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LA Noire review

On May 24, 2011 by Ash Meehan

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LA Noire hit store shelves here in Ireland on Friday and I decided to take a look at it to see if the hype behind this game was justified and to my surprise the hype and praise this game has gotten is definitely worth it. Now myself I have played a few Rockstar games mainly Grand Theft Auto game and I was interested if they could turn from always being the bad guy in the game to being a good guy a hard working work cop and well they managed it perfect.

LA Noire takes place in 1940’s Los Angeles after World War 2 and you take on the role of Cole Phelps an LAPD detective. The game does draw you in with Rockstar’s trademark open world and the sounds and visually really do scream I am in the 1940’s, but alas you can be thrown out by graphical glitches that sometimes pop in and NPC drivers crashing into each other and the cars trying to go back into position.

The cases you must take part in are really interesting and at the time of this review I have only reached the end of Disc 1 of 3 on the Xbox 360. I also find it fun to immerse myself by trying to think who was the killer before I found out in game, but alas I have still yet to get it right yet.

The game offers little puzzles as well you can complete that can help you for example early on you can reassemble a machine and you learn that the weapon at the crime scene was from that machine and can help you in the case. Investigating on every lead is important as you have to search for evidence/clues at the crime scene and at various destinations the crime takes you, the game helps you by having music play when there are clues to f ind and stops when all the clues in the area are discovered and when you are close the controller vibrates and you find yourself pressing A to find the clue.

Apart from this the main part of the game is the interrogation/talking to witnesses and this is where the game really does shine, now this game has being praised for its facial animations and once again it deserves the praise for it as I couldn’t see any obvious faults. When you are interrogating you use your notebook where you have jotted down information have conducted and ask them about it, this part requires concentration as you have to listen and watch the persons face to see if they are telling the truth or lying, after you ask the question you can pick truth, doubt or lie but if you pick lie you have to back it up with evidence in your notebook and if you are stuck you can use intuition points which you gain by ranking up to help you get it right.

Some missions can lead to car chases or foot chases or even shoot outs all executed well especially the foot chases where if you aim down the sight when chasing them and they are in view you have them pretty much caught (well in one mission any way).  Shoot outs are helped a lot with the use of a cover mechanic which is nice but so far rarely gets a chance to shine.

At the end of each case you are shown how well you did for example how many questions you got correct and if you found all the clues but my favourite part is where the game tells you what you could have done to catch the killer quicker.

In all LA Noire is a great game with some real hard hitting cases that can make you think like race crime etc. and many incidents where you see why the game got a Mature rating.

What detracts LA Noire from making go from a very good game to an excellent game is the camera in the game, the camera at times drove me crazy as I tried to navigate with objects close to me and it did detract a lot for me.

Rating: 88%

This game is definitely an early contender for game of the year, but will have stiff competition from games like Battlefield 3, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Duke Nukem Forever to name just a few.

Author: Ash Meehan

Hi, I’m the creator of SG Gaming Info. When I’m not working on my writing or creating content for this site’s YouTube channel, I like to relax and enjoy character driven story games.


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