Review: LA Noire (360)

+'s

-outstanding facial animations (best I've ever seen in a video game)

-good graphics and sound

-great sense of what you would imagine LA was like in the 1940's

-gutsy move to go in such a different direction than most games

-'s

-gameplay issues (trying and failing to jump a fence repeatedly, etc.) that plague most Rockstar games

-horrible action sequences (Team Bondi even made them skippable with no penalty)

-extremely receptive (talk to your superior, take your partner to the crime scene, walk along the crime scene, tap the A button whenever the controller vibrates, repeat until the music changes, interrogate the person on the scene, go to the next scene, rinse and repeat)

-case of a game almost being too long (I actually wanted to stop playing about half way through)

-story really isn't as strong as it needs to be to support such lackluster gameplay

-side quests are very quick, but take an EXTREMELY long time to reach (especially later on as more and more of the city is opened for exploration)

-the game tends to DRAG ON (i.e. certain cases are far too long and repetitive, etc.)

Neutrals

-interrogation mechanics are hit and miss (I'm still not sure why the game says certain questions are Lies and others are Doubts)

-the 360 version was just fine (there were some reported performance issues compared to the PS3 version, and there are 3 discs on the 360, but neither were an issue for me)

Overall, this is a very, very well made game that just isn't very much fun. I say it a lot, but Rockstar's open world games could do well to be much more focused (like Assassin's Creed for example) to eliminate the tediousness. Just because you can run around aimlessly in 1940's LA doesn't mean you should want to. I'd advise you make sure you are very much in the mood for this type of game. Even as a rental, this is a game that you need to be in the right mood for.