This game had no right to be this good! It was the perfect detective game. The cases were interesting and well thought out, they always made you think like a real detective and take into account the evidence and the details to find the right culprit.
The story has lots of ups and downs and it's making you experience different types of cases and approaches. At times this game felt like a good detective TV Show:)))
The Noir atmosphere of the 40s-50s is just great and L.A is the right city for this kind of game, Los Angeles more like Los Angeles y Los Demonios.
The facial expressions are the game's trademark, revolutionary for 2011. from what i've noticed.. many people find them a little cringy, but i thought they were impressive and added charm to the game.
One of my favorite things about this game is the main menu... it's soo creative, i love when games try to do something unique like that. Out of the the letters from the light panel, only the letters L, I and E flicker, cool detail.. right? You know the game will be good from the moment you see the work and effort put into this kind of things.
Soundtrack is amazing too, especially the main theme. It's very moody and it makes me wanna drink some whiskey and light up a cigar while elegantly dressed in a suit with a nice hat on my head thinking about life and the immortality of the soul.
One thing i didn't like was how big the map was considering there's not much to do in free roam but its not really a bad thing, they did good with creating the L.A of that time, just not super necessary.
Team Bondi did a helluva job with this game, shame they don't exist anymore. I hope we will see more games like L.A Noire at some point.

LA Noire is a game that I really hoped would be more interesting than it ended up being. It is entertaining enough, it has that typical Rockstar charm (and Rockstar's tendency to burn money on the screen for the most minute things) but it really feels like a missed opportunity.

The game takes place immediately after WW2, which is a great setting, but it feels like the devs were so enamoured with it that they forgot to put any substance in any part of the game.

The gameplay itself is so simplistic and scripted that it may as well not even be there, the investigation segments are really basic and the interrogations are sort of interesting but really badly handled (and it never matters how well you do in any of them). Same can be said for the open world, which was a complete waste of money and time to even have, it looks great but it serves so little purpose that I ended up just skipping the car rides every time.

So all we're really left with is the story, but I felt like it was paced all wrong. The game introduces its characters in the first hour, then everything stops for a solid 10 hours, and at the very last couple hours a story starts to materialize. And even then you're not given much to care for considering that by then the game is scrambling to get some kind of structure back, but it all feels very hollow, especially the very anti-climactic ending.

What I will say about the game though is that the creators really cared for what they were making, and it shows on every aspect of it. Too bad that it didn't really translate to a compelling experience.

Let it be known that I was not born a hater of L.A. Noire.

The entire concept appeals to me. Detective fiction is one of my favorite flavors. I am a great lover of video games that heavily feature immersive conversations. I prefer period pieces and more fantastical settings to the doldrums of life on present Earth. I have had little experience with Rockstar but know them via a profound reputation for quality, and nobody has ever played another video game by Team Bondi.

Not only would I say that I entered with no biases against L.A. Noire, I would say that I am the exact audience for it.

When I first started playing I was quickly smitten with the actor's in-game performances and the mechanics of crime scene investigation. I praised the multitudes of meaningless junk items that littered each crime scene because investigation should be about finding that which is significant, not just interacting with everything the game allows. The use of music and chimes to denote the existence of unclaimed clues struck me as clever and quite probably necessary. When the game first let me into a vehicle I was happy to obey every traffic law and immerse myself on the way to each objective. This roleplaying did not last. It could not last.

By the time I finished my work at the Vice desk I was so far ejected from the game that I was earning the lowest possible case ranking on purpose, out of sheer, seething spite.

There are no consequences to any action in L.A. Noire other than the possible reduction of that post-mission score. Unless the protagonist dies in a hail of gunfire or loses track of their target when tailing or chasing, they cannot fail, and in those instances the only penalty is that they may need to repeat approximately thirty seconds of gameplay. Failing to correctly intuit the broken, nonsensical logic of the spectacularly terrible interrogation interface does not change anything. Ever. The player will always receive the information that they need to continue the case, even if a suspect has to blurt it out for no sensible reason. If there appear to be two possible culprits in a case, feel free to book whichever one you find more offensive. The script has already decided that they are both the wrong answer, and there is no possibility in this case of finding the right one.

This puts the player at a terrible crossroads. One breed of player will accept the post-case grading system as sufficient motivation, and will try their best to make sense of the stupid idiot moon logic that L.A. Noire requires from the player to earn their perfect score. I have played every Ace Attorney game and two out of three mainline Danganronpas. Not one of those games features as many instances of arbitrary nonsense as L.A. Noire. Ever since the birth of that thrice-damned fools-lauded conversation wheel back in Mass Effect 1, these sorts of AAA games have been horrifically fumbling the roleplayer's intent as it travels from human to machine, and L.A. Noire does it even worse than most. In a good roleplaying game (do not start with me on whether or not L.A. Noire is a roleplaying game) the player is constantly asking themselves: "What do I want to do?" In a bad roleplaying game the player constantly asks themselves: "What does THE GAME want me to do?"

It did not take long for me to decide that L.A. Noire's interrogation system did not deserve the pleasure of my learning how to put up with it. In fact, it reminded me quite viscerally of my life in college, my every action graded by a rubric I did not respect and did not feel represented my interests in any way. I began to feel insulted, as if L.A. Noire were asking me to figure out when to use its stupid doubt button as a sign of submission. So that it could reward me with idiot points, signifying nothing but my obedience.

I still have no idea whether I'm supposed to actually take the context into account or if I'm just supposed to press the doubt button every time a character behaves in a way that no corporeal being ever has, and I refuse to learn. This is not how human beings behave, and thus no social ability I might bring to this game would avail me anything.

I ran down Roy Earle with his own car at least seven times because it was the only agency I had and because I was sick and tired of being surrounded by horrible, insufferable people who have to die. I did as much damage to his car as I possibly could on purpose, and pressed whatever button I damn well pleased in every conversation. What I'm saying is that when I reached the crossroads, I went left... barreling down Hater's Lane.

The moment the illusion shattered and I realized the utter absence of stakes, the floodgates opened. I went from driving patiently and in character to maxing out the gas pedal and road raging at any car I couldn't dodge. I became even more annoyed at the repetitive, ridiculous barks of NPCs than I already was. Not only has every single citizen of pre-television L.A. heard of Cole Phelps, That Cop Who Won The Medal And Is Solving All The Cases, they recognize him on sight without fail, and MUST announce the fact.

I was able to engage with maybe one third of the game's cases. The overly episodic nature of the story turns the characters in most of the cases into meaningless nobodies and their problems into something transient and ephemeral. Many of the cases are so repetitive that even if there were any stakes involved with the gameplay, it would be difficult for many players to become as invested as they should ideally be.

Firefights are always forced and no participant can ever be taken alive. Fistfights can be cleared simply by mashing the A button. Scenario design is frequently unclear which can lead to players having no idea what they're supposed to be doing, even if they haven't fallen victim to the game's many bugs. The PC Remaster crashed on me at least four times.

Not only do the GAME parts of L.A. Noire add nothing positive to the experience, they actively get in its way at virtually every turn. In my world, this earns something the title of "A Bad Video Game" by default. If removing the video game from your video game would improve it, you have made a bad video game, and should have made a movie instead. The problem of course is that by the nature of the medium, video games almost never pull off non-interactive stories better than film does and L.A. Noire doesn't manage it either. Almost all of the meat in the game's plot plays out in the last five hours and the writing is not above some serious criticism.

If you're coming to L.A. Noire looking for a good video game, don't. If you're coming to L.A. Noire for a good Noir story, I'd recommend you just watch or read some of the great Noir fiction of other media. If you insist on getting a fairly robust Noir story from a not exactly fun video game, I recommend you reach for Grim Fandango instead.

Team Bondi e Rockstar se unem pra entregar um dos jogos mais curiosos da década passada. L.A Noire é ate que bem experimental pro seu custo, algo que eu gostaria de ver mais no mundo AAA (ps: não vai acontecer) Com uma historia bem conduzida e casos bem envolventes, o jogo brilha com sua mecânica de interrogação viciante e divertida que deixa o jogador com vontade de rejogar as missões só pra ver todos as opções de dialogo e resposta. Outros destaques são as expressões faciais incríveis dos bonecos e o voice acting espetacular. A parte mais sem sal do jogo, curiosamente, é onde geralmente a Rockstar brilha, o World Design. Não me entenda mal, a ambientação de Los Angeles dos anos 40 é muito bem feita, só que não tem nada pra fazer dentro do mapa fora a historia, e o conteúdo secundário disponível é curto e bem desinteressante, me da leve impressão de que talvez durante fases inicias de desenvolvimento a Team Bondi planejava fazer algo bem mais linear só que o maior envolvimento da Rockstar fez com que eles decidissem colocar um mundo aberto pra lembrar os jogos do estúdio como GTA. Enfim, muito bom jogo, esqueça o mundo aberto e se aprofunde na historia.

the face mechanic even though repetitive and sometimes didnt really make sense is REALLY well made and unique, i do have some pacing problems with this game tho, homicide you have a banger case and then you get into vice and dont have the will to keep playing. I think the most important thing this game is missing is a good overall narrative outside all the cases, if you are going to make a 'episodic' crime type of game you need to have a mystery outside all the cases to make it worthwhile, good experience tho

The more I think about this game the more I'm sure that this is one of the most bitter games out there. It's understandable when a lot of the devs that touched this game had to work with a really unstable and cruel director.

The said bitterness seeps out through the plot and it's dialogue then explodes with it's ending. Oh my god, the ending.

If your main take away from this game was something stupid like "damn maybe I should be a cop" then your media literacy isn't the best or you're just a fascist. Because everything about this game is just man, doesn't this job suck when you go in expecting to do something "good" for your community? When in reality this position of power was never created for that purpose.

I wish more games would come out like this that use more than just combat to create interesting gameplay scenarios that are not only fun, but could also be maintained over one long play-through, or even multiple play-throughs. Too many games rely on combat and it’s kind of becoming tired for me. Having this, and something else like say, Death Stranding, in the big budget space is refreshing.

When most works of art share this one big thing, it can come off as creatively stifling to said works. I’m sure a lot of devs would attest to this. Given how many have departed studios they worked in or even founded, like was the case for Dan Houser, to found newer, smaller indie companies, it’s a safe bet that the industry’s got some things it needs to iron out. Yes, that includes workplace conditions and morale. The art we enjoy is nothing without the artists who bleed, sweat, and cry to make it, and they shouldn’t have do be doing any of that against their will to do so.

The “Too many games rely on combat” thing might be a pea brain take, but I don’t care. The crunch thing has ostensive backing by its long history however; employees coming out on record to what happens in their companies, the outing of scummy practices, the works. Team Bondi, the team behind this game, is no different, and it’s unfortunate what fate befell them, having to close down after the game bombed. This game was a labor of love, too much of one, and while it’s flawed, it laid this great foundation that hasn’t been built upon since, and it’s a damn shame.

All the hard work, being ground to the bone to make something, and in the end of that there’s not much to show for it. People just say “Oh, it’s that game I forgot existed from like however many years ago. It’s just GTA with cops right?” And then they move on. Feels bad, really bad. You get something that could be revolutionary if it were shone more, something so unique, and it doesn’t perform as its shareholders expected, so the people who made it have to go lights out.

To put it simply: Fuck capitalism, but also no because I think capitalism could still work, it’s just corporatism that’s the problem, but I don’t know anymore. The gaming industry sucks, stop buying the annual release 2K/EA sports games, support indie games, don’t pre-order games, sign whatever petitions you can to help workers in the industry, and last but not least, keep physical media alive. That last one isn’t as important but still, preservation matters too and physical media is one of the pillars holding it up.

L.A. Noire is an exceptional crime drama with great writing, chic dialogue, an authentic rendition of Post-War Los Angeles, and engaging detective gameplay that involves the player a lot in the process of cracking cases. It’s only let down by the lack of things to do in the open world, the stiff controls, which would be fine otherwise but get in the way once you’re placed in a chase sequence or shooting gallery, and the limp ending. This game is everywhere and you can get it for cheap, so please, try it out.

Meu save ficou preso no PS3 que não funciona mais, e tenho preguiça de começar do zero no PC, então....NAMASTÊ, OBRIGADO PELOS PEIXES, ATÉ MAIS VER.

Eu gostei da animação facial dos personagens, do sistema de investigação, mas eu não gostei do sistema de interrogação, que é muito punitivo e pode por todo o caso a perder com uma única pergunta feita de forma errada, ou acusação sem apresentar a prova correta.

Se baseia no sistema de Ace Attorney (não é confirmado, apenas se assemelha, na verdade) mas não possui a flexibilidade e uma certa liberdade que o AA permite ao jogador para fazer umas tentativas e erros.

E o pior é que como o loading do PS3, caso o jogador não se conforme com o resultado, vai ter de reiniciar o jogo e encarar um loading bem demorado.

LA Noire is the typical game that we imagine when we see a movie, you know what I mean, when we leave the cinema or turn off the TV after a shocking movie, one of those that leave stars in our eyes. That's where the imagination flies and if you are like me you will think, "I wish there was a game about this". And we go through our heads with different mechanics, parts of the story converted to gameplay, graphics, actors revisiting their roles in a wetsuit with ping pong balls.
LA Noire gives me the idea of some of those dreams, a game that is clear that was based on film noir, detective movies of the 40s and 50s. A guy saw Bogart's Marlowe and thought, "this would make a great game" like all of us.
It's not the first detective game ever, but it's the first (don't take my word for it) that changes the gameplay drastically from being a point and click to something more consistent, a third person shooter/open world, obviously also based on its current era, 2011, where all games were open world.
Now finally talking about the game itself, I can't say that I'm dazzled, I went in with a lot of expectations obviously, Rockstar game, detectives, 40's you know, a mix for something beautiful.
But after the little surprise that gives you maybe playing the traffic desk and a little bit the homicide one, that thing that makes you stay the most fades away, giving place to a bland, repetitive and sometimes without much sense game.

The interrogation mechanics are incredible, the way the actors are captured with that face technology is impressive, letting you see more memorable performances than perhaps a face all done with CGI. This technology goes directly into the mechanic of knowing if the suspects are lying or telling the truth. As I said impressive at the beginning, repetitive at the end, tired of so much interrogation and searching for evidence i was always left longing something more in the cases a twist maybe i dont know.
It is clear that La Noire lacked cooking, it has a complex story with the crunch in its development, and still came out a game with a dead open world, where what most compels us to drive our car is some loose talk with our partner.
The characters are well written, where we are shown our "main villains" at the beginning of the story, but later the end is a little anticlimactic, leaving a moment between our protagonist and these "villains" in the nothingness itself.
Honestly, even though it's a good and interesting game, they seem to have made a lot of bad decisions. First they make us take control of a character that although he is interesting and good we realize that he has more of a boy scout nuance only at the end of the game, while all the time they show us that he is hated by everyone around him not having almost a close relationship with anyone, a character with whom it is difficult for me to empathize, he is always the punch line of the joke, the typical friend that everyone screws, thats what Phelps seems to me. On top of that all this is doubly disappointing since it is achieved with many actors borrowed of one of the best tv series in history, Mad Men. They had everything to achieve it and it was more or less nothing. I realized more of this problem when at one point we stop controlling Phelps, we invest so much time in Cole that when we stop controlling him, it's strange to me, even more at the end of the game.
It is a good breath of fresh air to control another character, but we control Kelso so much that Phelps remains in the background, just to die at the end and be remembered falsely by the people who hurt him the most.
It seems strange to me how they wrote this character, after all we are talking about someone we control for hours.
But despite everything La Noire is a worthwhile game, its best missions are the DLC ones and its atmosphere and music its the best it has to offer.
It reminds me of that Taxi Driver theme with its soundtrack, saxophones and jazz trumpets put us in the mood to catch ruffians.
As a good friend of mine said "It's a game that has a very interesting investigative mechanic".

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LA Noire es el tipico juego que nos imaginamos cuando vemos una pelicula, ya saben de lo que hablo, cuando salimos del cine o apagamos el televisor despues de una pelicula impactante, de esas que nos dejan estrellas en los ojos. Ahi es donde la imaginacion vuela y si son como yo pensaran, "Ojala hubiera un juego de esto". Y se nos pasan mecanicas por la cabeza, partes de la historia convertidas a gameplay, graficos, actores revisitando sus roles en un traje de neopreno con bolitas.
LA Noire me da el aire de alguno de esos sueños, un juego que esta claro que se basaron en el cine negro, noire de los años 40 y 50. Un tipo vio el Marlowe de Bogart y pensó, "esto seria un gran juego" como todos nosotros.
No es el primer juego detectivesco que existe, pero es el primero (no me tomen la palabra) que cambia el gameplay drásticamente de ser un point and click a algo mas consistente, un shooter/mundo abierto en tercera persona, obviamente también basado en su época actual, 2011, donde todos los juegos eran mundos abiertos.
Ahora si hablando del juego, no puedo decir que me vislumbro, entre con muchas expectativas obviamente, juego de Rockstar, detectives, los años 40 ya tu sabe, una mezcla para algo hermoso.
Pero después de una pequeña sorprendida que te da quizás jugar los escritorios de trafico y un poco el de homicidio, esa cosa que mas te hace quedarte va desvaneciéndose, dando lugar a un juego soso, repetitivo y a veces sin mucho sentido.
La mecánica de interrogatorio es increíble, la manera que los actores están capturados con aquella tecnología de caras es impresionante, dejando ver actuaciones mas recordables que quizá una cara toda hecha con CGI. Esta tecnología entra directamente con la mecánica de saber si están mintiendo o diciendo la verdad. Como dije impresionante al principio, repetitivo al final, cansado de tanto interrogatorio y buscar pruebas.
Esta claro que a LA Noire le faltaba cocción, tiene una compleja historia con el crunch en su compañía, y aun así salió un juego con un mundo abierto muerto, donde lo que mas nos compela a manejar nuestro auto es alguna charla suelta con nuestro compañero.
Los personajes están bien escritos, donde ya nos muestran nuestros "villanos principales" al comienzo de la historia, pero mas adelante el final se me hace un poco anticlimático, dejando un momento entre nuestro protagonista y estos "villanos" en la nada misma.
Sinceramente aunque es un juego bueno e interesante parecen haber tomado muchas malas decisiones. Primero nos hacen tomar el control de un personaje que aunque es interesante y bueno nos damos cuenta que tiene mas de una matiz de boy scout recién al final del juego, mientras todo el tiempo nos demuestran que es odiado por todo el mundo que lo rodea no teniendo casi una relacion cercana con nadie, un personaje con el que a uno o por lo menos a mi se me hace difícil de empatizar, es siempre el remate del chiste el típico amigo que todos jadían, eso me parece Phelps. Encima todo esto es el doble de decepcionante ya que se logra con muchos actores de para mi una de las mejores series de la historia Mad Men, tenían todo para lograrlo y quedo mas o menos en la nada. Me doy cuenta mas de este problema cuando en un momento dejamos de controlar a Phelps, invertimos tanto tiempo en Cole que de una mision para otra dejamos de controlarlo y me es extraño, mas aun al final del juego.
Ojo es una buen respiro de aire fresco controlar a otro personaje, pero controlamos tanto a Kelso que al final Phelps queda en segundo plano, simplemente para morir y ser recordado con falsedad por las personas que mas daño le hicieron.
Me parece extraño como se toman a este personaje, nada mas, después de todos estamos hablando de alguien al que controlamos por horas.
Mas allá de todo esto LA Noire es un juego que vale la pena, sus mejores misiones son las de DLC y su ambientación y música es de lo mejor que tiene para dar.
Me hace acordar a ese tema de Taxi Driver todo su soundtrack, saxofones y trompetas de jazz nos ponen en el mood para atrapar rufianes.
Como dijo un buen amigo mío "Es un juego poseedor de mecánicas características investigativas de índice interrogante"

Playing LA Noire you can feel it being pulled in a dozen directions at all times. Its core plot is reaching for noir, police procedural, period drama, and crime epic. Its mechanics attempt to combine GTA navigation, Ace Attorney puzzle-solving, Assassin's Creed tailing, and a much-hyped interrogation system. It aspires to be cinematic but authentic, literary but ludic, grand but focused. None of these are problems in isolation, and a handful of times it feels like it is achieving most of what it's aiming for. Yet rather than feeling like a cohesive meld, we have a hospital ward where each element lies on a bed of Procrustes; stretched out or cut down to fit a meagre pattern.

Let's look at the narrative genres it dips into. Noir was described by Roger Ebert as "[t]he most American film genre, because no society could have created a world so filled with doom, fate, fear and betrayal, unless it were essentially naive and optimistic." LA Noire has plenty of the dark but little of the light, though I do wonder how well video games can present such a worldview. How can you insinuate there is seediness behind every door when 99% of doors can be seen and walked up to but never opened because nothing is behind them? How much can it feel like the player is in a naked city with eight million stories, when there's only about twenty NPC voice lines looping everywhere Phelps goes? The degree of openness and detail LA Noire aims for feels incompatible with maintaining the illusions and fogginess of noir; there are no ambiguities to fill with imagination or implication, something is either there fully realized or it's a cheap facade.

This lack of a sense of noirish possibility is further complicated by the game's aim to be historical fiction about the Los Angeles Police Department. Anyone aspiring to some degree of honesty should strive to represent the LAPD for what it is: one of the worst peacetime institutions ever organized by humans. LA Noire obliges in the broad strokes but pulls too many punches to be true to history. Phelps and his partners are racist, sexist, violent, and corrupt, though it's all ultimately superficial. We witness some slurs and beatings, but also every act of violence is provoked and in self-defense. There's blackmail and threats, but evidence is never planted nor false confessions coerced. We are aware of graft and misconduct but only in connection to the main plot and not as a daily function of the LAPD. My point is not that the game should be Dirty Cop Simulator 1947. Rather, by not actually shocking the player with just how evil the LAPD could be, the player is not actually made to question what they thought they knew. I would also maybe feel less affronted if not for the timing of the game's setting, a few years before Dragnet would forge the foundation of post-WWII copaganda around the LAPD. What came out in the wash is merely a somewhat critical piece of detective fiction with some nods to history.

Except is it good detective fiction? The game is predominantly structured as an episodic police procedural, with connections between cases gradually emerging in fairly predictable ways (with significant deflation from the non-diegetic newspaper scenes). When faced with either embracing the detailed tedium of The Wire or the sensational mystery-solving of Sherlock Holmes, the game doesn't commit to either. Again there is the noir angle, but it disposes of supporting characters too rapidly to make the ongoing mystery cut through the noise of "drive to scene, find reference to location, call R&I for address, drive there, talk to someone, repeat". To the extent that LA Noire subverts the procedural through its homicide and arson desk sequences, it feels somewhat hollow. At no point did I feel anything Phelps might conceivably feel: pressure to lock someone up, a weight on my conscience over how a case was handled, a need to break procedure to catch the culprit. Instead of being a game that's compellingly mundane or full of engaging puzzles, LA Noire is just about mundane puzzles.

Much of these issues coalesce around LA Noire's interrogation system--its sui generis mechanic. My problems lie less with the facial animation (which is usually good and occasionally great even a decade-plus on) or the simplicity (the difficulty curve flattens early when you realize it all boils down to accusing when you have evidence to contradict what they just said or doubting when you don't but they won't meet your gaze and otherwise choosing truth), both of which weaken the effectiveness but forgivably so. The damning sin is the music cue and the ✓or X appearing immediately after you finish a question, worsened by the many occasions where a correct choice doesn't give you much more than an incorrect choice. It undermines the ambiguity of noir, the immersion of historical fiction, and the suspense of detective gaming all in one fell swoop. Added to the tedium of actually proceeding through cases--which, again, could be saved by a deeper faithfulness to history or procedural structures--and you have a golden opportunity fumbled multiple times over.

Finally, the gap between how much of 1947 Los Angeles is represented physically and atmospherically versus how much of it is represented socially, economically, and institutionally is palpable. Everywhere you look, you'll find assets with remarkably immersive period detail and lovingly rendered interiors. I pulled into a parking lot and an episode of the Jack Benny Program began playing on the car radio and just... didn't stop. It was a full episode, minus the Lucky Strike ads. I probably listened for half the run-time, genuinely amazed a game would simulate something like this. Films and novels basically cannot replicate this sort of beguiling closeness to the past; it reminded me more of handling archival material than watching The Master. If nothing else, LA Noire deserves praise for these moments and details. But stand anywhere for a similar amount of time to observe the people of this world and you'll get whiplash.

Obviously, as already discussed, there is the omnipresent issue of the world being facades all the way down. But consider the NPC chatter. This is the one technical arena where I feel justified ragging on LA Noire because it is in no way a studio being hampered by budget or technology. They got people in the booth to record lines. Could have had them say anything! Yet they chose to make said chatter completely facile and atonal, predominantly acknowledgements of Cole's recent exploits and jokes ripped from an Uncle John's Bathroom Reader or spent Christmas crackers. I could have forgiven stiff animations or minimal interactivity, but neglecting to give this chatter any hint of a larger world is hugely disappointing. Every diner being an immersive theatre production unto itself would be unreasonable, but chatter that at least implies a communal presence could have gone a long way. I have to imagine by the fifteenth time playtesters heard a cop express a desire for a .45 so they can stop them in one round, they felt the missed opportunity.

Despite all this, I consider LA Noire more a noble failure than a trainwreck. You simply do not get games that reach like this or wade into these themes often. And for one shining case--the Studio Secretary Murder--it managed to pull the stars into alignment and showcase the vision they were seemingly going for. Noah Caldwell-Gervais described it as a genre orphan, and that is far more tragic than any of the game's own shortcomings. Some team should have revisited and refined these ideas, finding a more thoughtful balance of themes and mechanics. My guess is if they ever do, it probably won't be by having you play as a cop.

This game is a paradox. It was so ahead of its time, and yet so dated and showing of its age. This game used the innovation that was full facial capture, and yet everybody looks like an oil painting. This linear-oriented adventure game by Team Bondi makes even Mafia series blush with its linearity. Lastly, the "twists" in the story toward the end (without spoiling anything), and particularly at the end, result in a really sour feeling for the player. Were it not for the limited moments of freedom, I'd call it a bad game. However, there's "just" enough of that story in the individual cases that made it feel more elaborate than contemporary games of the 2011 era.

Honestly, it's a relic of the past, and at 30fps, play if you dare.

A game where you're meant to play as a really good police detective, but in reality, you play as the worst detective in any media you've ever seen.

I don't know if I missed it, but I don't think the game ever properly explained what "Doubting" really meant and I ended up coming to the wrong conclusions for like 95% of the cases because of this. Since you can't really fail, it meant that Cole was still rewarded despite being so shit at his job and it was so fucking funny.

I wish the game was a bit more intuitive with its investigation, but it was still very fun. Realistically, you spend more time driving around in a GTA style world than you do actually finding clues for crimes. While it's the best part of the game, there's really only 2 outcomes per mission and they're built entirely around being able to tell if the NPCs are deceiving you, some way more obvious than others. I think this is a great idea that could be reworked today but as it is, it's so goofy; there's a reason why it's memed to Hell and back.

A lot of the missions end similarly, either in a car chase or a big shootout so it gets predictable, but it was still a blast regardless.

L.A. Noire is a game that feels half baked in almost every regard. Huge open world with almost nothing to do in it. Large investigations that only have a direct solution. Great animation at times and laughable the next time. The pure story of LA Noire isn't very gripping at all. I really wanted to like this game as at the time I thought it would be like a big budget series Phoenix Wright style of investigations and breakdowns except it really wasn't. There were too many unintentional laughs throughout.

Cole Phelps as a main character is pretty interesting though. Although for all the wrong reasons. It's like he has ADD and is manic depressive or something. Dude goes from 0 too 100 in a nano second then back down to 0. It's hilarious. It doesn't just happen like one time either is all the time and it's practically a story beat.