Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Mixed reactions"

LA Noire sets you as a cop that joined the force soon after world war 2. Starting on patrol and working your way through various desks, you come across a huge criminal conspiracy involving several high-ranking people. Along the way you interrogate suspects, get evidence, chase and shoot suspects, and engage in some sandbox like most Rockstar games. The game looks nice and captures the essence of late 1940s LA well, though it takes a lot of processing power for it to do so, and any computer that's not really current will struggle with it, even on it's performance settings. The voice acting is done well, and the emotions on the suspects is good enough, though still seems artificial. The combat minigames can be very vexing though, as the targeting dot only appears when you are aiming (not good if you want to aim somewhat while in cover) and the game sometimes doesn't tell you what's expected of you (ie shooting a suspect when the game requires you to merely apprehend). You are also arbitrarily limited in how high you can aim, so good luck if you want to fire a warning shot on a suspect climbing up something. The brawling scenes are really just button mashing, no skill required. Failing wouldn't be too bad except there is no way to bypass or speed up the cutscene. Seeing the same cutscene 3 times in the space of 10 minutes... grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. And for the love of all that's holy: "Phelps, badge one-two-four-seven. How can I help detective?" asdshkdfhgfdlfsdlj. The first five times of that was more than enough, thank you. The cars also handle incredibly poorly, however considering these cars are 1940s models without power steering and the rest, it might just be a case of realism taking over fun. Driving is incredibly aggravating in sandbox, with the number of traffic lights and traffic along with the bad handling making getting from A to B annoying. Thankfully you can get your partner to drive for the most part, bypassing it, if after a bit of banter between the two of you.


This game loves it's cutscenes as well, so that leads to a lot of annoyance if you've seen it before (or are naturally impatient and have read the subtitles already, like moi) and just want to get moving. Indeed it plays more like an interactive movie than a standard game, so GTA 1940s it isn't. The cases can feel very monotonous after a while, thankfully the story that ties them together keeps you going.

In short, if they had made the driving and combat better it would have helped immensely. If they had allowed us to speed up or skip cutscenes it would have helped immensely. The story of the game is great, the voice acting is good, the attention to detail really shows, but the poor game mechanics stop you from giving it a really high mark.