LA Noire (Xbox 360) - Guest Review

In light of the news of LA Noire coming to Nintendo Switch, PS4 and Xbox One, here is a guest review of the Xbox 360 version, by The Purple Viper.

How can I help, reader? LA Noire is an open world game which revolves  around the playable character, Cole Phelps who at the start of the game is a beat cop who has come home from serving in the second world war. Set in the 40’s, you go with Cole as he moves up the ranks in the police force (desks) and solve cases. A point to note is that as with most open world games, especially Rockstar, the player is usually on the wrong side of the law, this flips that upside down and even penalises you for behaving in a bad way. It does this naturally and it feels bizarre you ever wanted to break the law on the limes of GTA.

Primarily the game whilst being open world, features linear missions in the way of “cases”. These cases are typically, there is a body and you then analyse the crime scene with your partner for clues which take you around LA to new locations and more clues usually, which enable you to discover who has done the crime. The way you do this is to pick up evidence and then use either the forensic department to find the best place to go to find out more about objects, or you find addresses in things on victims, such as wallets. At locations, you then can interrogate people when you ask them questions and call them either liars (backed up with proof) doubt what they say or believe them, by choosing the right option, you can discover more clues or even solve the case by getting people either to tell on others or confess themselves. When it was released, one of the main focal points of the game was that the rendering of faces was the most lifelike and accurate in any game to date and even though I only played it recently and practically lifelike graphics is the norm now, I can appreciate that this must have changed the whole game when it came out. The faces and expressions are so good, there is no difficulty in telling whether people are lying or not, much to the games credit (not to say the game is easy, but what it sets out to do with characters conveying expression, works more than perfectly).  When cases are complete you get a ranking, based on how well you did the case, such as questions wrong and damage done to the environment, this makes it more rewarding when you get the maximum stars avaliable. 9/10

The story was overall brilliantly put together, rich and long (but not too long) with cases feeling more rewarding for solving them as you progressed through LAPD, there was a bit of repetitiveness at times (especially on one desk, which was frustrating but in context it made sense at the end of that desk) the only faults are something that happens at the end of one of the desks which essentially voids all the conclusions (NB deductions from the player or even some confessions from “culprits”) which I found to be rather bizarre, but the story did work when it was explained (to an extent) so it didn’t ruin the story. The only other fault from an otherwise great story is that something towards the end happens, which whilst introducing us to another playable character, who is well played just like Cole, comes out of nowhere and to me seemed like a badly thought out excuse to bring the new character in for a bit. Other than these two points however, the story is one that I personally found to be very good and it had me hooked for the two weeks I played it on and off 9/10

In the way of side activities, there are also cars to collect, that is, get in and drive them (they then count as collected) and then when you get all of them, an achievement will be unlocked. The best side activity is the other one, which is radio dispatch, for each desk there are a number of calls that will come through on the police radio which are optional for the player to go and see to. Each one of these however provides not just a good side mission (most are not massively long, which I found good as you could do them and then get back to the gripping story) but provides more of a structured experience of this amazing game world that has been created. 8/10

The game world itself is very large and has plenty of character and detail, just driving around and looking at the buildings from a time long gone had me in awe, but also the NPC’s going around their day to day lives and the random chatter you can overhear, this coupled with the radio with music from that time (reminiscent of Fallout 3's Galaxy News Radio) made even driving idly round, very fun. 8/10

The few bugs that I came across were just minor nuisances such as the character moving in a bizarre fashion and making it hard to accomplish something but these were only seconds long and hardly a huge hindrance. The other one was when selecting evidence items, more often than not it would fly over to the opposite one I wanted at the slightest touch of the analogue stick, but again, this hardly ruined the game and is trivial really. 8/10

In conclusion, LA Noire is a brilliantly crafted game, with a huge, beautiful open world to explore and whilst apart from the missions it doesn’t seem like there is lots and lots to do, there is indeed, enough. The story is fantastic with only really one complaint toward the end however it was a gold way to engineer the final act of the story so it is hardly something that should put people off playing. What was one of the main features, is executed perfectly and the facial expressions are so good, it made me feel rewarded at times for reading the faces as if it was a real person in front of me. The occasional car chases could be boring and a pain, but I'm not a driver particularly so I imagine that was down to me as an individual, there is the option to stick. Overall an amazing game which I would strongly recommend to anyone into crime and open world.

8.4/10