La Noire is a game that when it first came out – I wasn't too bothered about playing. Now – I wish I picked it up sooner
The game itself is something that I've never come across whilst I've been gaming so this was a new experience to me when I started playing it. The investigating is fun to do and really depends on how well you can find all evidence to help you with your case.
After progressing through the game and onto the homicide cases, I did find that there was perhaps a few too many of these cases. With them all being seemingly similar (and yes I know that it is probably the known purpose for those who have played the game already) but I was starting to lose my interest slightly in wanting to play the game. The criminal chase, whether it was on foot or in a car, and sometimes a fight here and there did spice the cases up slightly. Since I was finding the main missions a bit of a bore – I decided to see what the street crimes would be like. These are side missions that are provided to you via the radio in the police car so it does depend on whether you can respond to the dispatch call for you to play them. These street crimes do provide a change of pace from the main missions and provide the game with more things to do. As well as this, you can go find some more cars to cruise around 1940's LA in, or casually drive around the city and see if you can find any landmarks to add to the collection which you might already have. Achievements for these may make any people who are sceptical about doing them think twice and may make them want to do the collectables side of the game.
The levelling up scheme in LA Noire came as a bit of a surprise however it did become useful with the intuition points. These provide you with the opportunity to show you all the clue locations for an investigation, removing an answer when questioning someone or asking what other players went for when deciding if someone is telling the truth, lying or just unsure of their answer. It does become handy when you're in a tight situation and needing some help. Other rewards for levelling up is gaining new outfits and getting five hidden car locations put onto the map for you.
The cases themselves are pretty well done, however if you do not gather enough evidence it can become a pain later on the case when trying to charge someone with a crime. Saying this, it appears you can never go wrong in a case. Worst case scenario – the boss says that you're a rubbish detective and then you're given a few cut scenes and then a new case.
As with any Rockstar game – there is the lovely glitches that we've become to love. The best one I cropped across was a man within a pile of planks of wood. Hopefully – a patch would sort out this bug as well as any others.
Driving on the game can be a bit of a pain. Trying to get directions from your partner whilst also trying to keep up with what they are saying with regards to the case is such a task. Try putting the sirens on to try and get through the heavy traffic, and it can back fire on you when drivers do not move out of the way or instead – decide the suicide path on going in front of you. This can become frustrating after a while although as I have seen myself – not many people move of out the way of vehicles with the sirens blaring.
The game provides an appealing background story to the main character Cole Phelps which is neatly tied up at the end of the game and doesn't leave the player in a world of confusion. Majority of the characters seem unique with no two being the same and Phelps does become a more and more likable character. The game also provides a good solid storyline and campaign that breaches the normal 10 hour mark of most single player games these days. This can obviously be expanded if you decide to do the side missions and collectables side of the game as well. The map is a decent size as well, not too small in the fact that you are seeing the same scenery over and over again but big enough that you like exploring it and finding new things.
The improvements that the game could have are possibly an ammo display when you are in a gun fight. You do get the odd "running low on ammo" from your character but this means next to nothing when you cannot see clearly how many bullets you have left.
I felt the street crimes were sometimes too far away from the main missions themselves and could sometimes take a fair while to drive to the location of the street crime and then drive back to the area of the case. Also, free time between missions could be a good change to the game to allow you to do the street crimes and not have to worry about where you are in the case investigations.
All little annoyances or lack of in game features, LA Noire is a definite buy and I am thinking about going through another play through of it to pick up some more achievements and hopefully improve on my crime solving skills.