🎮 Xbox 360 Game Review: LA Noire
I enjoy what people now call retro games and have recently picked up a 2nd (or probably 3rd or 4th) hand Xbox 360. Coming with 13 games and costing only £50 (roughly 250 STEEM at today's price), it's a great 7th Generation Console to pick up on the cheap.
One of the games that it came with is the subject of today's post - LA Noire.
Background
Initially released in May 2021 by Rockstar Games (renowned for their Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series of games and Red Dead Redemption), this game is now over 13 years old.
Its 1940's setting and adherence to cultural and political settings during this period stood out amongst reviews that I read prior to playing.
On Metacritic, the Critics rated it 89/100 with a user score of an impressive 8.0/10.
This puts it in the Top 100 (73rd) Best Games on Xbox 360.
So, is it any good?
Gameplay in L.A. Noire
The story's based around a character called Cole Phelps, a World War II veteran who becomes a detective in the LA Police Department. Throughout the game, you work in different departments (allowing some variety in the storyline) and perform 5 key tasks:
- Driving
- Investigating Crime Scenes
- Interviews
- Fist Fights
- Gun Fights
Whilst the game is portrayed to be "open world", I don't think it is - certainly not in the way that GTA is. You can veer away from the main storyline and respond to a call on the police radio but after a couple of calls, this starts to feel like an unwelcome distraction from the main storyline.
There isn't really any other "open world" element. You can take whatever car you want but doing so doesn't really achieve anything (there's probably a badge for unlocking every car but I didn't bother with this). Other than that, there really isn't much point deviating from the Main Story.
Gameplay - Driving
The driving experience is decent enough. You can put your foot down and drive like a maniac, or take your time and drive carefully. I prefer the lunatic approach and would happily write off whatever car I was driving. When it was trashed, I'd simply commandeer a new vehicle and do the same again. At the end of a mission, you'd get a summary of how much you'd trashed.
As part of some cases, you could be involved in a high speed car chase or need to tail a suspect. The car chases can sometimes be tricky but as with all of the cases, if there's something you're particularly bad at and fail repeatedly, you'll be given the option of skipping so that you can continue the story.
Gameplay - Investigating Crime Scenes
Solving clues is obviously an important part of being a detective so a decent portion of the game is dedicated to investigating crime scenes. You'll need to explore and find crime scene clues to help you move on to the next part of the storyline. The music helpfully changes to let you know that all of the clues have been found although you don't need to wait for this to happen. It just makes it easier to complete a case.
This can be frustrating when you think that you've covered every inch of a crime scene although you do get "Intuition Points" which you can use to highlight any remaining clues.
Gameplay - Interviews
Whilst investigating a crime, you have the opportunity to question key witnesses. This is in the form of 3 options: "Truth", "Doubt" or "Lie". These options don't quite coincide with the questions being asked but the general idea is clear enough. If you think they're lieing, you need to highlight a clue from your notebook as evidence. If you think they know more and aren't being entirely truthful, you can select "Doubt" whereas "Truth" is simply if you believe them.
Once again, whether you get the option correct or not won't prevent you from progressing with the storyline, it just makes things a little slower to solve.
Gameplay - Fist Fights
This is one of the more enjoyable aspects of the game which unfortunately, you don't get to experience particularly often. It would have been a nice addition for this to be GTA style where you could fight anyone, but with you being Da Police and responsible for protecting the public, it makes sense that you can't.
Winning a fight is always rather satisfying.
Gameplay - Gun Fights
The gun fights are quite enjoyable too and if you respond to a call whilst driving, it's likely that this is what you'll end up doing. The controls to hide / take cover and come out again isn't great but much like the Fist Fights, taking out a bad guy from distance is very satisfying.
Gameplay - Other
There is occasionally another activity required but it's rare that you're not required to do one of the above 5. The balancing "beam" was just annoying.
Overall Thoughts
Is L.A. Noire a good game to play?
Initially, the game was very enjoyable. The storyline and character development is strong and whilst you're solving each case, there's an overarching storyline that you'll want to reach the end of.
However, getting there starts to feel repetitive after a few cases - especially when your actions don't have much impact upon how the storyline progresses. The Driving, Investigating and Interviewing is roughly 80% of the game which is probably why I welcomed the Fist and Gun Fights.
Is L.A. Noire a long game?
I haven't reached the end yet and it's been more than a month since I last played it. I've completed 17 out of the 21 cases which has taken me just over 15.5 hours. Google tells me that it should take 20-30 hours to complete (depending upon how many of the calls you respond to) and I'm knocking off cases at the speed of roughly 1 per hour.
This does make it the kind of game that you can pick up for an hour at the end of the day which is what I generally did. You'd think that this would make the game less monotonous but for me, it didn't.
Final Verdict: Xbox 360 Game Review LA Noire
What Next?
If you enjoyed this article and you haven't done so already, please consider signing up for a Free Account and sharing your thoughts with me.
You may also be interested in reading some of my other Gaming articles:
- 02/10/21: 🎮 Game Review - "Simple Story - Alex"
- 19/07/21: Gaming Nostalgia || Amiga Power Top 10 (1991)
- 03/07/21: My All-Time Top Video Game (Part 5)
- 26/06/21: My All-Time Top 20 Video Games (Part 4)
- 14/06/21: My All-Time Top 20 Video Games (Part 3)
- 03/06/21: My All-Time Top 20 Video Games (Part 2)
- 28/05/21: My All-Time Top 20 Video Games (Part 1)
I wanted to play L.A Noire at one point but watching streams made me decide not to, don't remember exactly why. But as for something similar if you ever find Mafia 1 and 2, not sure if 3 is released for 360, you can give them a try, these should be pretty cheap to buy if found.
I replayed them last year, the remastered version for PC, had so much fun. The games being pretty old have simple mechanics but for their time I'd say they were a little ahead.