved. Chase scenes are too heavily scripted to be exciting, and gunplay is pretty unremarkable considering every other action game this generation has done it and done it better.

The idea of interrogations is that after each question you ask a suspect you are given three options to proceed: assume they are telling the truth, accuse them of lying, and the ambiguous "doubt". This seems intuitive in theory, but in practice each choice is fairly arbitrary and differs from case to case. Doubting could mean coax the suspect a little bit to if you know they are holding out, or it could mean wild accusations which make the suspect unwilling to respond. It is impossible to tell what the choices will result in. There is only one correct answer, meaning there is no freedom to approach the cases in any way but the arbitrary one the designer wanted. The choices would seem to indicate that there may be different outcomes to each case depending on the player's choices, but this is not the case. The plot will continue in the same way no matter how well or poorly the player does. So what, then, is the point of this gameplay mechanic which is purely based on choice if the player's choices don't matter and the game is going to continue on the same regardless? What makes games so unique as a story-telling medium is interactivity and gameplay, and this is where LA Noire could have really shined and instead dropped the ball big time.

The game tries to mask it's shortcomings with an expansive and admittedly beautiful recreation of 1940's Los Angeles. However there was literally nothing to do in this open world outside of the main story besides drive around, sight-see, and heavily-scripted side-missions which didn't require an open world, nor were very fun to begin with. Why tease us with such a large and beautiful world and then make the world so void of activities? Surely it would have made more sense to make the game more linear and save the no doubt immense amount of resources making the world so huge and instead use them to polish out the other aspects of the game to make them more, you know, FUN?

To say LA Noire was disappointing is an understatement. Maybe I was asking a little too much of it to begin with, but in my mind it didn't deliver on a single one of it's selling points and that is what made it such a disaster for me. The game is by no means unplayable, in fact many will probably buy it and be perfectly content with its great visuals, particularly the facial animations, detailed world, great characters, and overall uniqueness. But strip all the aesthetic stuff away and you're left with a mediocre story and a game that just isn't very fun to play.

I'm enjoying playing this game (I think), but I'm finding it a bit clunky and frustrating in all the places it shouldn't be. And in far too many places I'm thinking "Is that all there is?"

I have framerate issues in some outdoors areas. Also, I'm experiencing annoyance caused by the fact that in some areas I can't climb low walls. Sometimes I can scale fences, sometimes I can't. The developers only made some features climbable. The Assassin's Creed series gets this right. This game, not so much. If you're going to make certain things climbable, make them all climbable. Don't make a fence climbable in one spot, but 20 yards away the same height fence is not. Nothing breaks the sense of 'suspension of disbelief' more than having your game character running in place when faced with a hose line or a 2ft high wall that the game developers forgot to allow you to negotiate.

Then there's the actual gameplay. It often seems to me that this is more a walkthrough than a game, as each game decision is virtually handed to you on a platter. Then, if you get a decision wrong, it hands you the right answer anyway. So none of the decisions you make actually affect the outcome of the game. It's essentially a linear game that's pretending to have a branching storyline that your decisions affect.

Then there's clunky gameplay factors like the investigations. You seem to spend most of your time running around interior walls waiting for a tell-tale controller rumble that tells you that you're in the vicinity of a clue - but try to pick it up and you find yourself stumbling about trying to find the exact spot the game wants you to be in to collect it.

When you get a suspect in for interrogation, often the question doesn't match the answer you give, and rambles on about other issues so that you can forget what the question was about. Then if you choose that they're lying, it's that much harder to figure out what it was they were lying about. Also, sometimes they're telling the truth, but the 'correct' choice was to say they were lying. How does that make any sense? In short, the interrogation system is poorly implemented and confusing.

When you get your partner to drive, there's no option to watch the action as there is in Red Dead Redemption. Although your character says "I'd like to check my notes" there's no option to do that. It just fades to the destination.

I do like the option the game gives to skip a sequence that you're having a hard time with. I wish the GTA series had this. Unfortunately, this game is so easy that I've not needed it so far.

Another annoyance is that the game's revolvers can take out a criminal at 300 yards. Your character has the ability to aim and fire a police issue pistol with the accuracy and range of a sniper rifle. On the other hand, you can hit a guy in the head or shoot him in the chest with no effect (they won't ever go down on the first shot). It's things like this - silly nonsense - that makes the game so annoying.

Finally, although I didn't expect this game to be GTA or Red Dead Redemption, I did hope for some of the usual stuff you get in a sandbox game. What this game offers is a few samey side quests and a few cars to collect. The side quests are all variations on the same theme - shoot the cop killers/bank robbers, and collecting cars has no purpose - they don't go faster, they don't have extra radio stations - nothing. Going by landmarks 'unlocks' the landmark, but for what purpose (other than a few game points) I don't know.

In general, the game seems unfinished. It's fun for a while, but the game features all seem to be floundering in search of some kind of focus. Also, you find yourself in a vast area of Los Angeles, but there's very little to actually do there. You can't go to movies, you can't do any mini-games. It just seems like this game spent all its time on graphics and had no time left over to flesh out the gameplay.

L.A. NOIRE has so many good things going for it that it's a shame the game ends up being so disappointing.

The good:
-Fantastic motion-capture performances from terrific actors, including Mad Men cast members
-Superb atmosphere

The bad:
-Game play mechanics aren't particularly fun and are simplistic
-After playing through several cases you'll learn that you've already played everything L.A. NOIRE has to offer. The hours to come are simple variations on the same theme (go to the crime scene, interview suspects, drive around, then catch a fleeing suspect or enter a shootout). There's almost no variety.
-Stupid story with unsatisfying dramatic payoff
-Side "street missions" are completely disposable, most are brief shootouts or other "chases" that are over fast
-Big city with very little to do

Overall this game has an extremely low "fun factor." It's unfortunate that Rockstar and the developers went to so much trouble to recreate the era, only to drag it down with game mechanics that are simplistic and ultimately repetitive.

I just finished LA Noire on the Xbox 360 and I decided to come on here and immediately give a review. First off, ignore the one and two star reviews. They're ridiculous. This game is by no means a one or two star game. I think the problem that many people had was they expected a game like Grand Theft Auto and that simply is not what this game is about. This is a thinking man's game with plenty of action. Yes, there are shootouts. Yes, there are firefights inside buildings. Yes, there are car chases. But there are also crimes scenes. Looking for clues. Examining bodies. Interviewing suspects and witnesses. The action is put in for a reason, not just because they want to give the player something to shoot at.

Like the title says, this game is the way games should be made. It has a captivating story to it. It's about investigating crimes the way they used to do it in the 40's. Back then they didn't have DNA evidence. They solved crimes through real police work.

Let me tell you a little about the game, without giving too much away. You get to play a detective. You go from being a traffic detective, solving hit and run cases, to a homicide detective, where you get to track down a serial killer, to a vice detective where you get to investigate drug deaths, to an arson detective. In each of these sub-stories, there's a larger story that it adds a piece to until the very end. As you're traveling to your destination, many times you'll hear over the radio that an officer is requesting assistance and you get the choice to go and help them or continue on with the main story. Now these side stories tend to be action oriented, like a bank robbery or a hostage situation. So like I said, there's plenty of action in the game, it's just not Grand Theft Auto and I'm thankful for that because it would have ruined the game.

When you're interviewing people, you get the choice to either believe them (truth), try to get more information out of them if you think they're not being truthful (doubt) or accuse them of lying if you have a piece of evidence that directly contradicts what they're saying (lie). You can help make your choice based on what the character does, such as not making eye contact or fidgeting. Now let me tell you, there are some good liars in this game who will look you straight in the eye and lie to you.. You really need to be on top of things to be successful at this. It sounds easy but it's not.

If you're the type of person who likes a good story and likes to be immersed into the character that you're playing, this is the game for you. If you just want to shoot stuff and don't care about the story, you might like this game but you'd probably be happier with another Halo game.

Also, I don't know where people are getting that this game is too short. I looked at my stats and around the end of the game, I was already on 22 hours of pure gameplay. It's not a short game and I got everything I paid for it. If you're a more mature gamer, I think you will appreciate this game and I could not recommend it enough. Buy the game!

First off... LA Noire is NOT a clone of GTA 4 nor Red Dead Redemption. Yes it is an open world game but it has its limits. You can not recklessly do things the way you would in other Rockstar games. Younger people may not appreciate this games worth. You are a cop and things should be the way they are in this story.

Controls-
Some of the primary features from the other games are here. The 3rd person view, open world but the controls are slightly different. Nothing impossible to get used to though. The car controls are very sensitive. The car moves on the slightest touch of the analog stick, your car will move a little more than you may have wanted it to. (UPDATE- After playing some more, I was able to experience more vehicles. Not all of the cars are as sensitive to steering as the one you start off with. Which I think makes the game better as the cars have diversity as they would in reality.) During the interrogations the it's mainly just button prompts. All in all the controls work fine.

Gameplay-
As far as gameplay goes. This isn't really action driven and it shouldn't be. In order to solve cases, you have to interrogate and search for clues. The authenticity of those activities is amazing. There are shootouts and sometimes you may have to make the tough decision shoot someone but it does a great job of making you feel as you have to deal with that decision. They go a long way trying to make it as authentic as possible even making a black and white mode.

Sound-
I'm only 22 so I wouldn't know how 40's music was, lol. But from what I've heard in movies and older tv shows. It seems very authentic and gives you the vibe of watching a movie set in the 40's. And the voice over work is very good with some great actors. It's only complimented with the new technology Rockstar has used to portray the expressions and moods of the characters in the game.

I don't want to make this review really long so I'll end on this note. LA Noire is not going to be for everyone. It's not heavy on action. I can almost compare this game to Heavy Rain. At time it feels as if you a playing a interactive movie. A really great one at that. Here you will be rewarded with a great game, story, cases and re playability when you want to try to do things right.

First of all, I was very enticed to buy this game before it came out, based on the commercials/hype. I went out and bought it as soon as it was released. Ready to enjoy the game, ( All 3 Discs of it!) I plunged right in. By the end of my experience, however, I was disappointed. Not outraged, just disappointed.

That doesn't mean it doesn't have some great qualities, but they don't really outshine the negative ones. Generally speaking, this game is a 'watered down' version of a GTA game, with interrogation and clue gathering features. I refer to it being 'watered down' because there is very little substance to the game aside from the interrogations and story.

This is a 'detective' game, where you play the role as an 1947 L.A. cop who quickly ascends the ranks. You work on cases ranging from patrol, homicide, vice, traffic, and arson. The majority of the game is working on cases within those fields, earning from 1-5 stars based on your overall performance gathering clues and asking the right questions.

Before I go into specifics, I just want to note that I imagined this game to be basically Red Dead Redemption but in the post WW2 L.A. setting. I expected there to be tons of things to do with a lot of replay value, but sadly that just isn't the case with L.A. Noire. Now on to the enjoyable and not so much.

The Enjoyable : Excellent story, top notch voice acting, well designed city and atmosphere, interrogations, good graphics.

The Bad : No side games of any kind, no reason to explore the city in free roam,basic/repetitive/easy gun fighting, driving that's way easier than GTA games, extremely linear play(cases move along no matter how poorly you do), tedious with gathering clues at times(grinding on walls), overly repetitive in long play sessions, noticeably weak level design at times.

This is simply a very easy game with basic functions. However, the developers did a good job masking the simplicity and linear play of this game by making the acting and story absolutely top notch. This is a good game for mostly anyone above the age of 18, because there is a very deep and adult story within this game. Very similar to the movie "L.A. Confidential' in many ways.

In my honest opinion, 95% of this game's value is in the story and acting. It's truly one of the better I have seen in games. So if that's what you're looking for, this game has it. But if you are looking for a game with action, substantial content to immerse yourself, and replay value then stay far away.

I recommend this game for anyone who isn't looking for a challenge, but just a good story where you basically watch it play out during your sessions. Those highly casual gamers will definitely get some satisfaction out of asking the right questions and chasing down the occasional bad guy. This would even be a great game for adults who don't even play games, but love good movies, because it's so easy to play and is best played in very short sessions.

Overall, this game only deserves 3 stars because of the lack of content and replay value. Even though there are three discs, it is mostly filled with cut scenes. The only replay value aside from achievements in this game is to work on getting your cases all 5 stars(you can repeat any of the story cases whenever you want). There is also a street crimes feature, but there are only 40 crimes. This is easily done in two hours, and it's mostly driving from spot to spot.

If there were mini games(shooting range/bars/races/etc), buildings to explore around the city, and things of that nature, then this would have been a much better game and more deserving of a higher score. Sadly, there just isn't any content in the game past the story mode, and that doesn't cut it for me. However, L.A. Noire still deserves props for being original and having a polished story and actors.

There are some things that you should know before you go into this game. Even though Team Bondi's L.A. NOIRE has the Rockstar brand on the cover, even though there is some revolutionary technology driving the narrative, and even though 1940s downtown L.A. has been recreated historically to 90% accuracy, this might not be the video game you thought you were buying. I know that it certainly took me by surprise. It's a game that's nothing like Rockstar's previous titles, such as the magnificent RED DEAD REDEMPTION or the GTA series. Where as those games placed you firmly on one side of the law and attempted to blur the lines, L.A. NOIRE tries the same take from an officer's perspective, albeit with a completely different approach.

Though the main storyline takes a backseat for most of the game, you'll follow Detective Cole Phelps as he makes his way up through the hierarchy of the Los Angeles Police Department. Starting as patrolman, you'll eventually find yourself working cases for the traffic, arson, homicide, and vice divisions, with each having its own subplot and cast of characters. Each of these subplots are then broken up further into "episodes," with their own isolated set of investigations, clues, victims, and suspects. When all is said and done, it feels like playing through a full season of LAW AND ORDER.

The approach to each of these episodes doesn't vary much. The beginning will introduce you to the crime, after which you follow the clues around 1940s L.A. until you have a decent pool of evidence going. To gather this evidence, you'll be asked to walk the crime scene and other places of relevance until your character notices something, at which point you'll enter an examination mode of sorts and take a closer look at whatever it was you've picked up. Sometimes the things you can examine will be junk, but anything that adds to your case will be logged away for further use.

In the natural course of compiling evidence, a list of suspects and witnesses will start to present itself. This is where interrogations come in, what you'll very likely end up spending 85% of the game doing. And it's also where the game's technology comes into play.

Thanks to real-time facial motion capture, the characters you come into contact with in L.A. NOIRE aren't like anything you've seen in any other video game. L.A. NOIRE relies on real, acted performances instead of just voice acting, providing a sense of realism and immersion that few games have managed to attain. When interviewing a suspicious witness, a flick of the eyes and a nervous gulp might give him away, while a firm, eye-to-eye stare might convince you the suspect is telling the truth. This also makes the drama and the character interactions just seem so much more real, like you were watching a very, very good crime series instead of just playing a video game.

But that is where my gripes with the game come into play. For the most part, L.A. NOIRE doesn't really play like your average video game and is more like a TV series with interactive moments. 1940s L.A. has been recreated with astounding attention to detail, but the game doesn't encourage exploration at all. The story is constantly in play, and while diverging away from your next waypoint is definitely allowed, it just feels... wrong. It doesn't feel like you should be driving around at random, exploring things, seeing the sights. That certainly might not be the case for some players, but I tried free roaming a grand total of one time and felt uncomfortable doing so. Like, as an adult, I should know better.

And those playable parts of the game are gradually, over the course of this 20 to 25 hour game, worn down by repetition. Confronting a suspect will usually always end in some kind of dramatic and destructive chase, either on foot or by car, regardless of the suspect's guilt. Interrogations lose some of their shine once you realize that even most of the innocent people will find any reason to lie to you. And since the game doesn't allow you to undo your choices or missteps during interrogations without reloading the game to an earlier autosave, some of the confrontations can get old really fast.

With that, the gameplay stops feeling like the focus of the game and more like a means to an end, because outside all of the driving, the car/foot chases, and interrogations, there is a stellar story going on in the foreground against a realistic setting. The writing is pitch perfect to the point where you'd almost expect the developers had lived through the time period. Events and rhetoric from the time are constantly making their way into the script. Hollywood is beginning is rise as the entertainment capital of the world, the stars on film are brighter than the ones in the sky, and capitalism is in full swing in post-war L.A. Advertisements are everywhere, there's a cigarette in everyone's hand, the beginnings of the Second Red Scare are making its way onto the radio.

Playing the game really did feel like stepping back in time, and that's why it gets four stars from me. It felt like an experience more than a game. In fact, sometimes I was so absorbed by the plot twist and the minute details of the setting and of the script, that when everything eventually stopped and I was back in control of Detective Phelps again, I had to wake up and remind myself, "Oh, yeah... I have to play this thing."

Finally got this on a rental and have had my fill after about 2 hours...

First, I realize that people walked and drove a bit slower back in the 40's, but did the game have to be THAT realistic?

Second, as mentioned by many others, the game quickly gets repetitive. Walk around, look at clues, walk around some more... Everything happens at such a snails-pace that it becomes tediously boring. (May not have helped that I just took a break from playing Saints Row: The Third...) Plus the interviews are hard to pin down unless of course you've had training in interpretive acting, linguistics and psychology...

...but even that doesn't help. On the 3rd-or-so case of the game, I personally had a reasonable suspicion as to what happened, and got a witness to prove it. But when I asked the next question, the main character accused the witness of something else after he had already given away the answer. In the end I got 1 of 4 questions right, even though I had already solved it!

So what does it make me do? (And maybe it would have made me do it anyways...) another staple Rockstar mission: "Follow the bad guy at a 'safe' distance to see where he's heading..." For the love of GOD can we STOP USING THAT MISSION?!?! It is one of the most frustrating, overused, and unimaginative chores ever given in a video game.

Frankly I think they bit off more than they could chew with this one. The production value is remarkable: I'm really impressed with the "notebook" and the way you can store and revisit information. Even when you pause during an interrogation, you can read all the previous dialogue on a piece of paper that looks like courtroom stenography. Impressive stuff...

But they ruined it with flat-out dull game play, apparently broken dialogue trees, and too much attention to detail... ...in the wrong areas. So I gave it an overall 2-stars, taking into consideration the decent graphics and believable environments.

Eject disc, stick back in the padded envelope, and away she goes...

I was so excited about this game that I pre-ordered it (it was the first game I've ever pre-ordered in 15 years of owning a console). I'm a HUGE fan of the GTA games, but this one just didn't live up to my expectations of Rockstar. You can't even pull your gun out whenever you want to!!! I ended up selling the game before I even finished the storyline... it gets very boring after a while.