Is it too late to play LA NOIRE in 2022?

as a kid i always love the idea of being a detective but i learned at a very early age that i probably wasn't going to meet the job criteria yeah yeah fortunately though i also learned that if i can't achieve a dream in real life then there's probably a game for that and as everyone knows if you really want to live out your virtual dream you do it in a little game developed by rockstar for those unfamiliar rockstar is the legendary studio not only responsible for bringing us gta but also all the violent crimes ever committed by tweens at least i think are they gonna become violent just by playing grand auto theft and halo in these games yes okay good to know but thanks to gta 5 selling just a bajillion copies it's easy to forget that rockstar makes other games like for example did you know that rockstar has made just as many red dead redemption games as they've made awesome powers games surprise motherfu seriously these guys do so much more than just gta i mean they do gta on a horse and rockstar presents table tennis so when l.a noire was released in 2011 it didn't matter that it was being developed by australian studio team bondi because it had that oh so famous logo slapped right on the cover i think it's safe to say that the thought going through many gamers heads at the time was oh [ __ ] here we go again but i can confidently tell you that l.a noire is not only nothing like gta but it's nothing quite like any other game you've played but is that a good thing for an 11 year old game with no sequels time to answer the question is it too late to play l.a noir in 2022 la noire tells the story of detective cole phelps badge 1247. a returning marine from world war ii set against the backdrop of a 1940s los angeles your task is relatively simple rise through the ranks of the lapd put your name in lights and put some bad guys behind bars on your way you'll be splitting your time between investigating crime scenes and interrogating suspects with the occasional skippable firefight or chase scene to break it up now i wouldn't be doing my job if i didn't focus on the thing that makes this game so unique which is the interrogation system team bondi developed proprietary facial capture technology to be able to create a face that somehow looked both photo realistic and like everyone had drank from the wrong cup at the same time [Music] but this advancement meant that they could track and replicate even the tiniest facial movements to put into the game this level of detail added a whole new dimension to questioning a suspect games prior to l.a noire didn't have the technology to show these nuanced expressions meaning that when you accuse people in other games they tend to react like this yeah bit dramatic but thanks to this technology your goal now isn't just to find evidence that contradicts what's being said you can also choose to respond as a good cop or bad cop depending on the reaction you're observing and if you think that person might not be telling you the whole truth where you get your grills from i got them from uh johnny dane you lying yeah i like you man you lie a lot this concept is brilliant at least in theory for better or for worse the game does lack a certain level of consistency in its performances for example there were times where i would be having minutes long discussions with my wife over whether we wanted to play good cop or bad cop because of how subtle the reactions were other times though someone would answer a question and then stare back at me in a way that made me always think the other thing that makes it kind of tough is the responses themselves the remaster changed its original dialogue options to good cop bad cop and accuse but the game was also never written with that in mind this makes it actually harder to know what each response is going to get you instead of making it easier it also doesn't help that phelps is an absolute psycho and regularly likes to take things from zero to 100. give me something belasco or i'll take you back to the cells and tell the whole station you're a child molester seriously the dude has no chill and while his responses often find the right balance of aggressive and unexpected in hilarious ways you keep lying to me and i'll send you and your baby to jail i found that i was regularly misreading the body language and choosing the wrong options so i was just as surprised as anyone whenever i picked the right response are you gonna miss your mom no no you blew up six blocks god knows how many people are dead so now you and i are on the same page how would you feel if i told you it doesn't actually matter how many interrogations you fail or how many pieces of evidence you miss finding it is impossible to fail a case and get a result that the game doesn't want you to get how does it make you feel it doesn't matter how it makes you feel the story la noir wants to tell takes precedence here and ultimately we're all just along for the ride minus spoilers here but there's a whole section where no matter how good of a detective you are the game makes it impossible for you to arrest the real culprit as someone who wanted to be a detective it made me feel a bit empty every time these story bits happened and it left me asking what did i buy you for to make me sad now look i understand that it's said in the 40s i understand that racism and sexism were a part of that but i still would have thought there would have been at least one likable character but no every single person in this game is a dick sure statistically that's highly unlikely especially when there are so many characters in the game but god damn it it's true and this is a hill i'm willing to die on trying to find a character that is half decent is like trying to find a where's wally that's surrounded by a bunch of dicks i don't know what i'm looking at yeah what am i seeing here it's just dicks no there's i mean yes there are a couple of different it's mostly different there's a lot of dicks no all i see is dicks but even with all that taken into consideration i really enjoy this game it's still a lot of fun investigating crime scenes and interrogating witnesses even if it is a bit too easy to make mistakes that result in your wife calling you a two-time loser it has good music a keen attention to detail with its animations and a strong story unfortunately the uncanny valley result of hyper-realistic faces in a non-photorealistic world was too ahead of its time and i doubt that we'll see another game like this anytime soon and while it has a great concept it does get let down by its writing sometimes being unclear leaving me to scream at my tv every time i pick the wrong option but thanks to all its other pieces it still feels so distinctly different from detective games that came before it or that we've seen since so does that make it too late to play la noir in 2022 while you won't be as wowed by its visuals today as you would have been a decade ago its visuals were only ever there to give you a new dimension to experience in a detective game and that part of it ladies and gentlemen is just as fun to experience today as it was in 2011. thanks for watching if you liked it be sure to check out these other videos on if it's too late to play and let me know in the comments any games you'd like to see covered and if you really enjoyed it consider leaving a like and subscribing to help support the channel have a great week everyone and i hope to see you back for more of my ignorant opinions and unwavering bias in the next episode [Music]

Channel: How Good Games

Views: 142,041

Keywords: la noire, 2022, detective games, la noire remastered, too late to play, la noire gameplay, rockstar games, la noire ps4, review, reviews, game reviews, video game, time to play, gamer, games, gaming, sony, ps4, playstation, xbox, nintendo, switch, la noire remaster, gameplay, detective, cole phelps, la noire review, la noire ps4 pro, video games

Id: oyEQyHN9s5E

Length: 8min 0sec (480 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 24 2022