L.A. Noire

L.A. Game Noire dusts off somewhat forgotten detective stories and presents them in a modern, very attractive form. Unusual, original and exciting - a dream debut.

We consider L.A. Noire an excellent game that will please the vast majority of players. But be aware that L.A. Noire is mostly an investigative game and for this reason does not have as much action as some players would like it to have. If you are looking for lots of action and shooting in the 40s, L.A. Noire is not the game that you seek. However, if you are in the mood to spend hours looking for objects, analyzing, interrogating suspects and victims and occasionally take part in shootings or car chases, congratulations, you have won the jackpot.

May it be the likes of Shadow of the Colossus or Metal Gear Solid, if it’s quite there but not enough to push the boundaries, it’s still an awesome game.

If, like me, you missed out in 2011 when LA Noire first launched, I highly recommend trying it now on Switch (or on PC, PS4, and XB1 where it was recently released. The Switch version feels right at home and has me clamoring that somehow Rockstar will bring more of its catalog to the console. Bully, Red Dead, and GTA, please? But LA Noire stands on its own as a testament to interactive storytelling in games. It’s a prime example of a studio getting it right without making the player feel li...

The police procedural is a wildly popular literary, television, and film genre, but relatively few game developers have successfully captured the thrill of cracking a case. Of the few interactive experiences that have tried to match the intrigue of classic detective stories like The Big Sleep and Chinatown, the Rockstar Games and Team Bondi collaboration L.A. Noire stands out most clearly in the lineup. Six years after its original release, the heady crime drama surprisingly arrives on Switch.

When LA Noire first released in 2011, it was a one-of-a-kind game. The facial capture technology had never been seen before in a video game and its interrogation system made it stand out not only from every other Rockstar game but from everything else, period. After diving back into this gritty recreation of 1940s Los Angeles on the Nintendo Switch more than six years later, I realized there is still nothing else quite like it.

Fun fact: did you know that L.A. Noire actually released closer to the 1940s than to 2017?

Rockstar Leeds has done a great job bringing Team Bondi’s L.A. Noire to the PC, which is a thoroughly interesting and at times quite addictive crime thriller. It’s easy to get wrapped up in a case and wanting to uncover what really happened; sifting through the false smiles of NPCs and rubbing their nose in our superior detective work. Cole Phelps feels at home on the desktop and I didn’t experience any problems or hiccups along the way. If you want your brain teased and love the film n...

Ever since Columbo asked for “just one more thing”, we've been hooked on sleuthing. Sadly, nothing has ever given us the chance to put our years of watching the glass-eyed master at work on TV to the test, and games that have attempted to weave a murder mystery into their stories have almost always fallen short in terms of our expectations. The less said about the CSI games, the better, for instance. Enter Team Bondi and Rockstar's ambitious LA Noire, which gives you some real 1940s murde...