LA Noire Review

So started playing between 3:30 and 4, and now I look up and it's 11... that gives you a basic idea.

Graphics are amazing. Acting and all that jazz is too. The facial thing is beyond belief in how cool it is, I can't even imagine games without it now, it's going to be very hard to go back to games that feature clumsy facial animation. It's really like watching a movie. Graphics themselves look like Red Dead Redemption, rather than GTA 4, which is good.

Movement and shooting is also RDR. Gunfights are very fun. You die pretty fast so you actually need to use the cover, and there's no dead-eye obviously like RDR so if you turn the auto-aim off you really do need to pick your shots to manage to kill someone without being shredded. Tommy guns and rifles are very cool this game.

It's nothing like RDR and GTA in terms of actual gameplay and missions and so on. It's extremely linear, you can choose where to go first and all that but basically there's no downtime between missions - at least not as far as I am into it, the first Homicide mission (Black Dahlia/Werewolf). When you finish a mission there's a cutscene and then you go straight into the next mission, similar to Call of Duty and BF - it's really not an open world game. Even though the city is huge and there's so much to see and do, and many cars and so on. Just don't confuse it as a game like GTA or RDR where you can wander around and explore on your own time.

Missions themselves are fairly simple - by that I mean easy to complete. You can be a scumbag hasty cop and just find someone who might have done it and turn them in and force a confession out of them, or you can delve real deep and potentially uncover the real criminal, or at least accomplices or other things to get better evidence and approval. But I suggest turning off the clue hint thing. The controller vibrates and there's a musical chime every time you go near a clue to investigate... which ruins the whole point IMO, so you should turn that off (in the options) the moment you start playing.

It's easy to screw up a mission. There's no actual saving, so what you do is what you're stuck with. After every minor step in a mission the game auto-saves so you can't go back and restart it without restarting the ENTIRE case. This is good and bad. Good because you can't finetune your way to a perfect case by just loading all the time. Bad because if you call someone's bluff incorrectly and don't have the evidence to back it up, you can't question them about that anymore and some amazing evidence you had becomes unusable, and you then find the story taking different turns with you (Cole Phelps) accusing the guy in-game of killing someone or robbing someplace when you have clear evidence someone else did it... you just fucked up on questioning him about it. Some people have shifty eyes right off the bat which can make you think they're lying to you when really that's just how they are. In the end you still complete the case... but not always satisfactorily. This is why the game has some replay value but at the same time it's slightly frustrating when one little mistake takes it into a completely wrong direction.

The game also holds your hand a lot, and you can't really misinterpret evidence because when you look at some (in the right way of course, you still gotta find the evidence and put it into perspective) the game writes down for you where you should go look next.

Uhhhh, what else? The driving is great! Cars feel wobbly though like the suspension is loose and the steering is very crazy, but it works. Chases are fun. I have ran over several pedestrians but it always says "YOU'RE A COP STOP HURTING PEOPLE" or something like that, and they always get up again, so I don't even know if it's possible to go on random rampages. You can't just pull your gun randomly either, you get it in some chases and obviously as soon as things get rough you take it out and you have the option to go to your car's trunk to take out something a bit heavier. Oh and cars die a lot faster. You can't just get into 20 frontal collisions like in GTA and expect to keep driving. Smashing into a car's wheel wells will cripple it. And the cars themselves are great, lots of variety, there's trucks from the 30s that can't seem to top 30mph and there's speedy roadsters from the late 40s that are a blast to drive. You're a cop so you can take any damn car you want.

Also your character, Phelps, is kinda an asshole. He gets angry WAY too fast. I mean the lady just had her husband shot up in front of her - you wanna not start yelling at her because she might not be revealing he drank a lot? But it fits with the character and some other people call him out on it. Definitely a lot of great acting. Just the faces alone are to die for.

So, yeah. Not as great as RDR, or GTA 4, but definitely a game worth getting. It's very beautiful and disturbing at the same time. The attention to detail is unbelievable. I definitely do not regret buying it even in the slightest, I tried to give you all of the bad things I could think of here but don't let that keep you from buying it if you were planning on it - I love it and it's classic Rockstar. It's not perfect, but it's really, really good.

@ Ronin, we know... you'll just rent it. I just saved you the trouble of typing that out.

Nice review Fido, made me want it even more. I'm gonna try to just trudge through it normally and not let bad decisions frustrate me. Seems like that's people's main issue with the game but it's also what gives it some replayability so that's a win-lose.

Probably gonna turn off auto-aim just to enjoy the shooting parts a bit more, kinda want a challenge with this game. Auto aim made RDR way too easy.

And yeah, I was pretty wowed by the detail of the faces too just from vids I saw. And you all thought I was crazy...

Yeah that goes without saying to turn off auto aim. You can fire behind cover and so on and it's pretty cool. Phelps is a bad-ass too, gets his hat shot off and just goes to pick it up when the shooting's done.

I have to admit this game gets very tough. You get through the cases - in that way it feels like a wire - but there is definitely no guarantee you do the cases satisfactorily. The first ones, up until Homicide, are a breeze... but before too long you really have no idea who did it, and it's 50/50 and requires some serious considering, and maybe even picking your evils (do you charge the pedophile or the wife-beater?).

It's really fun. The cars really do deserve a second mention though. There's so much variety in how they handle, and the damage on them is pretty sweet - not quite as detailed as GTA though, but the cars in the 40s were different, I think it might actually be on purpose because if you get into a serious wreck, parts go flying. You'll see bumpers all down the street, headlights in pieces, and so on. If you speed like a maniac you better be able to drive, because if you get into a serious head-on collision with another car your car is pretty much guaranteed to be disabled.

Also I think I just majorly fucked up a case, and I get the feeling I just got demoted to working as a beat cop just driving around and finding crimes... so maybe this is free roam after all, I don't know. I'll see.

Not as good as RDR..... fuck I didnt even really like that game, sounds pretty much like my review and I didnt even play it.

tl;dr

and I'm just gonna rent it anyways




























































yah, I saw that at the end Fido

What? Ronin has something against Rockstar games too?

No, he regularly tells us he rents games rather than purchases them. It's like his thing.

Sounds like wise thing to do... of course the frequency of mentioning that does hold the potential to dumb that down a bit.

Anyways... hope LA Noire provide the usual +60 hours of entertainment Rockstar are known to deliver.

I don't have anything against R*...

I think they make some fun and impressive games

They just aren't my style of game... that's all

I don't hate on em like I hate on CoD

RDR was really really fantastic actually... GTA got old and played out IMO, but it was different when it first launched... and Noire looks interesting as well... but it simply doesn't appeal to me personally.

and yes, I know all of you here are hanging on my every action so of course I must do my part and let everyone know which games I will be renting, returning, and keeping from gamefly

This game looks REALLY interesting. I like the idea of making a game that requires more thought and slows things down. It could allow them to market it to more "sophisticated" people as well..

I saw an ad for LA Noir on the NYtimes website haha

It does require a lot of thought if you wanna enjoy the game. You have to cross-check things in the notebook a lot because if you fuck up interrogation, entire ways of questioning are sealed off and it's very possible to end up charging, say, a child molester for a murder you know he didn't commit... just to charge someone at all.

Also, the game is longer than I expected. You fly through being a Beat Cop & Traffic very quickly and I thought it was just going to be 3 or 4 quick cases per desk and then done. But fuck, I'm on I think the 10th or 11th case now in the game, on Homicide desk, and I've been playing a LOT. And there's 21 cases total... and they are taking longer and longer, and it gets more and more tricky every time, and you know you're doing something wrong but you can't quite put a finger on it but it slowly comes together, it's just great.

Love this game. Gets better the longer I play it. I'm in love with the cars. As you rank up, locations for unique or very rare cars get added to the game. Not that regular cars driving around are boring (because of how old they are many don't go too fast but every now and then you get in one and it fucking flies and it's so cool). But anyway the rare/unique cars are THE SHIT. So beautiful and so fast and so fun to drive, and if you wreck them they always show up again where you first found them so you can drive them between cases if you want.

So about glitches & stuff. I've had 2 weird glitches so far in the entire time playing. One was when I was driving a fast car very fast over a hilly street getting lots of air and I smashed into a light pole while airborne, I think I hit it with the underside of the car. Car went flying. Literally just bounced off the light pole and went impossibly high. Another glitch was when I was trying to catch a bad guy on foot and bumped into some lady and sent her flying some football field far away. Those are the only two I've seen, and they weren't a big deal, nothing so far has interfered with gameplay.

Also practically no load times. One short one when loading the game, but nothing at all compared to what RDR had. If you drive yourself to cases, you won't see a load screen during gameplay at all unless you count title screens when starting a new case. If your partner drives you you'll see a load screen but it lasts 5 seconds at best. This is PS3 slim though, dunno how it is on other PS3s or lesser consoles.

One thing worth noting is pedestrians are very hard to kill. I've managed some serious injuries through car wrecks but I don't think you can run them over. I only speed when it's necessary, when something requires urgency, so usually I drive more or less responsibly in the game. So I haven't tried actually killing peds. I shot one accidentally and failed a minor side-mission once but that was with a tommy gun and they were fairly far behind what I was shooting at, I was blindfiring and I guess the innocent guy caught an unlucky bullet. Causing injuries to innocents reduces the efficiency at which the case is rated.

So yeah Gnarly, it's a much slower game than anything I've ever played, if you turn off the BS hints you really need to go over crime scenes slowly and force yourself to accept that sometimes you can't get them all. It's kinda funny though when you look for evidence and you tell Phelps to pick up a carrot and he slowly turns it around in his hand and remarks something like "I don't think this is gonna be much help in the case..."

Slow but sexy.

Fido wrote:

lesser consoles.

Ooooooh!

Fido wrote:

It does require a lot of thought if you wanna enjoy the game. You have to cross-check things in the notebook a lot because if you fuck up interrogation, entire ways of questioning are sealed off and it's very possible to end up charging, say, a child molester for a murder you know he didn't commit... just to charge someone at all.

Also, the game is longer than I expected. You fly through being a Beat Cop & Traffic very quickly and I thought it was just going to be 3 or 4 quick cases per desk and then done. But fuck, I'm on I think the 10th or 11th case now in the game, on Homicide desk, and I've been playing a LOT. And there's 21 cases total... and they are taking longer and longer, and it gets more and more tricky every time, and you know you're doing something wrong but you can't quite put a finger on it but it slowly comes together, it's just great.

Love this game. Gets better the longer I play it. I'm in love with the cars. As you rank up, locations for unique or very rare cars get added to the game. Not that regular cars driving around are boring (because of how old they are many don't go too fast but every now and then you get in one and it fucking flies and it's so cool). But anyway the rare/unique cars are THE SHIT. So beautiful and so fast and so fun to drive, and if you wreck them they always show up again where you first found them so you can drive them between cases if you want.

So about glitches & stuff. I've had 2 weird glitches so far in the entire time playing. One was when I was driving a fast car very fast over a hilly street getting lots of air and I smashed into a light pole while airborne, I think I hit it with the underside of the car. Car went flying. Literally just bounced off the light pole and went impossibly high. Another glitch was when I was trying to catch a bad guy on foot and bumped into some lady and sent her flying some football field far away. Those are the only two I've seen, and they weren't a big deal, nothing so far has interfered with gameplay.

Also practically no load times. One short one when loading the game, but nothing at all compared to what RDR had. If you drive yourself to cases, you won't see a load screen during gameplay at all unless you count title screens when starting a new case. If your partner drives you you'll see a load screen but it lasts 5 seconds at best. This is PS3 slim though, dunno how it is on other PS3s or lesser consoles.

One thing worth noting is pedestrians are very hard to kill. I've managed some serious injuries through car wrecks but I don't think you can run them over. I only speed when it's necessary, when something requires urgency, so usually I drive more or less responsibly in the game. So I haven't tried actually killing peds. I shot one accidentally and failed a minor side-mission once but that was with a tommy gun and they were fairly far behind what I was shooting at, I was blindfiring and I guess the innocent guy caught an unlucky bullet. Causing injuries to innocents reduces the efficiency at which the case is rated.

So yeah Gnarly, it's a much slower game than anything I've ever played, if you turn off the BS hints you really need to go over crime scenes slowly and force yourself to accept that sometimes you can't get them all. It's kinda funny though when you look for evidence and you tell Phelps to pick up a carrot and he slowly turns it around in his hand and remarks something like "I don't think this is gonna be much help in the case..."

tl;dr

Nah but seriously I'm not reading this cause I want to try to avoid spoilers. Not really about the story but I wanna be surprised by SOMETHING in this game so I'm gonna avoid reading anything more until I play it myself.

Yeah that's fine, I didn't write any actual spoilers but that's exactly what I'd do, I hate finding out too much about a game like this before it's out.

PMSL
http://twitpic.com/4zdxsl

Fuuuuuu, hope I dont have that. Mine is relatively new.

RoninHo'in wrote:

PMSL
http://twitpic.com/4zdxsl

NOOOO JESUS NOOOOO .. if this happens to my fatty when I get L.A. Noire, I'm gonna cry. My fatty already has a breathing problem : ( .. fans are loud and going non-stop soon as it turns on.

SOunds like a sweet game, but I really need to start saving up for a new PS3. Or at least have a backup plan.


Mine is a 40GB Fat, and I bought it used 3 years ago...I haven't destroyed it but I haven't done my best to take care of it anyway. I'm afraid it will go out at any time now. I need to do that and get a new laptop...Ahhhh I don't have any money anymore.

Hawk wrote:

SOunds like a sweet game, but I really need to start saving up for a new PS3. Or at least have a backup plan.


Mine is a 40GB Fat, and I bought it used 3 years ago...I haven't destroyed it but I haven't done my best to take care of it anyway. I'm afraid it will go out at any time now. I need to do that and get a new laptop...Ahhhh I don't have any money anymore.

What happened to your babysitting gig?

Still have it, but remember I just made a big purchase.

Hawk wrote:

Still have it, but remember I just made a big purchase.

Indeed. How much do you have saved up?

Lish, ur screwed

If it's overheating already.... LA Noire would be like handing it a fully loaded revolver for russian roulette.

You might wait and see if Sony promises free replacement though... then it could save you... given all the bad PR they're gettin, they might have to really step up the response to this issue and you could make out big from it (free upgrade and new box)

I have like 300 dollars right now.

RoninHo'in wrote:

Lish, ur screwed

If it's overheating already.... LA Noire would be like handing it a fully loaded revolver for russian roulette.

You might wait and see if Sony promises free replacement though... then it could save you... given all the bad PR they're gettin, they might have to really step up the response to this issue and you could make out big from it (free upgrade and new box)

Nahhh I'd say my baby can take it, it's taken everything else I put on it. But if she blows well then she blows, I'll be getting a slim. I'm not waiting on Sony to do shit.. jesus.