L.A. Noire: The Complete Edition PC
User Score
7.6 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 443 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 356 out of 443
  2. Mixed: 35 out of 443
  3. Negative: 52 out of 443

Review this game

  1. Your Score
    0 out of 10
    Rate this:
  1. Submit
  2. Check Spelling
view
per page
  1. 9of9
    Nov 25, 2011
    3
    At the highest settings, this game looks like something from the PS2 era. The gameplay is slow, plodding and dull with terrible, floaty controls. The tutorial tips are slow and misleading - during one of the early missions when you chase a suspect, it tells you to hold RMB to stand and aim at him. When you shoot him, you fail the mission because he was injured. This kind of problem plagues LA Noire at every step. Questioning is unintuitive, driving is wonky (sharply turning a corner will leave the camera taking seconds catching up to the direction of the car, while you plough through traffic and pedestrians), shooting is terrible.

    It has a few positive merits - the writing appears to be good and the facial animation is very well-done, but it does not justify the £18 I will never see again. It's both an adventure game and an action game and it's a terrible example of either one. If you can run it, get the flawed but infinitely more enjoyable Mafia 2 instead.    … Expand
  2. gas
    Nov 26, 2011
    3
    Good idea actually poorly executed. The first big issue is about the porting, the game looks really dated even if on max settings and its nearly unplayable even at lower settings due to a terrible frame rate. Running around seems to watch the TV serie The six million dollar man, its terrible. Beside that i have to tell also the controls are not really working good too and the game its so easy that it seems to play an interactive movie, tbh its one of the worst ports ive seen so far, and the game itself it seems made for 5 years old kids. I wasted money, this game is garbage… Expand
  3. moarx
    Nov 8, 2011
    4
    I've only played ~30 minutes or so, but it's hard to go much further due to the terrible controls. I was able to deal with them through the first investigations/brawl, but once you get to the robbery (fairly early on in the game) it's practically impossible to keep playing. The already strange controls become even more frustrating once you entire the game's first gunfight and it's bad enough that I'm going to wait until a patch (assuming they bother with one). As far as graphics go, they have a decent selection of graphics settings but overall the game looks fairly dated and it's clear that they didn't add much aside from better shadows/view distance for the PC release. Higher-res textures should've been included, it's pretty obvious how bad the textures are when playing on a PC (due to being closer to your monitor). Another thing that stood out are the settings for anti-aliasing which only seems to support FXAA, a form of AA designed to work better on NVIDIA cards. Personally I have an ATI card so FXAA doesn't work nearly as well as it would if I were using NVIDIA. I haven't tried forcing AA through CCC, I'll probably do that once they improve the controls.

    Thankfully I didn't spend any $ on this as I had credit on the website I purchased it from (GreenManGaming) or I would've regretted my purchase.    … Expand
  4. Digitalkid
    Dec 26, 2011
    3
    As good it was on start, as awful it became few hours later. Great idea and nice graphics totally ruined by illlogical and dump dialog and interview decisions. You accuse people with most faint evidence like rope match which is for sure can be found in every 2-nd house in LA. You sit affront a suspect and wandering which size of shoes he wears instead of just looking at his feet. You accuse hobo of "being in some place at 2 a.m." just finding a purse of a victim. He could pick it up later from a dead body, which is normal for his kind. It can't be a sure reason to say he's lying about his whereabouts in exact time! --- So great idea totally buried by dumb scenario.((((… Expand
  5. diesbildnis
    Nov 9, 2011
    0
    THIS GAME DOES NOT WORK ON STEAM. I pre-ordered this game and have tried to load it up repeatedly using different fixes (UAC disabled, run with admin, etc.). It just loads up the first screen and the start menu is missing so there is no way to begin. I emailed Rocksteady the problem and they are "looking into adding it to the knowledge base". I dropped $45 on a pre-order game that does not work at launch and now am just sitting around hoping for a fix. Such a buzz-kill on a game I was really looking forward to and I am so disappointed in Rockstar and Steam.… Expand
  6. deadstoned
    Nov 12, 2011
    3
    Bit dull and boring really, story line doesnt get good until half way through. Rockstar would have been better served making Red Dead Redemption for PC rather than this. Feel like I wasted my money on this :( . Not worth £30+ from Steam. Maybe £15, but its certainly not very exciting or fun.
  7. Shtiggy
    Feb 24, 2012
    1
    Fun game, but piss poor crossover into the PC platform. Game runs slow and makes it pretty much unplayable. It's a shame, I like the game, but won't play it now. I only hope that Rockstar makes GTA V PC playable.
  8. SlickNick
    Jan 4, 2012
    3
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I came to point out more examples of extremely frustrating interrogating and how stupid the game's logic is. Example 1:

    You're chasing a boyfriend (unknown location) and girlfriend suspects. You've caught up with the girlfriend and are interviewing her. You just found a train ticket on her dresser that's 1-way from Hollywood to Akron OH. You ask about her "Plans to leave town". Your character inquires if she's trying to skip town. She says she's not and has no idea what I'm talking about. Obviously you have solid evidence she's lying. So "lying" would be the obvious choice with the train-ticket as evidence. Nope. If you click "lying" your character accuses "You know where your boyfriend is, tell me!". The girlfriend challenges "You can't prove I know where my boyfriend is!". Ok... but these things are totally unrelated to the original statement. WTF game.
    Example 2:
    You find a dead wife, you go to her husband's residence and look around for clues. One of the clues is some boat rope found hanging off a boat in his yard, your character notices its the same braid as the ligature marks on the victim's neck. When questioning the husband you ask about "Potential Suspects" by asking the husband if anyone didn't like his wife. He answers "No, she was well liked by everyone, she's fun to be around, I don't know anyone who didn't like her". The correct answer is "lying" because of the boat rope. WTF? How does boat rope prove the husband knows of someone that didn't like his wife?

    How about those apples? Game just slapped me in the face. How dare you think the game has to make any sense.    … Expand
  9. Sorrowmoon
    Dec 30, 2011
    3
    The interviews were an interesting concept at 1st but it quickly became boring. The game feels like it doesn't really matter what you do it'll eventually come to an end. I never bothered to finish it because I became saturated by boredom. The driving wasn't all that interesting and the combat scenes were poor at best mostly due to controls.
  10. psynophile
    Jan 1, 2012
    2
    Please, please don't waste your money on this game for the PC. I can see how it's probably a decent game for the 360/PS3 but this port is just ridiculously bad. I'm glad that I only spent 12.00 on it for the Steam sale. Even then it really isn't worth it.
  11. JYT
    Jan 6, 2012
    2
    On PC Windows 7. The graphism are well made and the characters looks cool. Unfortunately the controls when driving the car is totally awful it made the playabilty awful. It is also a bas idea to save automatically while driving or chasing a bad guy, all stops and then the car does not respond and crashes. Like assassin creed, the story is linear which means you either pass each stage or you don't progress. there are not multiple route to the end which is poor really. The character should reach the end by multiple routes.… Expand
  12. ozgeek
    Feb 11, 2012
    1
    Played for 3 hours and then quit after becoming bored. I don't buy games so it can play for me. This game is bacially a interactive movie and even a training-wheels for Grand Theft Auto games. The city is overdone, there is so much to explore but no real "free mode". A linear story mode. **** graphics. I've seen better in GTA4. Too much cutscenes. Too little controls. Basically just push the left stick up to get on ladders and climb up, similar to call of duty - a sign that it is designed for consoles in mind.… Expand
  13. kevlar1111
    Jun 29, 2012
    0
    This game is a diamond in the rough. The graphics look dated, although all the face related things are quite good. The game play is decent but not amazing. The place where this game really shines is the story. The story is fantastic and the characters are all extremely well done. Would recommend this game to anyone who is patient enough to see through it's flaws.
  14. Funksatron
    Apr 24, 2013
    2
    It's hard to something positive to say about L.A. Noire. I suppose the detail in the city of LA was fantastic, which, while it was artistically impressive, didn't add much to the enjoyment of the game. I'm giving Rockstar a little credit for the effort. I appreciate what they set out to do, but I don't think it was executed competently. Firstly, the foundation of the gameplay is crime-solving via scrutiny of simulated facial expression and a collection of evidence. This means you are evaluating the veracity of statements based on the performances of actors (of variable talent) who are all essentially lying (since they are acting) as reinterpreted through the facial rendering engine. This technology is another failure. It looks like nothing more than low res video being played over a 3D model of a human head. All the characters looked like dead-eyed, shifty, slime-faced androids. Many were hard to distinguish. Which brings me to the characters. There was a lot of content to this game, about 18 hours for me, but it was vastly more concerned with breadth than depth. I never felt invested in any of the characters because none of them felt human. I still don't understand the motivations of the protagonists. This game could possibly have been something in another studio's hands, I still find the idea intriguing, but in the state it was released it's not worth either the investment of time or money.… Expand
  15. oBusk
    Jul 8, 2012
    0
    The game lured me in with a 1940s seetting, and then delivered one of the better written stories, i've experienced, in a beautiful and detailed city. The length of the game is impressing, and most cases have an own story to tell, so the game won't feel all the same. The "motion capture" technique used to recreate the faces of actors is just amazing, and you can actually recognize the actors and see real faces, rather then a animated version. A bonus is that the DLC that comes with this version of the game is actually weaved in with the main storyline, rather than having some random cases with no connection to the game afterwards. Loved it! Try it!… Expand
  16. Snarky
    Jul 29, 2012
    0
    Not worth your time or money, it's just another **** console port released by Rockstar. Not only is the main character completely unlikeable, the game is also inconsistent in the way it handles "evidence". Good job, Rockstar! Then we have the ridiculous serial killer planting evidence all over the city and in peoples homes setting other people up for crimes they did not do. REALLY, ROCKSTAR?! REALLY?!!??! What finally ruined it for me was the INDIANA JONES-STYLE **** that you have to do later in the game. What the **** were they thinking?! Chandelier-swinging in a game like L.A. Noire?! **** you, Rockstar! **** you sideways in the ass with a two-by-four! ZERO POINTS to you Rockstar for ****ing this game up so badly!… Expand
  17. vianna77
    Aug 5, 2012
    3
    Pros: The storyline is good.
    Cons: The game is REALLY boring. I played it for 23 hours and I can't believe I'm not in the middle of the storyline.
    This game will take forever to finish!!!!!!!
  18. Aonien
    Jan 16, 2013
    3
    I wasn't as impressed as I was interested with this game. This game barely looks anything like a real detective investigation. The interviews are ridiculous. Nine times out of ten I'll get a wrong answer in each of them, all because I believed in what the witness had to say.
  19. Kref
    Jan 21, 2013
    1
    How much time do developers think I should spent reading their stupid names after finishing their mediocrate product? I assume their office pets names are also included in that stupid list. They really think I should terminate program abnormaly? All right, let them get their reward - two points and no ine more.
  20. Gargus
    Mar 8, 2013
    1
    I grew up loving the hardboiled detective film noire types of movies so when I heard about this I was quite excited since it was right up my alley.

    Sadly though the end product is nothing like it could have been. This is basically a snooze fest disguised as a game. Honestly, if it didn't have Rockstar's name on the box it wouldn't be rated highly as it is or sold as well despite the fac    t Rockstar did not make this game.

    My main dislikes with the game are.......

    1- You never really detect anything. You walk around till you get a little chime meaning you press the x button and pickup the clue. If the clue needs to be examined further the game will tell you so. Once you have the clues your partner will signal you it's time to go somewhere else. The game basically walks you through detecting everything and finding clues. It tells you when you need to hit what buttons and where.

    2- You can't mess up interrogations. This was lauded as a big feature for the game. If you blow the interrogation then you just do it again. Even if you guess wrong when your judging a person's true intentions you can still win the game without ever getting one right. You can go right through the game by guessing everything wrong when its decision time while interviewing someone. The game basically won't let you make mistakes that stop the game play and there are no consequences for anything during interrogations. There is no need to study a person's facial reactions or what they say because it doesn't matter. Guess right? No advantage. Guess wrong? No punishment.

    3- The facial animations while good are just a gimmick. Another big selling point for the game is just a gimmick. Again looking at people's faces during interrogation to guess if they are lying or not doesn't matter since you don't have to be right. The facial animations are nice but it doesn't matter aesthetically because their bodies still move like stiff puppets. And they still aren't lifelike because they are over exaggerated to be noticeable. I personally wish they hadn't wasted all the money on filming actors in a fancy studio with all this high tech equipment and instead used the money to hire better writers for the game and work on making it more fun instead of just being a gateway for their facial animation tech. Honestly the animations felt more like a tech demo they were hoping to get other developers to license the tech for their games.

    4- The game is incredibly linear. Yes a couple times you can chose to shake down a bartender instead of checking up on a drug addict but you never really get to chose anything. The game firmly holds your hand from the start to the finish and never let's go. I felt more like a errand boy out driving from point A to point B and then from C to D.

    5- The storyline while not bad isn't that great. The main storyline starting out builds and builds and builds then suddenly it just stops and comes to a half with a very paper thin plot excuse and then suddenly you thrust off in another direction with no looking back. They just go to all this trouble of building up to something and then suddenly pull the rug out and leave you unsatisfied. The ending is very, very unsatisfying as well.

    6- Team bondi has been saying the game isn't finished and that's easily noticeable just playing through it. They left the game kind of shallow in order to sell more DLC to gamers and that's obvious since they have been releasing DLC since its release and have recently announced more. It's just a shame they would release a 60 dollar game partially gutted so they can sell DLC and turn it into a 100 dollar game.

    7- 60% of the game is still just grand theft auto. Just like in grand theft auto you have to drive a car for hours and hours and hours while you playing doing absolutely nothing but going up and down the same boring streets as a time sink. You can take any car you want like in GTA, you'll waste hours of time driving just like GTA, when you run it's just like in GTA, when you shoot or fight it's just like GTA, in fact everything that isn't investigating or interrogating is just like GTA.

    In the end this game is wasted potential. I really wish I had waited till it eventually drops to 25 bucks or less because that's all it's worth. I had a lot of fun for about 6 hours and after that I find myself playing it just to finish it since I paid so much. I was really disappointed in this game.    … Expand
  21. MikeHunt
    Apr 24, 2013
    2
    I was looking forward for this game, since it was so hyped. I've played Mafia (and Mafia 2) before and really enjoyed the atmosphere in these games. I've been forcing myself to return to this game several times now for a period of 3 weeks, but I just can't seem to enjoy it.
    There are a few reasons for this:
    The game has quite high hardware requirements. I'm playing on an iMac 27" (Intel     core i7 3,4 GHz., 16 GB. RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6970M w/2GB) but the game still feels sluggish.
    But this isn't the worst of it. The gameplay is what really makes me dislike this game. The idea is good enough, but in reallity you are walking around, clicking the most obvious items for the only reason that the game will continue down the VERY linear story. The dialogs where you have to guess if people lie or tell you the truth seems random if you get right or not. And even if you get them all wrong, the game continues anyway. There is just too little for me to do that amuses me. Most of the time I just have to click to let the story move on. I'd rather see some old detective movie then.

    I completely acknowledge the voice acting, animation and facial expression of characters in this game. It's very nicely done. But the game is still boring as hell.    … Expand

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
83 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 28 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 23 out of 28
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 28
  3. Negative: 0 out of 28
  1. PC Master (Greece)
    Feb 29, 2012
    90
    A unique adventure game that borrows many features from mystery and action games, incorporating them seamlessly in the narrative flow, thus creating a truly special game that not everyone will enjoy. And that's because it has its own character, defying contemporary 'fast food' games that are churned out today and because it's reminiscent of endeavors made in another era, where immersion of an ultimate single-player experience was the first and last goal of their creators.
    Read full review
  2. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Jan 19, 2012
    90
    Ingenious game merges a classic adventure with sandbox action titles, resourcefully. Playability is not always perfect but overall impression is stunning. [Christmas 2011]
  3. Games Master UK
    Jan 12, 2012
    92
    The wannabe detective's definitive version to plump for. [Feb 2012, p.101]
See all critic reviews »