This review contains SPOILERS! Click to expand.
With wounds from the war he managed to escape from, Cole Phelps joins the distinguished LAPD, eventually getting entangled in a series of grisly crime and murder he must solve. Set in a faithful recreation of post-WWII Los Angeles, L.A. Noire is a third-person detective simulator about piecing clues together to solve a series of crimes, through thorough picking of random ****
With wounds from the war he managed to escape from, Cole Phelps joins the distinguished LAPD, eventually getting entangled in a series of grisly crime and murder he must solve. Set in a faithful recreation of post-WWII Los Angeles, L.A. Noire is a third-person detective simulator about piecing clues together to solve a series of crimes, through thorough picking of random **** and reading peoples’ faces for guilt or otherwise.
PROS:
● The game’s recreation of 1940s Los Angeles is ***-tier, from the architecture to the art to the people’s dresses the shitload of cars to the tunes on the radio, like you’ll feel really old it’s so authentic
● Interior locations are so ******* detailed and amazingly not broken by those Bethesda-trademark loading screens
● Every single one of the 21 cases boast a compelling and riveting (and sometimes interweaving) plot to get through the eventually repetitive gameplay sequences
● ***-tier voice acting and animations from the game’s shitload of characters, apparently made possible by first-of-its-kind motion capture technology that allowed for some of the most realistic faces in gaming, even against today’s triple As
● Character movement animations are stiff and slow but realistic and immersive, just like how Rockstar likes it, smothered with tons of nice incidental animations you’ll probably never notice
● Roaming around Los Angeles is such a delight, with the nice driving mechanics from the shitload of cars available for no-strings-attached GTA
● Terrific period-accurate in-game radio, and the similarly fantastic soundtrack and original tracks
● Some cases deal with some pretty dark and messed up stuff, which is how it should be
● Gunplay can take some time getting used to with its clunky as **** controls and animation, but it eventually comes off as pretty satisfying, with enemies realistically rag dolling and the environment getting all ****** up a la Mafia 2 before it
● Dialogue feels really dynamic depending on how much poking around you did and the number of clues you got
CONS:
● Side quests are nice diversions that break the monotony of the campaign, but they also break your train of thought to the case at hand and eventually they do feel kind of repetitive – but I suppose real life police work is repetitive
● I would’ve preferred GTA’s campaign structure in that Phelps is allowed to free roam in between cases, take on those pesky side missions meanwhile and appreciate the intricate map much more
● The soundtrack often buries that terrific in-game radio, which is a shame
● Phelps sounds really unnecessarily angry all the damn time
● If you think about it, staring at suspects at extended periods of time while they make those faces is pretty ******* silly