L.A Noire for PC

[Heresiarch]

I've heard some vague but pretty good things about it. And just noticed it's out for PC for a while. Is it good? Never played a true detective game or a noir game either. Didn't bother to read that 8 paged thread of it because I'm afraid there are spoilers there and it's mostly about game performance and it's tldr anyway.

 

[Angelo85]

I played through it with the DLC missions as well. In the beginning it's all fun and exciting but the game lost it's charm somewhere along the way for me because you do basically the same things in every 'mission' (case). And after a while it's getting tedious and reaches a point where it's becoming a (non) interactive movie. A movie that's 20 hours long.

Also IMHO the main story arc is not really a noire story.

Like I said the game is fun in the beginning and might even be fun until the end for some players. I say give it a shot.

If you are looking for an interactive movie experience you could also take a look at the latest Jurassic Park title from Telltale games. It got lots of quick time events and the detective parts are confined to 'find the hidden object' games (with visual clues).
So it's a very easy game but it was more fun than L.A. Noire to me, mainly because of the short game length. It was able to entertain and engage me from beginning to end and let me enjoy the story without too much hassle or tedious gameplay.

 

[Shadenuat]

It's monotonous to no end. And dialogues are often just a guessing game, as you can't really tell what exactly Cole is going to say. Of course it's also a shitty port, expect the same amount of freezes and lags as with GTA4 if your PC is't high-end. Overall I would say it just is't worth all the time you will put into trying to get high points for every mission, and it's frustrating not to, as just by running straight forward you will loose your completionist detective feeling.
The army scenes are boring too, and newspapers just ruin all the shadowing and guessing about real nature of murders. Don't read newspapers.

For a decent detective/noir game I suggest Post Mortem.

 

[Metro]

With GOG's holiday sale starting tomorrow I'd recommend the Tex Murphy games (which should be at least 50% for for like $5 each max) over LA Noire.

 

[Suchy]

Basically the writing/voice acting/animation are the biggest attributes of this game. The gameplay sucks, but if you're a story fag, you may enjoy it.
I hated it at the beginning, terribly linear, bad controls, etc. Later it grew on me, when I started doing homicide cases. The missions became somewhat more open, sometimes with C&C here and there. Still too schematic though.

 

[Multidirectional]

Only fun in short doses. Best to treat it as a formulaic TV show - one case in one session. Playing for longer than that tends to become boring. And don't even think about driving yourself, leave that to your partner whenever possible.

 

[MetalCraze]

It may seem ok at first but after a while you start to realize that it's a very shitty game.

Primitive gameplay that is all about lucky selection of 1 out of 3 responses that is correct (and again it's mostly about the lucky guess since you never fucking know what exactly your character will say - ME dialog wheel starts to seem extremely adequate in comparison) and you can't just ask questions you want to ask. What you select doesn't matter - you can fail every case and still keep getting promotions like a pro - in the very worst case you'll just restart the investigation.

And that's all there's to the game apart from shitty popamole shooter missions where a superhuman detective with the regenerating health can take on a bank full of robbers.

Writing is bland and consists of nothing but cliches from worst cop shows.

It's an "adventure game" designed for retards - heck it even has the fucking NOIR misspelled to cater to illiterate fucks. Of course there's no noir in the game at all.



If you want to play a real noir detective adventure game with some action and real consequences - play Blade Runner
Even 5 seconds of this trailer have more noir than the whole LA NoirE

 

[Andyman Messiah]

You're going to love L.A. Noire if you prefer cutscenes over gameplay.

 

[Captain Shrek]

You're going to love L.A. Noire if you prefer cutscenes over gameplay.

Thanks. I better watch The Maltese Falcon the umpteenth time then.

 

[St. Toxic]

It has some impressive animation techniques. Oddly enough, though, they're mainly used in static-camera cutscenes and dialogues, which makes them pretty much indiscernible from pre-rendered cutscenes.

 

[MetalCraze]

Actually that's a recorded video slapped on a 3d model of a head. You can see the same in f.e. pre-rendered BG2 finale video where you could see a real mouth talking on a low poly head of a mage.

That's why you don't see those animations from anything but a static position since if the camera was moving around it would've looked really awkward.

 

[Heresiarch]

Wow, guys you all seem pretty negative about it. I think I'll pass it then, I still have Mass Efffect 2 to finish

BTW, anyone played the Sherlock Homes that was out a few years ago? I've played it for around 15 min and must uninstall it immediatly due to motion sickness...pity there ruins my first detective game experience.

 

[Dr.Faust]

BTW, anyone played the Sherlock Homes that was out a few years ago? I've played it for around 15 min and must uninstall it immediatly due to motion sickness...pity there ruins my first detective game experience.

Most of the Frogwares Sherlock Holmes games are actually pretty damn good. Give The Awakened at least another try because that game is A+ dope.

I think you can play them in fixed camera angles too so your oversensitivity to movement shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Wolfus]

Yeah, newer SH games and remasters of older ones can be switched from 1st person to isometric and vice versa. Also Awakened and Ripper are great detective games. I am looking forward to play the next one.
http://www.frogwares.com/game/testament ... olmes.html

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Frogwares Sherlock Holmes

Oh god, not this shit again.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

Is this game garbage or what? Uninstalled after the first set of cases. Facial animation is amazing, and there's also great voice acting. But there's simply no gameplay at all, as the interrogations are a massive guessing game.

 

[Straight elf]

there's tits tho.

 

[DalekFlay]

Is this game garbage or what? Uninstalled after the first set of cases. Facial animation is amazing, and there's also great voice acting. But there's simply no gameplay at all, as the interrogations are a massive guessing game.

It's an adventure game with brief action moments basically. If you don't like adventure games, you won't like it. The conversation system makes a ton more sense once you read up about what the third option really means, which I forget the name of. "Press" or something like that?

 

[Falksi]

Is this game garbage or what? Uninstalled after the first set of cases. Facial animation is amazing, and there's also great voice acting. But there's simply no gameplay at all, as the interrogations are a massive guessing game.

Agreed, it's total fucking wank. Apart from the facial animations I've absolutely nowt good to say about it. Even then there's that stupid "try to look innocent so obvious that your obviously guilty" look they do.

 

[Avonaeon]

If you want a good detective game, play Return of the Obra Dinn, instead.

 

[Parsifarka]

It's an excellent interactive movie, very enjoyable for what it is. The driving is alright and the shootouts are satisfying. Amazing graphic detail, not just the faces but the crime scenes as well.
If you're into classic action cinema (Bullitt, French Connection, The Getaway, Dirty Harry, etc.) you'll have a blast. Just don't expect much freedom of agency, it's decline at its top.

 

[Barbalos]

I enjoyed it. I really like police and detective games though. There was also a large amount of unintentional hilarity in my playthrough, similar to this:

 

[TheChickenKing]

I played through this a while back and I enjoyed it a bunch, but I also - same as the other people with positive opinions on the game - like police/detective stuff a lot. One weird thing I remember noticing was that I failed interrogations more in the later levels. In other words, I had a harder time reading facial expressions. I played this game ages ago, but I genuinely wonder if they tried to "game-ify" the facial expression reading and provide a difficulty curve, asking the actors for the earlier suspects to really ham it up to make them easier to read.

 

[Dexter]

L.A. Noire was great, ignore the haters.

Also I'm not sure how it's a "movie game" if you have driving, shooting and clue finding/Adventure sections all together in an "Open World" of L.A. with some side missions and interrogations. It's more resembling something like MAFIA/MAFIA II with expanded cut scenes and a fuller city e.g. does this really look like a "movie game" to people?


There's also a VR version of the game, although it's limited to specific cases:

 

[anvi]

Argh, I really want to like this game but I just can't. I tried it 3 times. First time I quit after about an hour, I didn't like how it was so on rails and hand holdy. DING DING every time you mouse over a piece of evidence. And when you investigate a crime and someone says I DIDNT SEE NOTHIN I SWEAR! and then does a super obvious lying face... I thought fuck this and uninstalled.

Second time I got a lot further, tried to give it more of a break, got about half way through the game, things improve a bit, but overall I just didn't care about the story and the gameplay wasn't good and some other game came along I wanted to play.

Today I tried it again for a third time, mostly because I forgot how bored I got the last time. This time I feel the first time, it is goofy as hell, and also the gameplay is generally a bit shit. Fighting is nothing more than space to block, then left click to punch the guy out. Therefore pointless. Driving is goofy and also pointless, and just like an unnecessary timesink chore to get to places. And the investigations are goofy too. Interrogations are ok but they either make it obvious with their stupid faces or they don't and then you have no idea what to choose. The shooting is quite good though, but there isn't much of it, and even if there was it wouldn't be enough to carry the game.

Also it now seems really dated too. The controls are annoying as fuck, partly because it is old, and partly because it was made for consoles. Like you have to force the camera to face down at an object by swiping your mouse a mile, and finally he focuses on the notebook. Then you left click (or is it right click?) to open the book. And now left and right keys don't do anything to turn pages, you have to use left click (or is it right click?) to turn the pages, and if you do the wrong click it closes the book and puts it back in the drawer and you have to wrangle with the camera and repeat the whole thing again.

I wanted to persevere to see what the later stages of the game were like but I can't do it. I always wanted a game just like this, real investigations, as a cop/detective, in a real city that you can navigate freely. I played a game as a kid called Police Quest that was so primitive and old, and I wished some day there would be a newer and bigger budget version. This is the nearest I've ever seen, but it just.... isn't good.