Amid the post-war boom of Hollywood's Golden Age, Cole Phelps is an LAPD detective thrown headfirst into a city drowning in its own success. Corruption is rampant, the drug trade is exploding, and murder rates are at an all-time high. In his fight to climb the ranks and do what's right, Phelps must unravel the truth behind a string of arson attacks, racketeering conspiracies and brutal murders, battling the L.A. underworld and even members of his own department to uncover a secret that could shake the city to its rotten core. Cole Phelps served in the Marine Corp. during World War 2. Now he finds himself as a detective serving in the Los Angeles Police Department, and faced against LA's most dangerous criminals, rapists, kidnappers, drug dealers, and even his own haunting past. After 6 years of development Rockstar decides to take the risk again with their new game LA Noire. LA Noire is unlike many games I have played this past year or anything developed by Rockstar; you're not the bad guy running crazy, free to kill, steal and etc, you're a cop trying find truth in the city of lies: Los Angeles. I've never played anything like LA Noire before in my life, it's unique in many ways; and I'm glad that Rockstar Games decided to take a big risk to create what was thought to be and impossible task yet fully succeeded. However, LA Noire isn't really my pick for the game of the year, but it's still a fun ride throughout the whole experience.<br/><br/>STORY<br/><br/>The story in LA Noire follows the former WWII veteran Cole Phelps trying to prove himself in the LA police force in 1947, Los Angeles (1947 was one of the most violent years in the city's history). Cole tries to prove to everyone and to himself that he is the incorruptible cop and always expects results even if his dreaded won't let him. However, as the story goes Cole discovers that things aren't always what they seem on both sides of the law. There is also a side-story from the various newspapers you will find in the game involving drugs and corruption between the various antagonists of the game. The story overall is very compelling and intriguing as it's atmosphere is very true to the Film-Noir genre, but after all that, the ending seems abrupt and it's a very disappointing way to end a compelling story like this. Overall the story is strong and it really immerses you in the life of a detective in a age of corruption. 8/10<br/><br/>GRAPHICS<br/><br/>The graphics in this game look absolutely gorgeous; give credit to Rockstar for succeeding in faithfully re-creating 1940's Los Angeles. In addition to give credit to Team Bondi in Sydney, Australia who have been unfortunately got shut down after the release of this groundbreaking game. None of the game play would've been possible without the innovative technology of Motion Scan (a device that fully captures an actor's face with 32 cameras surrounding him/her) and I hope that Team Bondi gets remembered for it. I can talk all day on how beautiful this game looks, feels and how well the acting is in this game (Note: Actual acting, not voice acting). 10/10 <br/><br/>GAMEPLAY<br/><br/>The game play in LA Noire follows a older-style of gaming: the standard point-and-click. Note: If any of you are thinking of this as a GTA game from Rockstar in the 1940's, it's not, it plays more like a interactive movie. Also, if you're not into the slow methodical paced game with a lot of dialogue, then this game might not be for you. As you play, you start out as a patrol officer, which is basically a tutorial on how the goes, and as you progress through you will be on four main detective desks: Traffic, Homicide, Vice Narcotics, and ending with Arson. In my opinion, Homicde and Vice are probably the best cases because hard not to be intrigued by these cases. The standard format of the game play goes like this: Intro Cutscene, Go to locations, Find clues, and interrogating (The best part of the game)ending with a rating based on the clues you found, questions you got correct and the amount of damage you done to the city (I always get one star because of my reckless driving {sad face}). First time playing through, I was worried that this game would be to easy because you can tell a person is dishonest when they start to make these ridiculous faces, but as I progressed I was surprised that I got stumped on a many questions throughout my play through. If you ever do think that a case is too hard, there are intuition points that can earn and use to help find clues and answer questions by removing answers or asking the community. Don't think it's all investigating, as you progress further into the story there are many shootouts, brawls, and car chases to participate in. I wouldn't recommend replaying this over and over again because the game will eventually start to get repetitive, which it can get. In addition, the game isn't all about cases, there are also street crimes to be solved which feels like a chore to get through as you progress further. There isn't much point in discovering landmarks (30) which are to be discovered to get 100% in this game, the CRAZY amount of cars to collect (95!) or the hard to find Golden film reels (50) which don't really have much purpose than those of you craving 100%. In addition with the DLC such as new suits (gives you power ups?) and new cases, it doesn't help the overall package to be better; it just gives you more detective work to do, which isn't a bad thing but it's already repetitive as it is. Gameplay overall is very linear, but it's a unique linear that will have you hooked until the end (even though the end is slightly disappointing) 8/10 <br/><br/>Final Verdict<br/><br/>Rockstar has made both an unexpected and widely anticipated game that was said to be a failure. LA Noire may have its negatives with its repetitive game play, lacking of stuff to do in an open-world game and the unsatisfying ending, but the positives of this game far outweigh the negatives. Please give credit to Rockstar and Team Bondi for creating one of the most innovative games out there right now. Trust me, this game is worth every penny of its purchase, go get it NOW!<br/><br/>8/10<br/><br/>Final Thought: R.I.P Team Bondi <br/><br/>Motion Scan is the future of gaming! Excellent cinematic atmosphere, story, soundtrack, and great characters. The interrogation gameplay was interesting, but sometimes also frustrating. At times the correct choices seemed a bit far-fetched or inconsistent, even if you were very careful. Maybe the developer pushed this gameplay mechanic a bit too hard in an attempt to keep the difficulty high enough. This prevented me from enjoying an excellent game as much as I should have. The combat also feels out of place (when gunning down hordes of nameless bad guys like in GTA) in a mature game. Flaws aside, this is still a milestone and an example of video games slowly growing up. The open world city is also amazingly authentic, arguably better (and certainly larger) than Liberty City in GTA 4. Porting from consoles was done acceptably well - you get HD textures and enough options, but there is a console checkpoint save system, 30-fps lock and a little mouse lag. Sadly Rockstar Social Club is mandatory.
Kaulman replied
370 weeks ago