Buy L.A. Noire - Xbox 360

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L.A. Noire is a very good game for the gamer that likes to be analytical, gather clues, and figure things out. It's slow paced, as police work usually is, but it's also very rewarding. The Motion Scan technology in this game is fantastic, and I see it being built upon for future releases of completely different games. The ability to read an actors expression is certainly pushing a new paradigm in games that just hasn't been executed before with any success. Team Bondi delivers here.

The story in this game isn't something new. Allowing the user to be the police officer, and a good one, is for the most part new. There is almost an RPG like feel to the game, with long dialog while you're interrogating people. This may come off as boring to some, but I assure you the scenes aren't just fillers. They're fun, interesting, integral parts of the whole story.

The game is still an open world concept, so you can move around and explore the beautiful old L.A. city that Team Bondi laid out. There are also a number of side missions that you can do.

I gave it a 4 out of 5 because the game can get a bit redundant at times. Don't worry, the story does get varied, but a few of the cases are too similar. The other reason I took a bit off the final score is that there just isn't much room for replay value here. Short of the inevitable game add-on's that you can purchase from the XBox Live Marketplace, there's not going to be much reason to come back once you beat it. I'd put the gameplay at about 15-25 hours. This doesn't take into account how much time you spend exploring away from the main story line and side missions.

L.A. Noire is definitely worthy of your collection. I hope we see more Team Bondi developments produced by Rockstar.

Thank you for reading!

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Before I begin, I just want to say I have a feeling people are going to vote down this review without reading it or taking in the arguments just because it doesn't fit the popular view of this game. However If I can convince just one person to not buy into the hype and consider both the deserved praise and, more importantly, the legitimate criticisms against this game, I'll be happy. This review isn't for the fans, its for potential players who want an honest review.

Something about LA Noire captured my imagination months before it was released. It featured a new technology called "motion scan" which allowed for it to have the most realistic facial animations I'd ever seen. When I saw the motion scan demonstration, I was floored. I saw it as a huge step forward for narratives in games and if it was done right could make games rival or even surpass movies in terms of emotional investment.

And what a seemingly great way to show it off! A game about a detective who has to read people's intentions through their facial cues? It has all the makings of an incredible game. It also takes place in my hometown and in one of my favorite time periods. And its Rockstar! There's no way they could screw this up!

I was (and still am) so tired of games with immature and underdeveloped stories. I was ready for a game with a mature story not just for its own sake, but one that integrated itself with gameplay in such a way that it couldn't have been done in any other medium. Finally a game that understands that interactivity is the key to making games into a unique art form.

And then the game pretty much ruined everything it had going for it. Motion scan ruined by having a boring and unlikeable protagonist. Integration of gameplay and narrative ruined by making the player's choices mean absolutely nothing. The prospect of at least having an interesting plot was ruined by having an unremarkable story with a bad ending.

After the initial sparkle of everything wore off, I realized nothing about the game is fun to play at all. Investigations are boring and repetitive. Interrogations look nice thanks to motion scan but I might as well have been watching a movie due to the limited gameplay involved. Chase scenes are too heavily scripted to be exciting, and gunplay is pretty unremarkable considering every other action game this generation has done it and done it better.

The idea of interrogations is that after each question you ask a suspect you are given three options to proceed: assume they are telling the truth, accuse them of lying, and the ambiguous "doubt". This seems intuitive in theory, but in practice each choice is fairly arbitrary and differs from case to case. Doubting could mean coax the suspect a little bit to if you know they are holding out, or it could mean wild accusations which make the suspect unwilling to respond. It is impossible to tell what the choices will result in. There is only one correct answer, meaning there is no freedom to approach the cases in any way but the arbitrary one the designer wanted. The choices would seem to indicate that there may be different outcomes to each case depending on the player's choices, but this is not the case. The plot will continue in the same way no matter how well or poorly the player does. So what, then, is the point of this gameplay mechanic which is purely based on choice if the player's choices don't matter and the game is going to continue on the same regardless? What makes games so unique as a story-telling medium is interactivity and gameplay, and this is where LA Noire could have really shined and instead dropped the ball big time.

The game tries to mask it's shortcomings with an expansive and admittedly beautiful recreation of 1940's Los Angeles. However there was literally nothing to do in this open world outside of the main story besides drive around, sight-see, and heavily-scripted side-missions which didn't require an open world, nor were very fun to begin with. Why tease us with such a large and beautiful world and then make the world so void of activities? Surely it would have made more sense to make the game more linear and save the no doubt immense amount of resources making the world so huge and instead use them to polish out the other aspects of the game to make them more, you know, FUN?

To say LA Noire was disappointing is an understatement. Maybe I was asking a little too much of it to begin with, but in my mind it didn't deliver on a single one of it's selling points and that is what made it such a disaster for me. The game is by no means unplayable, in fact many will probably buy it and be perfectly content with its great visuals, particularly the facial animations, detailed world, great characters, and overall uniqueness. But strip all the aesthetic stuff away and you're left with a mediocre story and a game that just isn't very fun to play.

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I'm enjoying playing this game (I think), but I'm finding it a bit clunky and frustrating in all the places it shouldn't be. And in far too many places I'm thinking "Is that all there is?"

I have framerate issues in some outdoors areas. Also, I'm experiencing annoyance caused by the fact that in some areas I can't climb low walls. Sometimes I can scale fences, sometimes I can't. The developers only made some features climbable. The Assassin's Creed series gets this right. This game, not so much. If you're going to make certain things climbable, make them all climbable. Don't make a fence climbable in one spot, but 20 yards away the same height fence is not. Nothing breaks the sense of 'suspension of disbelief' more than having your game character running in place when faced with a hose line or a 2ft high wall that the game developers forgot to allow you to negotiate.

Then there's the actual gameplay. It often seems to me that this is more a walkthrough than a game, as each game decision is virtually handed to you on a platter. Then, if you get a decision wrong, it hands you the right answer anyway. So none of the decisions you make actually affect the outcome of the game. It's essentially a linear game that's pretending to have a branching storyline that your decisions affect.

Then there's clunky gameplay factors like the investigations. You seem to spend most of your time running around interior walls waiting for a tell-tale controller rumble that tells you that you're in the vicinity of a clue but try to pick it up and you find yourself stumbling about trying to find the exact spot the game wants you to be in to collect it.

When you get a suspect in for interrogation, often the question doesn't match the answer you give, and rambles on about other issues so that you can forget what the question was about. Then if you choose that they're lying, it's that much harder to figure out what it was they were lying about. Also, sometimes they're telling the truth, but the 'correct' choice was to say they were lying. How does that make any sense? In short, the interrogation system is poorly implemented and confusing.

When you get your partner to drive, there's no option to watch the action as there is in Red Dead Redemption. Although your character says "I'd like to check my notes" there's no option to do that. It just fades to the destination.

I do like the option the game gives to skip a sequence that you're having a hard time with. I wish the GTA series had this. Unfortunately, this game is so easy that I've not needed it so far.

Another annoyance is that the game's revolvers can take out a criminal at 300 yards. Your character has the ability to aim and fire a police issue pistol with the accuracy and range of a sniper rifle. On the other hand, you can hit a guy in the head or shoot him in the chest with no effect (they won't ever go down on the first shot). It's things like this silly nonsense that makes the game so annoying.

Finally, although I didn't expect this game to be GTA or Red Dead Redemption, I did hope for some of the usual stuff you get in a sandbox game. What this game offers is a few samey side quests and a few cars to collect. The side quests are all variations on the same theme shoot the cop killers/bank robbers, and collecting cars has no purpose they don't go faster, they don't have extra radio stations nothing. Going by landmarks 'unlocks' the landmark, but for what purpose (other than a few game points) I don't know.

In general, the game seems unfinished. It's fun for a while, but the game features all seem to be floundering in search of some kind of focus. Also, you find yourself in a vast area of Los Angeles, but there's very little to actually do there. You can't go to movies, you can't do any mini-games. It just seems like this game spent all its time on graphics and had no time left over to flesh out the gameplay.

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L.A. NOIRE has so many good things going for it that it's a shame the game ends up being so disappointing.

The good:

-Fantastic motion-capture performances from terrific actors, including Mad Men cast members

-Superb atmosphere

The bad:

-Game play mechanics aren't particularly fun and are simplistic

-After playing through several cases you'll learn that you've already played everything L.A. NOIRE has to offer. The hours to come are simple variations on the same theme (go to the crime scene, interview suspects, drive around, then catch a fleeing suspect or enter a shootout). There's almost no variety.

-Stupid story with unsatisfying dramatic payoff

-Side "street missions" are completely disposable, most are brief shootouts or other "chases" that are over fast

-Big city with very little to do

Overall this game has an extremely low "fun factor." It's unfortunate that Rockstar and the developers went to so much trouble to recreate the era, only to drag it down with game mechanics that are simplistic and ultimately repetitive.

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I just finished LA Noire on the Xbox 360 and I decided to come on here and immediately give a review. First off, ignore the one and two star reviews. They're ridiculous. This game is by no means a one or two star game. I think the problem that many people had was they expected a game like Grand Theft Auto and that simply is not what this game is about. This is a thinking man's game with plenty of action. Yes, there are shootouts. Yes, there are firefights inside buildings. Yes, there are car chases. But there are also crimes scenes. Looking for clues. Examining bodies. Interviewing suspects and witnesses. The action is put in for a reason, not just because they want to give the player something to shoot at.

Like the title says, this game is the way games should be made. It has a captivating story to it. It's about investigating crimes the way they used to do it in the 40's. Back then they didn't have DNA evidence. They solved crimes through real police work.

Let me tell you a little about the game, without giving too much away. You get to play a detective. You go from being a traffic detective, solving hit and run cases, to a homicide detective, where you get to track down a serial killer, to a vice detective where you get to investigate drug deaths, to an arson detective. In each of these sub-stories, there's a larger story that it adds a piece to until the very end. As you're traveling to your destination, many times you'll hear over the radio that an officer is requesting assistance and you get the choice to go and help them or continue on with the main story. Now these side stories tend to be action oriented, like a bank robbery or a hostage situation. So like I said, there's plenty of action in the game, it's just not Grand Theft Auto and I'm thankful for that because it would have ruined the game.

When you're interviewing people, you get the choice to either believe them (truth), try to get more information out of them if you think they're not being truthful (doubt) or accuse them of lying if you have a piece of evidence that directly contradicts what they're saying (lie). You can help make your choice based on what the character does, such as not making eye contact or fidgeting. Now let me tell you, there are some good liars in this game who will look you straight in the eye and lie to you.. You really need to be on top of things to be successful at this. It sounds easy but it's not.

If you're the type of person who likes a good story and likes to be immersed into the character that you're playing, this is the game for you. If you just want to shoot stuff and don't care about the story, you might like this game but you'd probably be happier with another Halo game.

Also, I don't know where people are getting that this game is too short. I looked at my stats and around the end of the game, I was already on 22 hours of pure gameplay. It's not a short game and I got everything I paid for it. If you're a more mature gamer, I think you will appreciate this game and I could not recommend it enough. Buy the game!