L.A. Noire Reviews

I remember watching the first teaser / trailer of L.A. Noire and was astounded by the richness and quality. I love the 1940s and after watching the Michael Mann film Public Enemies (2009), my hype for L.A.
Noire went out of this world with L.A. Noire's trailer (2010) which came out exactly after a year or some months later. And when the game had been released, it didn't get it right away cause I was in university. However I did buy it for my brother. The Xbox 360 version that had 3 discs. Again after another couple of years later, I finally
played the game in 2013. I took my time and played it slowly. Finished it finally during the 2nd week of January 2014. Man oh man, what an insane ride. What a game! I loved every minute of it, every QUIT & Continue (the retries) to get all them questions right during interrogations. Ha! It is a beautiful game with a brilliant cast and grand environments. If you love California and 1940s then here is a game that will rock your socks off from team bondi and rockstar games.
Why the interrogations aren't boring? Cause the expressions given out by the characters in question are just unbelievably real. Even though expressions are common, the fact remains that each human being is an
individual and it applies to our facial features too, that's what makes the expressions different. The game play itself is generous, without sticking to just one type and still manages to maintain a sense of consistency. Certain levels require certain types of game play ranging from puzzles to action sequences. And I have to talk about the crime scene investigations which is just beyond my appreciation. Some are bold, some easy but brilliant all together. The most important thing that keeps us going in the game is the story. Greatly crafted and put
together really well. Finally, the music. You don't like the 1940s without loving the music from the era. Both the original score and the selection of classic tracks just wants me to say, "these cats got great taste mac." Thank you to every good soul that worked on this game, it
is a beautiful game, a masterpiece. Hope I haven't missed anything out, even if I have I'll make it up with the following line: L.A. Noire is one of the best games ever made, I've ever played and you will ever
play.

Now that I've finally hooked my PS3 to TV with a hdmi cable, I wish I had played it on my PS3. But the Xbox 360 wasn't bad either.

For all the great technology and effort that went into designing the game, the results are pretty disappointing. The re-creation of 1940s Los Angeles is impressive in it's detail and the face animation technology employed in the game really is fantastic. Ultimately, this is a very story driven game first and foremost and precious little attention has been paid to the story.

The last set of cases was quite interesting and there was real momentum to the story. Except that, the cases were mostly pointless and terribly cliched - police corruption in the vice squad, wife and lover murder husband, crooked producer rips off mafia financier etc etc. Every LA Film Noir cliche has been employed in this game. In the homicide squad, I followed the same routine for 6 cases straight - talk to husband of murdered woman, talk to bartender, talk to other man at bar. It felt like I'd visited every fucking bar in Los Angeles by the end of that sequence of cases. There are also have smaller 'street crimes' that you encounter when you are driving around the city. They usually involve shooting a lot of people, chasing a suspect on foot or chasing a suspect in the car - over and over. No imagination has been applied here either.

Apart from the problem of mediocre stories, the cases were very linear as well. You don't have a lot of branching in the story, it just goes straight as a straight line. The puzzles in the game could be solved by an 8 yr old. More than 2/3rds of your time is spent driving around to get from one location to another and walking around the crime scene "searching" for clues. If you walk around enough, you'll eventually find them all. I was utterly fed up of the driving and walking by the end. The game really feels like a lot of walking and driving connected by bits of story.

The highlight is supposedly the suspect and witness interrogations, which employ the face animation technology. You can to guess if they're telling the truth, holding back or lying. If it doesn't sound terribly exciting, you would be right. It's easy to tell if the person being interrogated is not being totally truthful, but choosing between accusing them of holding back or lying turns into a bit of guesswork at times. Questions have to be asked in the order they are listed almost all the time or their answers start to sound weird (like referencing information that was revealed in questions higher on the list, that you actually haven't asked). The whole process is more or less linear, like the rest of the game is.

In the final analysis, while I was very impressed with the ambition of the game, the result is half-baked. I'd love to see all the great technology being put to use in a game that has a deeper experience and more attention to detail.