Reviews VideoGame / LA Noire

The Spruce Goose of Games

LA Noire is long past the point now when its razzle dassle new motion capture facial realism might have impressed a gaming public. Even at the time, the state-of-the-art frowning was putting people off by leaning into uncanny valley territory. That in a nut shell describes LA Noire: every aspect of it is a mechanical triumph in terms of how much games have come along, but also every aspect has a serious flaw that ultimately puts people off.

LA Noire Is a game with a uniquely brilliant realization of Los Angeles...that you'll decide to skip because it becomes too tedious to drive through. It has a sophisticated approach to conversations...that will frustrate you because of the simplistic dialogue options and occasional bullshit leaps of logic to interrogation. It largely eschews the AAA game reliance on constant gun play for a more natural, realistic game...but ruins this with goofy mini-games in which you have to tight-rope walk across chandeliers or outrun bulldozers. You have a detective mystery in which you have to carefully interpret clues and make serious decisions...but it doesn't matter because however badly you do a job of searching a crime scene or interrogating suspects, the game will still lead you to the solution. There is a complex, weaving story with unusually deep characters...ultimately squandered to a plot that features guffawing villains who like to film their top secret, evil meetings, just so the hero can find it lying around.

LA Noire is astonishing, in terms of how big a risk a major studio took with it, how far out of their comfort zone it took the developers to design it, and how much experimentation had to be done to see it made. And for all of those things, LA Noire at least deserves to be respected. But that's what damages the experience in the end. all those new things, so refreshing at first, end up being unpolished, misused and badly implemented. I will always like LA Noire to a degree. And I will always be impressed by its vision - but it is a vision that is poorly realized and ultimately clumsy in execution.