Absolutely infuriating social awkwardness simulator masquerading as an open-world mystery game. Guess the robot conversation cues right or get fucked, I guess.
a bit like starting a new dating sim every 15 minutes
I really should finish this game. The story is very interesting. It's just that the perfectionist in me hates getting the wrong answers so I tend to restart entire missions just to get shit right. I know, I know, I need to fucking relax.
He doesn’t cheat enough on his shitty wife.
4 stars.
4 stars.
Rockstar, quero L.A. Noire 2 sem os defeitos do primeiro.
mentioned this game to a friend the other day and damn it really did sink like a stone in pop culture didn't it. just absolutely zero cultural imprint, a perfectly smooth experience - ironic, given how janky it was - forgotten almost entirely by everyone who played it. Fine.
I can't say they're any real improvements from the old version, at least it includes all the DLC.
Definitely one of my favourite Rockstar games
One of my fav rockstar games.
The 2nd best game after bully with rockstar's name attached and one of a kind in its own little subgenre.
Pros:
A very interesting concept for a game
The acting is well done
The setting is literally the only time anything in video games has been placed in the 40s and not been WWII
I enjoy the general pacing of the cases.
The amount of detail on a lot of the game that most people will just never notice, like all the cars.
Cons:
Feels like rockstar stepped in and forced some gameplay decisions
Everything that isn't the cases feels at best half baked, why would i just randomly enter cars?
The overarching story really gets stretched thin, his wife is more so non existent than an actual character and that's really disappointing.
the open world actively takes away from the game, although i do enjoy the car movement
it is just such a long feeling game when you try to drive everywhere instead of just letting the partner drive you.
A real downer of an ending, the bad guys get away with it all. Its very clear that the noire part is more taking inspiration from chinatown and... that's about it. The 40s noire films always have the bad guy get caught in some way and are usually very hopeful at the end.
I'm picturing an alternate version of this game that doesn't have an open world, has light time management with the cases as you travel to locations on a map screen, and you actually have your family be an aspect in the game. It sounds a lot nicer in my head.
7/10 for the 4/5ths i played of it. The shooting and driving aspects got very tiring. I'll probably pick it back up in a while. I would love to see another try at the concept but that's never happening.
Pros:
A very interesting concept for a game
The acting is well done
The setting is literally the only time anything in video games has been placed in the 40s and not been WWII
I enjoy the general pacing of the cases.
The amount of detail on a lot of the game that most people will just never notice, like all the cars.
Cons:
Feels like rockstar stepped in and forced some gameplay decisions
Everything that isn't the cases feels at best half baked, why would i just randomly enter cars?
The overarching story really gets stretched thin, his wife is more so non existent than an actual character and that's really disappointing.
the open world actively takes away from the game, although i do enjoy the car movement
it is just such a long feeling game when you try to drive everywhere instead of just letting the partner drive you.
A real downer of an ending, the bad guys get away with it all. Its very clear that the noire part is more taking inspiration from chinatown and... that's about it. The 40s noire films always have the bad guy get caught in some way and are usually very hopeful at the end.
I'm picturing an alternate version of this game that doesn't have an open world, has light time management with the cases as you travel to locations on a map screen, and you actually have your family be an aspect in the game. It sounds a lot nicer in my head.
7/10 for the 4/5ths i played of it. The shooting and driving aspects got very tiring. I'll probably pick it back up in a while. I would love to see another try at the concept but that's never happening.
I found the overarching plot to be very confusing, the pacing was awful too, some of the voice acting is badly mixed, the gunplay is ok, the individual cases were very good though. I wouldn't mind if this was just individual cases with no overarching plot but I still appreciate the attempt at 'unconventional storytelling'! Nails the jazzy noir feel.
Started this remaster back up in summer 2019 and I guess got bored or distracted. Eventually picked it back up during lockdown, more enhanced graphics rather than remastered but still enjoyed replaying this!
Mostly solid, but every single cutscene is shot and staged in the most boring way possible which detracts from the cinematic storytelling it's going for. Mind just glazed over every time. It never reaches the storytelling heights of the films it references and most of the stories are a dead end, though the latter is thematically in service of showing that the police care more about results than justice or tying up loose ends correctly. Never great, but it's good.
Well written, some slightly naff gameplay but a great game with strong atmosphere
I can only describe this game as lovingly opulent. L.A. Noire is overstuffed and buckles under its own ambition, but also shows focus and restraint uncommon for productions of this scope. It gives so much, and unlike other games that feel incomplete, I have the inkling that with enough time, they might have been able to pull everything off.
L.A. Noire is a detective game centered around reading faces as a game mechanic. The models may not have aged gracefully, but the mo-cap, acting, and animation are spectacular. The phrase “no small parts, only small actors” fully applies, and made me realize again how few games, (even in the modern age!), are even trying. Secretaries and post men delivered their single lines with such authenticity, personality, and impact as to continually blindside me in the way only interacting with the public can. These were not performances of comfortable and familiar acting styles, but recreations of people I’ve met in real life. Vocal inflections at once familiar when spoken, but so mundane as to have never been remembered or imagined. Gestures and glances so natural and specific the TV felt like a one-way mirror. If the only means of gameplay in L.A. Noire had been multiple choice selections during detective interviews, the quality of acting would have been worth the price of admission alone. But for L.A. Noire, that’s only the foundation.
I absolutely adored the first desk of cases after finishing the tutorial sequence. So rarely has a game so consistently dropped my jaw open with excitement and possibility. There was a real tension in realizing how I would have to un-learn so many habits from playing other games with different goals to succeed in this one. As a human who wants to be a good person, in games I’m inclined to pick pleasant dialog options when talking to NPCs. In L.A. Noire, sometimes in order to get good information from good people, you have to press them in a way that makes everyone uncomfortable. And sometimes you have to put on a polite face when dealing with assholes. L.A. Noire wanted me to navigate human motivations to arrive at the truth at the expense of decorum, and its dedication to this perspective impressed me.
But equally impressive was the immense flexibility the game had for my spectacular miscalculations and failures. In an early case, I missed the murder weapon, a gun that had been thrown out in a garbage can right next to where I assumed control of the detective, and the game still let me progress through the entire case without ever having to go back and find it! In another, I missed so much evidence that the motivation of the perpetrator made no sense. Playing through the case again with a guide, I learned not only was he reacting to another man’s unwanted sexual advances, but the dialog of other characters describing the situation had been just subtle enough to work with or without that subtext.
Here is where I explain why L.A. Noire is bounteous while being restrained. As a detective, you look for evidence in 3D spaces. You drive around. There are tailing missions. You chase after suspects, up ladders and across rooftops, in encounters that can end with a first fight or a shoot-out. You break up illegal street races and run from the mafia. And you can skip absolutely all of it, without even affecting your score! The only thing the game cares about, and forces you to do yourself, is collect evidence, conduct interviews, and press charges. Everything else is treated as set dressing.
Which blows my mind, because the level of detail is astounding. There are a half dozen guns with different rates of fire, clip sizes, and accuracy ranges. There are 95 models of cars, each of which control differently, with different top speeds and turning radii. Each where you can shoot out individual headlights. Each of which you can crash spectacularly. Multiple times did I get in a wreck, only to step out and watch an individual car tire roll down a city block or two. Buildings took an astounding variety of cosmetic damage depending on how hard cars crashed into them. It was all so consistent it was difficult to notice, because the moment to moment action flowed so naturally.
All of this effort, and you can choose to have your partner detective drive you everywhere automatically!
If there is one element of the game that brings down the mood, it is the game’s overarching plot. Early cases have a light and fun “case of the day” type feel that makes it easy to replay for the joy of detective work. Later cases delve more into the player character’s personal life and drama, which become interconnected and less fun. It is obvious not as much time was available to develop the space and pacing necessary for the later developments to feel natural. (And the tone becomes more self-serious and somber, which disappointed me after the domestic absurdity of the opening.) I respect the ambition, and the foundations of what I can see on paper look solid. In execution, Cole Phelp's story rips the focus away from the game’s strengths as an adventure game, as player choice can no longer matter as it did when the stakes were lower.
In my rating system, 2 stars represents an average, C rank game, and L.A. Noire is definitely an A+ rank game. It’s so generous, so conscientious, so luxurious, so extra that I heartily recommend it even with its obvious flaws. For how rich and rewarding replaying cases can be, it is an absolute war crime that the console version of this game does not have a “skip cutscene” button. The convoluted saving system can make it difficult to drop in and out of a case within a single session, but most are doable within a movie length amount of time.
More subjectively, there are some elements that I could see turning someone away. I would have been perfectly happy if the entire game had taken place on the Traffic desk, catching fraudsters and tracking down stolen cars. Unfortunately, a good portion of the game is with Homicide and Arson cases. Depending on one’s squeamishness level, you do see dead bodies, awful wounds, and burnt corpses. There is more than one naked dead woman in this game, and the callousness of the depiction walked the line between feeling realistic or tasteless.
While the player character Cole Phelps is framed as better matching the sensibilities of the modern player, the culture of the time has been uncomfortably recreated with period-accurate flavors of misogyny and racism. On the one hand, I understand the desire to depict the reality of the city in a vibrant and believable way, while on the other, I wish the game could have fudged in the favor of a fun time.
Overall, excellent, fantastic, the best open world game of all time, because it lets you opt out of playing an open world game at any moment.
L.A. Noire is a detective game centered around reading faces as a game mechanic. The models may not have aged gracefully, but the mo-cap, acting, and animation are spectacular. The phrase “no small parts, only small actors” fully applies, and made me realize again how few games, (even in the modern age!), are even trying. Secretaries and post men delivered their single lines with such authenticity, personality, and impact as to continually blindside me in the way only interacting with the public can. These were not performances of comfortable and familiar acting styles, but recreations of people I’ve met in real life. Vocal inflections at once familiar when spoken, but so mundane as to have never been remembered or imagined. Gestures and glances so natural and specific the TV felt like a one-way mirror. If the only means of gameplay in L.A. Noire had been multiple choice selections during detective interviews, the quality of acting would have been worth the price of admission alone. But for L.A. Noire, that’s only the foundation.
I absolutely adored the first desk of cases after finishing the tutorial sequence. So rarely has a game so consistently dropped my jaw open with excitement and possibility. There was a real tension in realizing how I would have to un-learn so many habits from playing other games with different goals to succeed in this one. As a human who wants to be a good person, in games I’m inclined to pick pleasant dialog options when talking to NPCs. In L.A. Noire, sometimes in order to get good information from good people, you have to press them in a way that makes everyone uncomfortable. And sometimes you have to put on a polite face when dealing with assholes. L.A. Noire wanted me to navigate human motivations to arrive at the truth at the expense of decorum, and its dedication to this perspective impressed me.
But equally impressive was the immense flexibility the game had for my spectacular miscalculations and failures. In an early case, I missed the murder weapon, a gun that had been thrown out in a garbage can right next to where I assumed control of the detective, and the game still let me progress through the entire case without ever having to go back and find it! In another, I missed so much evidence that the motivation of the perpetrator made no sense. Playing through the case again with a guide, I learned not only was he reacting to another man’s unwanted sexual advances, but the dialog of other characters describing the situation had been just subtle enough to work with or without that subtext.
Here is where I explain why L.A. Noire is bounteous while being restrained. As a detective, you look for evidence in 3D spaces. You drive around. There are tailing missions. You chase after suspects, up ladders and across rooftops, in encounters that can end with a first fight or a shoot-out. You break up illegal street races and run from the mafia. And you can skip absolutely all of it, without even affecting your score! The only thing the game cares about, and forces you to do yourself, is collect evidence, conduct interviews, and press charges. Everything else is treated as set dressing.
Which blows my mind, because the level of detail is astounding. There are a half dozen guns with different rates of fire, clip sizes, and accuracy ranges. There are 95 models of cars, each of which control differently, with different top speeds and turning radii. Each where you can shoot out individual headlights. Each of which you can crash spectacularly. Multiple times did I get in a wreck, only to step out and watch an individual car tire roll down a city block or two. Buildings took an astounding variety of cosmetic damage depending on how hard cars crashed into them. It was all so consistent it was difficult to notice, because the moment to moment action flowed so naturally.
All of this effort, and you can choose to have your partner detective drive you everywhere automatically!
If there is one element of the game that brings down the mood, it is the game’s overarching plot. Early cases have a light and fun “case of the day” type feel that makes it easy to replay for the joy of detective work. Later cases delve more into the player character’s personal life and drama, which become interconnected and less fun. It is obvious not as much time was available to develop the space and pacing necessary for the later developments to feel natural. (And the tone becomes more self-serious and somber, which disappointed me after the domestic absurdity of the opening.) I respect the ambition, and the foundations of what I can see on paper look solid. In execution, Cole Phelp's story rips the focus away from the game’s strengths as an adventure game, as player choice can no longer matter as it did when the stakes were lower.
In my rating system, 2 stars represents an average, C rank game, and L.A. Noire is definitely an A+ rank game. It’s so generous, so conscientious, so luxurious, so extra that I heartily recommend it even with its obvious flaws. For how rich and rewarding replaying cases can be, it is an absolute war crime that the console version of this game does not have a “skip cutscene” button. The convoluted saving system can make it difficult to drop in and out of a case within a single session, but most are doable within a movie length amount of time.
More subjectively, there are some elements that I could see turning someone away. I would have been perfectly happy if the entire game had taken place on the Traffic desk, catching fraudsters and tracking down stolen cars. Unfortunately, a good portion of the game is with Homicide and Arson cases. Depending on one’s squeamishness level, you do see dead bodies, awful wounds, and burnt corpses. There is more than one naked dead woman in this game, and the callousness of the depiction walked the line between feeling realistic or tasteless.
While the player character Cole Phelps is framed as better matching the sensibilities of the modern player, the culture of the time has been uncomfortably recreated with period-accurate flavors of misogyny and racism. On the one hand, I understand the desire to depict the reality of the city in a vibrant and believable way, while on the other, I wish the game could have fudged in the favor of a fun time.
Overall, excellent, fantastic, the best open world game of all time, because it lets you opt out of playing an open world game at any moment.
Gets kind of repetitive after a while and while I appreciate what they were trying to to do with the motion capture and the facial cues, it never really feels natural enough to feel right.
Great deal of fun to be had here.
It hit the nail on the head with it's atmosphere, music and world.
Some insane stuff goes down here so don't take it too seriously.
It hit the nail on the head with it's atmosphere, music and world.
Some insane stuff goes down here so don't take it too seriously.
L.A. Noire is a promising experiment from Rockstar's past that in many ways has still not seen its full potential realized.
The core gameplay of L.A. Noire has you take on the role of rising star cop Cole Phelps as you collect evidence, famously use facial cues to interrogate suspects and engage in boilerplate Rockstar shootouts and car chases. in 1940s Los Angeles.
The investigation aspect still largely holds up as novel to this day and scrounging around crime scenes for clues (although the game does hold your hand slightly by alerting you when you've found everything of note) adds an extra layer of accomplishment when you pull it out to catch a suspect in a lie. The game does tend to litter the areas with an often repeated supply of irrelevant items that can be inspected and while things like matchboxes will be crucial evidence in some cases and meaningless in others, the game doesn't do this quite enough to justify the junk.
Interrogations themselves are the main draw of the game as it allows its focus on performance capture to shine as one-off suspects become memorable characters. The actual mechanics of investigations as a whole are kind of a smoke and mirrors trick as no level of failure really has any material effect on the game's trajectory but the performances make even small mistakes notable experiences and the writing allows for a botched question to still provide some semblance of information.
The remastered version also replaces the classic "Truth, Doubt, Lie" with "Good Cop, Bad Cop and Accuse" and while "Bad Cop" in particular is a more fitting description, these still don't quite go far enough to convey how Cole might respond to a suspect. Dialogue choices can occasionally lead on tangents that wind up frustrating, such as identifying that a suspect is lying about something but having Cole call them out on something tangentially related you might not have evidence for.
The open world is where this system starts to fall apart and actually lags behind more linear and abstract detective worlds like the Ace Attorney series where it could have expanded on them. Some later missions do progress differently depending on what order you choose to tackle tasks in but most cases do not involve the kind of backtracking and cross-examining that make both L.A. Noire's predecessors and successors interesting.
Instead, the open world is largely just a stage for car chases, gunfights and tailing missions both in main story missions and side quests that don't really feel distinct or interesting. I often found it grating for a case to end with Cole tackling or gunning down a suspect, when it was infinitely more tense to have to bring multiple suspects into the interrogation room and decide who to charge.
This is especially heartbreaking because the world is so well constructed that in a late-game car chase I crashed my car into a building only to realize "Hey this is the laundromat from mission 3" and the final homicide mission that has you use clues to travel to specific landmarks. Unfortunately, the game doesn't really require you to treat its fictional L.A. as a lived-in and interconnected place, instead just pushing you along from point A to point B.
Much of this is understandable when considering L.A. Noire's true intention is to tell a linear story, which it fundamentally does well. The rise and fall of Cole Phelps is essentially a mishmash of noir tropes but the game does a good job of elevating secondary characters such as Cole's partners and his former military teammates to make the story worthwhile. Cole himself fits pretty neatly into the standard Rockstar protagonist at the time as he is naive enough to act as an audience stand-in but tortured enough to add emotional weight.
My primary gripes with the story are that we don't really get to see much of Cole's life outside of his police work and the war, which takes away some of the gravity of a late-game twist. Also, the homicide desk is one of the most satisfying sections of the game from a gameplay perspective but ultimately reads like a non sequitur as the story ramps up in the second half.
Looking back, L.A. Noire is nestled in an odd space where it was not quite as innovative as it could have been. It does well to bring aspects of the more visual novel-style detective games to the AAA space but fails to fully connect the dots as much of the open world aspects feel like filler.
The core gameplay of L.A. Noire has you take on the role of rising star cop Cole Phelps as you collect evidence, famously use facial cues to interrogate suspects and engage in boilerplate Rockstar shootouts and car chases. in 1940s Los Angeles.
The investigation aspect still largely holds up as novel to this day and scrounging around crime scenes for clues (although the game does hold your hand slightly by alerting you when you've found everything of note) adds an extra layer of accomplishment when you pull it out to catch a suspect in a lie. The game does tend to litter the areas with an often repeated supply of irrelevant items that can be inspected and while things like matchboxes will be crucial evidence in some cases and meaningless in others, the game doesn't do this quite enough to justify the junk.
Interrogations themselves are the main draw of the game as it allows its focus on performance capture to shine as one-off suspects become memorable characters. The actual mechanics of investigations as a whole are kind of a smoke and mirrors trick as no level of failure really has any material effect on the game's trajectory but the performances make even small mistakes notable experiences and the writing allows for a botched question to still provide some semblance of information.
The remastered version also replaces the classic "Truth, Doubt, Lie" with "Good Cop, Bad Cop and Accuse" and while "Bad Cop" in particular is a more fitting description, these still don't quite go far enough to convey how Cole might respond to a suspect. Dialogue choices can occasionally lead on tangents that wind up frustrating, such as identifying that a suspect is lying about something but having Cole call them out on something tangentially related you might not have evidence for.
The open world is where this system starts to fall apart and actually lags behind more linear and abstract detective worlds like the Ace Attorney series where it could have expanded on them. Some later missions do progress differently depending on what order you choose to tackle tasks in but most cases do not involve the kind of backtracking and cross-examining that make both L.A. Noire's predecessors and successors interesting.
Instead, the open world is largely just a stage for car chases, gunfights and tailing missions both in main story missions and side quests that don't really feel distinct or interesting. I often found it grating for a case to end with Cole tackling or gunning down a suspect, when it was infinitely more tense to have to bring multiple suspects into the interrogation room and decide who to charge.
This is especially heartbreaking because the world is so well constructed that in a late-game car chase I crashed my car into a building only to realize "Hey this is the laundromat from mission 3" and the final homicide mission that has you use clues to travel to specific landmarks. Unfortunately, the game doesn't really require you to treat its fictional L.A. as a lived-in and interconnected place, instead just pushing you along from point A to point B.
Much of this is understandable when considering L.A. Noire's true intention is to tell a linear story, which it fundamentally does well. The rise and fall of Cole Phelps is essentially a mishmash of noir tropes but the game does a good job of elevating secondary characters such as Cole's partners and his former military teammates to make the story worthwhile. Cole himself fits pretty neatly into the standard Rockstar protagonist at the time as he is naive enough to act as an audience stand-in but tortured enough to add emotional weight.
My primary gripes with the story are that we don't really get to see much of Cole's life outside of his police work and the war, which takes away some of the gravity of a late-game twist. Also, the homicide desk is one of the most satisfying sections of the game from a gameplay perspective but ultimately reads like a non sequitur as the story ramps up in the second half.
Looking back, L.A. Noire is nestled in an odd space where it was not quite as innovative as it could have been. It does well to bring aspects of the more visual novel-style detective games to the AAA space but fails to fully connect the dots as much of the open world aspects feel like filler.
Desviando da proposta de uma trama investigativa de um policial de Los Angeles em ascensão, L.A. Noire se torna uma experiência chata e enjoativa com o tempo. Apesar dos lindos gráficos com expressões faciais realistas, o jogo nos entrega lores extremamente scriptadas que não dão sensação nenhuma de "missão cumprida", apenas de avanço. Além disso, o jogo possui um mundo aberto totalmente morto, com missões secundárias também repetitivas e que não agregam em nada à jornada do protagonista. Esperava mais.
very unique game with good soundtrack
There's a lot of odd things in this game, but I still think it's pretty good even if it falls a bit flat on some of its promises. I think the biggest impression it's left on me is that I would kill to have more games where it's mostly walking around, talking to people, looking at things, etc., and when guns are finally drawn at the end of the mission, it feels weighty and serious because you haven't even had the opportunity to do so before now.
Operator, give me a good game.
All the DLC in this game which makes it that much better. If you liked the original release and didn't play the DLC like me this is worth it.
This is probably one of the best Rockstar games ever made, I'd love a sequel someday.
the street crimes portion of this game is a lot of fun, just running around L.A. and taking down dumb robbers. it nails the '40s aesthetic pretty well especially within the specificity of Los Angeles. it's a shame the actual story is too half-baked and one-dimensional to carry concepts that on their own are pretty interesting from a gameplay perspective but are so fundamentally underdeveloped in the grand scheme of things. in the words of Mad Men's Vincent Kartheiser (who, funnily enough, has a cameo in this)...not great, Bob!
Posiblemente mejor que cualquier GTA hasta la fecha.
Eso sí, le sobra el mundo abierto y falta de rejugabilidad una vez te sabes los casos.
Eso sí, le sobra el mundo abierto y falta de rejugabilidad una vez te sabes los casos.
I adored this game the first time I played it, coincidentally the same year this version of the game released, having played the original port on the PS3. Revisiting it now though, the flaws are a lot more glaring.
The story is quite interesting, the individual cases at least. The overarching plot not so much. It lacks something, like a big twist. The ending is still very rushed and anti-climatic and some character motivations don't make much sense at all. The WW2 flashbacks are very corny and a lot of those characters (specifically Courtney Sheldon) leave a lot to be desired in terms of actually caring about them. The pacing can be pretty awful at times, mainly the latter half of Homicide and most of Vice/Arson. Everything before that was paced well.
Story grievances aside, the mechanics itself make-up for it. Cases are very fun and a lot more fun when you know what you're doing. Thankfully this time around I did, racking up 5 star cases is such a good feeling. Whoever was responsible for the NPC AI in this game though I assume was let off because it is pretty fucking awful... by my understanding, you need to cause zero vehicle damage and refrain from injuring civilians to achieve most 5 star rankings on a case. It doesn't help that a lot of civilian AI literally walk right in front of your vehicle at the most inconvenient of times, some even make a habit of running straight for you... and you're penalised for it. You'd think that the siren would be your best friend, but for some reason people in this city don't feel the need to get the fuck out of the way and some will literally either turn right into you or just not move at all, very harrowing experience to say the least.
It's a good game with very obvious issues, deserve a lot more recognition but with a pretty low sense of replayability. I would not be opposed to a sequel though and I think Jack Kelso could be the perfect candidate for that.
The story is quite interesting, the individual cases at least. The overarching plot not so much. It lacks something, like a big twist. The ending is still very rushed and anti-climatic and some character motivations don't make much sense at all. The WW2 flashbacks are very corny and a lot of those characters (specifically Courtney Sheldon) leave a lot to be desired in terms of actually caring about them. The pacing can be pretty awful at times, mainly the latter half of Homicide and most of Vice/Arson. Everything before that was paced well.
Story grievances aside, the mechanics itself make-up for it. Cases are very fun and a lot more fun when you know what you're doing. Thankfully this time around I did, racking up 5 star cases is such a good feeling. Whoever was responsible for the NPC AI in this game though I assume was let off because it is pretty fucking awful... by my understanding, you need to cause zero vehicle damage and refrain from injuring civilians to achieve most 5 star rankings on a case. It doesn't help that a lot of civilian AI literally walk right in front of your vehicle at the most inconvenient of times, some even make a habit of running straight for you... and you're penalised for it. You'd think that the siren would be your best friend, but for some reason people in this city don't feel the need to get the fuck out of the way and some will literally either turn right into you or just not move at all, very harrowing experience to say the least.
It's a good game with very obvious issues, deserve a lot more recognition but with a pretty low sense of replayability. I would not be opposed to a sequel though and I think Jack Kelso could be the perfect candidate for that.
It's a game that has so many damn flaws I feel like I shouldn't enjoy it as much as I do, but damn it if it isn't one of my favorite open world games ever made. The atmosphere and world of a 1947 post war LA are spectacularly done, the actors all do their best with the material given, and I adore the story for about 85% if the run time. The gameplay can be janky, and the front and center interrogations show their age as soon as the first couple, but I absolutely adore this game and would recommend anyone get it on a discount if you can. It is a great time if you can get hooked by it.
There's a lot to like about LA Noire. The recreation of 1940s Los Angeles is really cool, the cases are written well, and you really get to engage in the detective work of being a police officer. I really enjoyed the first half of the game, but the second half slowly deflated and I started to lose interest in the game in a number of places. (Spoilers ahead) The most interesting part of the game, not surprisingly, is the Homicide desk, which ends at the halfway point of the game. After this point, I didn't really find any of the actual crimes very interesting, and I think the developers knew it as the number of conspiracies and gunfights dramatically increase from here on out. I'm pretty sure you shoot more people in one case of Vice than you do in all of Homicide. Even Homicide isn't innocent though, it turns out that (again spoilers) all of the cases are connected and caused by the same serial killer. I get the appeal, but it ends up that all of these cases have exactly the same type of victim - middle aged washed up drunk women who hate their husbands and get killed coming home from a bar. This means you spend every case going to visit their shitty husbands and visiting the shitty bars and following the same steps. Even so, I very much liked Homicide the best, as it felt like it had the best cases and arc. Though your partners continue to tell you "no way man, you've been doing this for like 3 days, you know how crazy it would be if literally every case you ever did was connected?", it turns out no, he's right, every single case you do is in fact connected. The part that really lost me was your character's "fall from grace", which came out of nowhere. They really just needed something to make you look like a piece of shit, but it didn't fit with your character... at the time. Even though you're a goody two-shoes for the first 75% of the game, suddenly you're an adulterous, angry war criminal by the end. It didn't do anything for me at all. Also, my PS4 crashed and corrupted my save so I had to finish it on PC, so that'll bump it down a few grade levels.
masterpiece.