Ahhhh, 1940's la. Bright lights, guns, drugs, scandals and unfaithful husbands. This seems like paradise right ....... NOT ! So who do you send in to clean up this mess you ask ? A kick a** former solder turned cop that's who ! Without giving away any story obviously I'm now going to give you my la noire review does one of 2011's most anticipated games live up to the hype or should team bondi bury their heads in the sand and go sleeping with the fishes, let's find out !














La noire is a detective game for those of you who don't know and you know what that means, you will be solving cases throughout the whole game obviously. Just because its published by rockstar doesn't mean it plays like the gta series or red dead series. Yes its open with lots of cars to drive but that's where the comparisons end. In this game you will only be solving cases, you will not be able to cause havoc or kill random people. I was surprised by as open as this game was that there wasn't much to do but ill get to that later. For now ill tell my positives and negatives about the game first are the positives




" hey cole, you think kujo did this ? "



First the visuals, I admit these are some of the best graphics I've ever seen in an open world game. Some buildings have a lot of detail, cars in the game are well done too and they all look unique to another for the most part. The big thing here in this game are the facial animations ! They are so life like that I was floored when I saw them. This is really important for this game in particular cause during interviews and interrogations they help you determine if the suspect is lying or not. It really ads to the immersion of making you feel like a real detective.


Now as for game play, what I liked was that this game was not one of those games that make you go all gun happy everywhere ( I love my shooters too but I love something differint as well ) what you do at each crime scene is walk around and look for evidence to make your case and do interviews. Some pieces of evidence even make you look at it more closely by pushing the x/a button. This makes you reveal a certin detail that you normal wouldnt see by just picking it up. Some evidence also requires you to zoom in with the left stick on the controller insted of pushing a button. Now this may not seem like its fun bit I really enjoyed investigating my surroundings for clues while this games great soundtrack was playing. It was really relaxing and a nice change of pace from what I'm used to playing.

Now while you look for clues you also have to interogate various Npc's in the game. The key is to ask a question and determine if they are telling the truth, lying or you choose the doubt option to try to force an answer out of them. Now as I said earlier, with the great facial expression system they have for this game you can see if they are calm, nervous, or completly sacred about being caught lying after they say something. Now by getting questions right you can get new clues and info from the suspects to help you solve the case or convict that person of the crime later. By getting questions right you get exp points which help you grow by rank. When you grow a rank you get a intuition point. These can be used for two things. You can ether use one to help you locate all the clues in a crime scene or you can use it to help you get the questions right. What happens is that out of truth, lie and doubt one of the three choices gets eliminated so it can help make getting that one question right easier. Now mind you, if you choose lie you need to have the proper evidence to support your claim. If not, no matter if he or she is lying you won't get it correct without it

Now there's not just clue finding and interviewing, there are street crimes that you can solve. These aren't really deep and interesting by anymeans since most are just good ol fashioned shootouts, but they do add some action segments to the game if you just want kill people and fight. Completing these ( 40 in total ) also gives you ex points so they do give you something good for doing them. There are some Chase segments during cases ( and boy there are plenty ) they aren't hard to do as you can either tackle them down or you can hold the trigger button down in certin chases to fire a warning shot and stop the perp in his tracks. All the things I listed are basicly what you do during the game. Now that being said these gameplay eliments do present some big flaws that might turn off some people from getting this game ( especially the cod kiddies)


For starters like I said above these things are all you do in the game. Typical case in this game will go like this. You go to the scene, look for clues, interview a witness, get information that will lead you to your next area of interest, call the operator and get that place's location and go there ( sometimes you have to call the operator more than once during a case ) look for more clues and Chase a guy, go to another place or two then you either convict who you were searching for or end up killing him. Rinse and repeat. This game is extremly repetitive and there's nothing you can do on the side besides the also repetitive side cases. This is a typical complaint of many rockstar influenced games and it holds true in this game. This is bad case some people might get boored and it will feel like a chore to some. My recommendation to get the most enjoyment is to play a case or two at a time. Now while I had no problem playing three or 4 in a row I can see some people get bored after more than two in a row so do this and the game will feel fresh to you everytime you play it.

Another thing that will put people off is that you do not get punished in any shape or form for not getting all the questions right or not having the right evidence. You will still end up finishing the case wether you got the right perp or not. From what I've seen, you can get all questions wrong in a case and STILL PASS IT ! This makes searching for most clues pointless since you technicly don't need all of them to finish the case. They should have made it so you you won't be able to solve the case unless you did some really good detective work and get your facts right.

there are also these silly melee fight segments against some perps you face. They were a little a waste of time and pointless ( though knocking out guys with 4 punches or so made me laugh a little ) you are a detective with a gun on you but you can't take it out during these segments, I don't get it. Speaking of gun fights in the game, they turn into simple games of whack a mole. Stay in the same cover spot and wait for them to pop out, then smoke em. They rarely flank you if at all so don't expect uncharted or gears type combat here. It's really shallow. I also thought the story ( especially the ending ) could have been better but like I said, no story related stuff in this review.

Overall I thought this game was really flawed in some areas but it was really enjoyable,unique and cool to play. I think for a first effort together team bondi did a very good job that with a sequal, they can really have a huge breakthrough game on their hands. I hope they do another one and go for it !

.Recommended price point: $40 or less
.games that compair to this if you have played it already: heavy rain

FINAL SCORE: 7.8/10

Thanks guys for reading my review. Tell me how I did as this is something I really would like to do more of in the future. You guys on this site rock !