After one play through of L.A. Noire I have to say I am very very impressed. Rockstar has once again done what they do best, and have created a totally unique and wonderful world for gamers to get lost in. This time though, instead of the streets of a modern city, or the world of the old west, they have dropped us right in the middle of L.A. after the end of World War 2.
You take over a war vet who is trying to make his way from just a normal patrol cop to the top of the homicide squad. Your first few cases serve as the tutorial and you learn how to drive, fight, investigate crime scenes and interrogate witnesses. Adding to the challenge, you can miss evidence and since it's up to the player to decide if a witness is lying, telling the truth, or holding back you can even mess up your investigation by reading their body language wrong. It's all very immersive and pretty impressive.
The types of cases you solve vary, since your rank as officer changes with each few solved cases - though most of them end up coming back to murder. It's a bit upsetting in away that even as a low level traffic cop you are already solving murders, but when you think about the alternative it makes sense that the game has you doing that instead of chasing down a guy with too many parking tickets. There is also a good blend since some of the cases are stand alone, while others tie into a larger plot - but they all feel natural with the progression of the game so you don't feel like you are working on some useless side thing.
The over all plot is rather hidden, which is more then slightly annoying. Without giving away too many details the game has a much larger and serious storyline. This storyline is told largely through newspapers found at crime scenes. The newspapers aren't too hard to find, but it is possible to miss a few. Not only that but they kind of give away spoilers for what is coming up in the game before it happens. As with most Rockstar games there is a big twist, but I discovered this twist about three cases before it actually happened, I felt pretty cheated.
It's also not a Noire game, I might be nitpicking but people that are really serious about film will notice that this is an old detective game, not a traditional Noire narrative. It does throw in a few things from the noire film genre but over all it falls short on a lot of what make noire noire. However, for people that aren't so serious about things like that it's really perfect for what is expected and the world is very detailed. It has a great soundtrack, the dialogue fits for the time period, they took time with cars, hairstyles, the way the homes look, everything is exactly how it should be for the mood they are trying to create. The soundtrack is wonderful and varies enough from mission to mission to make the whole game feel more immersive. The voice acting is great and the detail on characters' faces is wonderful.
The big upset is how obvious it is when suspects are telling the truth or lying. While I get that they were trying to make the game playable when a suspect starts laughing after answering a question, or their eyes widen to emphasize (hey they are looking at the camera to make sure you know it's true) it kind of makes you think "really all this face technology just to make that part of the game so simple?". The only real challenge I noticed was a few characters it was hard to say if they were holding back or lying, but even that wasn't much of a challenge too often. However the game is not super easy so it's kind of nice to have this little perk to help you out a bit.
There is a lot of collecting in this game, and a few side missions. This brings me to my biggest problem of the game, there is no free roam while playing the story. This is MAJORLY upsetting to me because I missed a whole lot of collectibles thinking I would eventually find it, but it's not a part of "normal" gameplay. There are many things to collect and each level of case has different "street crimes" that are only open while you are working on certain cases. If you want 100% of the achievements in one play through you are going to just have to ignore the main story a bit and wander off from time to time as well as just exiting the game and going back to "roam the streets" through the different case logs in the menu. Avoiding cases sucks for a number of reasons, one you are stuck with an annoying partner and for a while nothing to do while you wait for other crimes to open. But the big one is all of this adds on to whatever case you are working on. Getting five stars on every case while running off to do side stuff is impossible. Any damage/deaths/or extra time spent while just running around the city counts against your over all case score. It's nice that you can do free roam from the menu screen but the fact that the story forces you from case to case to case is very annoying.
That being said you can replay any case from the menu screen so really you can just mess around, finish the case with a low score and go back to it. Plus the second time you play you can just have your partner drive everywhere (by holding instead of tapping the y button) to save a lot of time on travel. Blending the two will make sure you can get everything in one play through but it would have just been nicer if after a case you can choose right then to say "I'm not ready for another case" or something more like RDR.
The complaints are minor though when compared to all the good, it's an interesting story and an amazing world that you are allowed to play in. There are a few holes and things that just seem a bit annoying since the game was in production for so long. Overall it delivers and is a great experience. I can't wait to see where the DLC takes the player and how it's worked in, and honestly I can't wait to go back and finish getting all my achievements. Once again Rockstar has created a great game. 4 out of 5.
I was on the fence about trying it but now I'll give it a go!