L.A. Noire Review
LA Noire is from RockStar and Team Bondi. It puts you into the shoes of a cop of the rise named Cole Phelps. You'll get the chance to solve case for multiple different departments within the LAPD. You'll find yourself in the Traffic division, Homicide, VICE, and Arson. You'll have to track down all the clues and get your witnesses and suspects to tell you exactly what you need to do. If you can accomplish all of this you might find yourself as one of the best in LA.
Graphically this game starts off stunning. The lay out of the city looks spot on, the characters that you'll interact with will have you constantly thinking, haven't I seen that face before, somewhere else? There's also the long list of vehicles that you'll have at your disposal. The one thing that is revolutionary is the face tracking technology, and you're going to have to use it if you're going to be able to find out what you need to know. The odd thing though is that as you play the game the graphics actually seem to decay. You'll noice more and more texture pop as you go on, and the characters also seem to decline in appearance. I noticed near the end of the game that several of the characters' mouths will appear to be melting.
The music of the game definitely gives you that 1940's vibe. The voice acting really sells the story when you couple it with the faces that you'll be encountering.
The controls are for the most part easy to pick up and will be your best friend. There are some issues when you're trying to get in and out of cover with the shoulder button, but other than that you'll find that you won't have too many issues with your controls.
As stated before you're a cop in 1947 name Cole Phelps. You'll get your chance to show that you're a star pretty quick off the bat, and as you continue to complete cases you might just get those promotions. There's a set number of cases for each division and you'll be ranked on how well you collected all the clues, got the correct answers, and caused minimal damage to cars, the city, and individuals walking the city. You'll also find that there are other crimes that you'll pick up on over the radio, and you can choose to complete those as well. The better you do with the questioning and taking on the street crimes the higher you'll rank up. As you rank up you'll have access to other suits, and you'll also get rewarded with Intuition Points that you can use to either remove wrong answers from your interrogation or you can pool the audience (if you're connected to XBL) to see what the most popular choices are.
You'll find that this story will keep you pretty glued to your seat. I did have some issues with the VICE cases as I didn't really find them nearly as enjoyable as the Homicide cases, but the overall layout of the story, filled with twists, definitely kept bringing me back to this game.
If you're looking to a Hard-Crime game in which you can sink your teeth into, then this is the game for you. If you're looking for a GTA type of game in which you play a cop, you might be slightly depressed as you won't be able to draw your weapon unless its a time for a gun fight. This game, even when the graphics starts to go, is something that you need to get. This game gets an 8.7 out of 10.
