L.A. Noire Review

So last month I was doing tons of articles on L.A. Noire. Now about a month later I am bringing you a review. Why so long you may ask? Well in all honesty we didn’t know if we wanted to do reviews or not but now we have decided that we want to. So anyways on to the review.

Let me just start by saying that if you want a game like GTA or RDR then you don’t want L.A. Noire. That said it is still a fantastic game as my review will point out.

L.A. Noire is a game done by Rockstar and Bondai games. You play detective Cole Phelps who starts off as a low ranking officer and quickly climbs up the ranks. You start as a street cop and after a few tutorial missions end up a detective.

The story in the game is great. They keep it well paced and it doesn’t get confusing like some other games. Phelps is a former marine so you get some flashbacks as well which put some insight into Phelp’s past.  You get to deal with some more famous charterers later in the game as well as some familiar voices from various tv shows and movies. Every time you catch a bad guy and do the case correctly you feel good about yourself but it goes both ways because they captain will give you an ear full and maybe even demote you if you mess up to bad. Still without ruining anything major in the story you can look forward to a great story and a wall paced one at that.

Next for the L.A. Noire review we will look at game play. For the game play its pretty straight forward. You drive old school cars which feel old school when you drive them, so if you are used to GTA 4 good luck with this one. If you get put into a fist fight you can dodge, grapple and punch. If you do enough damage you can do a finisher. When it comes to gun fights they only have about 6 guns unless you get the DLC gun. It’s simple none the less. Take cover and shoot when they pop out. Unless you have the Tommy gun I pretty much just walk and let out a barrage with that thing. The biggest problem I have is sometimes it is hard to control Phelps when you are looking for clues. It kind of suffers from that Heavy Rain control problem. You can get stuck on walls or tables pretty easily. When you get to a crime scene you have to find clues. They make it easy for you and a chime will go off when you are near something you can inspect. Be sure to remember everything you inspect isn’t going to be a clue. After you find clues you will typically have to question someone. You ask them a question then have to pick truth, doubt or lie. You have to look at there facial expression and determine which one to pick. If you know they are lying and have the proof pick lie but if not pick doubt. They also have a level up system which gives you things called intuition points. you can use these to help with questions or have all the clues put on your mini map. They will also give you knew suits as well.

Now we will look at audio and video for the L.A. Noire review. The biggest pet peve I have with any video game is when a voice acting is terrible. A prime example of this is Just Cause 2. Just because you are playing in a different country doesn’t mean you need to hire terrible voice actors from that country. Anyways in this game the voice acting is perfect. The faces move well with the words and the people really sell it. Most of the people are previous actors or voice actors anyways which is always nice. Graphically it looks good. They put a lot of detail in the world and cars. What really sells the characters in the game is the facial animations. They must of put a bunch of time into this because it hasn’t been done before in a game and looks great. It is also how you can tell if someone is lying or not so it had to be good. Both of these are really good in the game. They don’t try to oversell anything which is good.

Now for the longevity of L.A. Noire. This game is long. It took me about 35 hours to complete but I replayed a ton of cases to get 5 star ratings on all of them. The game features about 20 cases and after the tutorial ones they each take anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours. Once you finish all the cases you can free roam in the city as well. They gave you plenty to do in the city you can do street crimes, find rare vehicles or look for golden film reels. All of it is extra and doesn’t need to be done but it is a nice little edition. They also have DLC cases coming and already have 4 out as I am doing this review. With the Rockstar pass you can get each of them for free which is a really good deal in my opinion because the DLC is just as good as the normal cases, sometimes better. Needless to say even after you beat the game you will most likely still be playing the game or keeping it for DLC.

Here comes the part where I nit pick at things I hate. The driving in this game is fine but why when I hit a fence or something that I should be able to break going 50 mphs does my car just bounce off? It is just like in GTA 4 when you hit the smallest, thinnest tree in the world with the fastest car you don’t even budge it. It’s annoying but not game breaking. Also it seems like people want to get run over and if they do guess who loses a star? You. Yup the more damage you cause the more likely you are to lose a star. Other then the lack of weapons though that’s about all I can complain about.

That will end the L.A Noire review. This is easily a game of the year contender and I wouldn’t be surprised if it took it home.

L.A. Noire review 4.75/5 Get it.

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