I see it on sale for PSN. I played some of it back when it was originally released but I got distracted and never returned. Now I’m looking at it like I would enjoy a period piecettt game like this. I remember the open-world being a bit empty so it’s not one of those games. This would be purely for the gameplay loop and story.
2 Likes
You might as well read a james ellroy book instead honestly I used to really like la noire but it’s not nearly as cool as anything that inspired it and sometimes it’s even annoying like how every other actor in the game is just from mad men like they even pulled extras from it lol. i think the interrogations are kind of tiring after a point. the main character is a shitty person but not in an interesting way which is also a huge drag. at least ellroy guys are total freaks.
the investigation stuff is kinda fun because you pick stuff up and look at it like shenmue while muttering to yourself but it’s ultimately pretty basic, you don’t even get to participate in the hyper realistic drawings of the person you’re talking to that phelps like quickly does off screen, you’re mostly just trying to catch people lying and picking what clue or piece of information proves, which is fine i guess but i don’t know i felt like danganronpa felt like more of a detective game. or like phoenix wright. and none of the other stuff you do or the kinda not so good overarching plot really compensates for that unfortunately? any of the frogwares games with the evidence board kind of have a better deduction system than la noire i think if only because you can like see the connections between things while you figure them out.
the driving is driving it’s a rockstar game from 2011 you know. the car chases are like rubberbandy as fuck so as long as you chase them they kinda play themselves and the hard part is trying not to obliterate garbage cans n other city property so your boss doesn’t get mad at you, which is kinda cool, but it only affects your star rating and is like an achievement thing basically instead of a fun mechanic.
and every time you have to shoot guys it’s kind of annoying because there isn’t really a lot going on there like you more or less have unlimited ammo besides having to reload except for guns you pick up off the ground which do have limited ammo… you can just use phelps’ sidearm the entire game with no problem and they’re just kind of tedious shooting galleries after a point.
there is an entire desk of cases with a plot that you’d think would have like implications for what’s going on but is kind of just like a half-remembered extremely weak fan fiction of ellroy’s the black dahlia. and the actual like overarching thing that connects the disparate plot threads only ever gets addressed very late in the game is again weird ellroy fanfiction (with stuff lifted from la confidential and clandestine) and only makes sense if you’ve read the newspapers so it’s like…i don’t know…not a great story and not told in a super great fashion. like it feels like they wanted an easy way to make the player feel like “i figured something out!” but only if you bother to find all the newspapers. so make sure the investigation music stops playing after the “you found all the items” sting at every crime scene if you decide to play it i guess cuz newspapers count as clues
sorry for the wall of text i think detective game is a very cool genre of adventure/puzzle game and maybe another game in this style could have been a lot better
14 Likes
It was pretty bad at release and has not aged gracefully
Should have been a linear adventure game instead of the open world but not really with tacked on combat
Should have been an fmv game instead of the most aesthetically garish halfway point between fmv and mocap
6 Likes
Nothing in this game feels good to do.
7 Likes
The way guns work in this game is so annoying because it has a whole system for shooting your gun into the air to scare someone into surrendering, but for like 60% of encounters lethal force is mandatory, and for 20% of encounters the ending is just a scripted animation that plays when you chase someone to the right part. Would have just preferred if Cole just put everyone he draws on in the ground and his boss gave him shit for being a loose cannon. Would be better than having to open a guide on gamefaqs like I was keeping track of missable treasure chests in FF9.
4 Likes
Coincidentally just picked up my first ellroy book and like yeah, time better spent. I feel like I’ve tried to pick this game up twice and fell off it both times. I think basic is a good word to describe it because i really wanted it to be cool, but it kinda just felt boring and lifeless.
The interrogations were weird because I couldn’t tell if the developers were making them make weird faces to signal that they were lying or if it was to fake me out about them lying or what exactly I was supposed to be getting from those weird reactions. Which is now making me think of that rehearsal 2 scene, lol
7 Likes
Sid meiers covert action had little mini games for all the grunt work of spying like wiretapping and cryptography and shit. It’s amazing how anything like that would make the moment to moment time you spend in la noire infinitely more engaging. Any time you need to figure out any information that would be the result of a puzzle in a regular adventure game Phelps just calls R&I because that’s what the dicks in ellroy books do when they aren’t breaking and entering lol. You really do not break into enough people’s houses covertly!!
if you want to be so dedicated to being a pastiche you might as well of put in the cutscenes where Phelps sits outside in his car sweating being an obsessive little creep putting on the black gloves while he plans to break the law to further the investigation
8 Likes
yeah probably. it’s interesting. after the game was over I camped outside a diner and watched all the recorded human faces eat and talk like a postcard from another world
6 Likes
LA Noire is better than most mediocre games because it’s interesting, but not at all inspiring to replay (or play) because everything interesting in it is implemented in service of mediocrity.
I agree with people saying you’re better off with books or movies or (I’ll throw out) the Naked City tv show for period pieces/stuff with the vibe. It’s not the worst game, there is noticeable attention to detail in some elements, especially in the models and spaces, and there are moments where those details come together to evoke a unique representational pastiche. But that’s really infrequent vs sort of being pulled along an endless rope of dull hidden object hunt / bad GTA tailing mission / QTE chase / multiple choice fmv trivia which is made much worse by not being true FMV.
Also that generation is so cursed by faux-open setpieces that either break or fail if you don’t play along in the specific way they anticipate. Two cops sitting motionlessly in their car for 10 minutes before rushing to whatever so the dialogue doesnt break. that parts realistic ig.
13 Likes
ahem.
Why did nobody mention that you can toggle a noir-option in the menu that makes this game immediately better, because you are in … wait for it … LA … noir(e) 
was half the appeal of this game tbh, put vintage hits radiostation on, and do some driving around in a Talbot Lago (iirc) sportscoupe to check out this LA diorama — if that’s sth which makes you go ‘hell YEAH’ then wait for a sale and endulge in it.
And after you’ve had your fill, you can literally quote our Hero
so what next?
1 Like
I think you all saved me $20. Especially with my Switch 2 arriving any time now, I’ll wait to put my gaming hours into that for now. @iguferon thanks for the take.
4 Likes
The only notable thing about the game is that you get to run after a guy and maybe shoot things in and around the big Intolerance set. Wait that can’t be right. Does the game take place in 1916? No it doesn’t, it’s 1947. Oh well, anyway, kind of cool.
4 Likes
i watched tim’s thing on this at 2x, that was ample
1 Like
I’ve considered playing it again.
I bet I would like 40s LA a lot more than I did in my 20s.
I bet the facial animations would drive me nuts again.
What got me is the game felt like a human simulator made by aliens. You could not predict what to read from peoples faces and you could never begin to predict what Cole would actually do to your choice of response. It made me feel crazy.
But as other people have said I guess You actually had as much control over those scenes as how the action-set pieces played out.
Anyways I was gonna play the PS3 version for like 500 yen where I make bad 500 yen decisions All The Time.
8 Likes
It can be enjoyed in the same way that Quantic Dream games are both high budget and very uncanny. I think the developers really liked the period and style but hate storytelling. I platinumed it back when I had way too much free time. There’s an open world collectible that most players will never see and it is one of the most tedious things I’ve ever done in a game.
5 Likes
I kinda wanted to play this just to try to ID what cars everything is modeled after
6 Likes
All I remember is a scene where the cop goes “Well actually” in response to some anti-Japanese prejudice so I was like “ah, The First Weeb”
And a scene with a dead woman who’s been impaled on the steering column of her oldtimey whip
2 Likes
you gotta go back a lot farther than that
5 Likes
Yeah, fair
1 Like
If you can get it for super-cheap, it is kind of neat to drive around 40s LA, a lot of work went into the city, the cars, the fashion, etc. so it’s fun to look at that for 10 minutes or so. Unfortunately the game is, as mentioned frequently, pretty lacking in a boring Rockstar-esque way.