L.A. Noire plays like the woman you are dating that does everything she wants in her own time, but everything still works out in your favor. And somehow, in the end, you’re left wanting more.

Glitchoris BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front)
Buy it. Now. It’s a more than a worthy follow-up release from last year’s Red Dead Redemption. Rockstar is evolving, and this is a crucial step in their maturation.

More Than Just Window Shopping
One of the marks of a great game (and woman) is when you start noticing all the small great things that don’t attract attention. Like when you look out of windows in the Hall of Records and notice the street shops on the other side of the street, in perfect clarity, and watch people walk by, stop and look, and resume walking. We’re familiar with a small amount of coding and graphic work, but that’s insane talent on a large scale.

An earlier criticism about Castlevania was how Kojima can make a game look freaking sweet but be nerve-wracking to play. An area looks like it’s accessible when it’s clearly not – and we get so used to this that we stop looking for the hidden areas.

With L.A. Noire, when assessing a crime scene and looking for clues, this is not the case. It’s clear what areas we should be looking at while not giving away total parameters.

Ze End Of Ze Line
Red Dead Redemption showed us that Rockstar can script a narrative. Now, they’ve shown us that they can repeat earlier successes without becoming their own cliche.

The narrative payoff brings two very important aspects of stories together almost too nicely. We go from, “Get the fuck out…” to “No fucking way!” within minutes.  This is what the graphic build-up was trying to do.  The climax was worth the exposition and rising action.  Or in simpler terms, the sex was worth the foreplay.

Cut scenes have been around the gaming industry for plenty of years. Anyone who played Xenosaga knows that some games come with more cut scenes than actual play time. But the graphics are so good that the final cut scenes show the gaming world (and media world – for that matter) that Rockstar is more than the leader of the pack; they are the 1940′s America to the rest of the industry’s 1930′s world. Ahead enough to drop a bomb like L.A. Noire.

Hold Your Reservations
L.A. Noire does have it’s setbacks, but they are overshadowed by the positives. For example, character voices seem softer at times than others leading us turn our volume up. Then the next scene hits and our ear drums burst. It happens more than once unfortunately.

Also, some geographical locations have spots where the game will freeze momentarilly. On our play through, the Keystone Film Set crime scene locked up twice within about thirty seconds. Earlier in the game, and I don’t remember where, it froze as well. The freezing only lasted for a second or two, but long enough for me to remember that I was playing a game.

You will also probably take a few more bullets than you want using the cover system. We encountered a more-than-necessary amount of times when we had troubles breaking from coverage only to rotate around a wall leaving us wide open.  Which begs the question of how a WWII hero can evade countless Japs but struggle hiding in the library stacks.

Final Thoughts
While we won’t be comparing ourselves to Cole Phelps as much as we did John Marsten, we still love the game. By the end of the year we expect it to be in the race for awards – for best overall game, best supporting character (Jack Kelso), and best German fem bait.