➤ LA Noire's review on PlayStation 4 🎮

It's interesting to talk about Team Bondi again so long after its closure, but the reality is that the very fate of the LA Noire authoring team would have deserved an investigation by Detective Phelps, protagonist of the game. From the controversial relationship with Rockstar, which according to some would have managed to save the project and take it to stores instead of letting it sink well before the seven years it took to realize it, to the harsh working conditions during the so-called "crunch", there are still many aspects of the story that appear unclear, in the face of a fate that can very well act as a warning for the current realities involved in the videogame sector: sometimes it is not enough to create a successful product to save goat and cabbage.

A bit like a rock icon who disappears at the peak of his career leaving an album to be released posthumously, Team Bondi has given us an experience, that of LA Noire, which makes its return today with a pleasant remaster in which inevitable technical shortcomings of the original production are somehow masked by a boost in resolution, brought up to 4K on PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X. All while facial animation technology still manages to amaze and fascinate, always maintaining a very high level of acting and helping to create those atmospheres - noir, in fact - on which the game has built its success. So welcome back to 1947 Los Angeles.

The strange case of Cole Phelps

A former marine with a dark past that will inevitably return to haunt him, the protagonist of LA Noire is the detective Cole Phelps, rising star of the Los Angeles Police Department, tense nerves and great intuition. During the campaign, enriched in this remaster by the addition of all the DLCs for a total of about thirty hours of gameplay, our task will be to have new cases assigned to us as we investigate, to punctually go to the spot on board the order vehicle with our companion and there to explore the crime scene in search of clues. The vibration of the controller will signal the presence of evidence in the immediate vicinity, which once collected we can examine using the analog sticks to rotate them and discover any engravings, marks or details useful for investigations. After this initial phase, translated into notes in our precious notebook, we will be able to talk to any witnesses by conducting real interrogations.

It is at this juncture that the facial animation technology employed by Team Bondi makes the difference, revealing to us through glances and grimaces if a person is telling the truth or is hiding something from us. In the face of each answer provided, we can decide to indulge the suspect, force our hand if we believe he is lying or even make precise accusations., which however will have to be supported by evidence. There are right or wrong paths during interrogations, and taking the first ones will allow us to get a higher score and earn bonuses such as intuition points, essential for speeding up certain practices, first of all the identification of evidence or the elimination of incorrect reactions during the interviews. In short, a sweet and "understanding" progression, the one proposed by LA Noire, with a view to an experience that perhaps tends to repeat itself a little and lose its bite during the central phase of the campaign, but which then redeems itself in a big way in view of the the final.

PlayStation 4 Trophies

If we consider both the main campaign and the various DLCs integrated into the LA Noire experience, there are sixty-three Trophies contained in this remaster. Many of them are obtained simply by completing the various cases that are proposed to us in our growth path within the LAPD, while others revolve around an almost perfect conduct of interrogations. Obviously there is no shortage of achievements related to exploration, between distance traveled by car and emergency calls to which we have answered.

Still fascinating

The linearity in the progression of the game, with the cases that follow one another and each show a different side of Los Angeles immediately after the war, it is broken by the possibility of answering sudden calls during the various journeys and therefore devote himself to the pursuit of robbers and scammers, or even to engage in firefights that reveal a solid and consistent combat system, which at the time of the original publication showed the evident signs of a strong proximity to the experience of Grand Theft Auto . The same guide system, which leads us from one side of the city to the other while our companion invariably fills us with chatter, in pure Rockstar style, making us commit all sorts of infractions if we have to follow the dialogues through subtitles (the game is spoken in English, for obvious reasons of correspondence to the facial animations), it turns out to be simple but pleasant, devoid of problems related to the management of the view, although precisely in this situation the technical limits of production come to the surface.

The increase in resolution (but not in the frame rate, blocked at 30 frames per second due to the fact that the numerous cinematics grafted into the normal gameplay sequences were made with that refresh rate in mind) certainly has the merit of rejuvenating the '' appearance of the scenarios and polygonal models, adding sharper textures to some surfaces and significantly improving the reflections on the bodywork, but the geometries remain those of almost seven years ago and in particular the visual distance highlights a game world substantially less rich and detailed than the current open world, which often and willingly resorts to "fogs" and pop-ups to mask the engine's inability to render distant objects. In short, LA Noire feels the full weight of its years and in this sense the presence of Photo Mode seems perhaps out of place, but in terms of atmosphere and direction it is still confirmed today as an excellent, peculiar and very enjoyable product. Also thanks to the aforementioned dialogues in English, recited with great competence, and to a soundtrack that manages to best capture the spirit of those years and the style of the opera.

Comment

Tested version PlayStation 4 Resources4Gaming.com

8.0

Readers (41)

8.6

Your vote

LA Noire is still today a solid, engaging title, impeccably directed and capable of offering lasting entertainment thanks to the inclusion of the various DLCs in the structure of the basic campaign. The events of detective Phelps, the various cases he is investigating and the shadows of his past contribute to creating a story that is certainly worth retracing, although it is clear and evident how this remaster is aimed above all at those who have not had way of trying his hand at the title of Team Bondi almost seven years ago. On the technical front, the remastering work certainly improves the graphics in various ways, but the age of production is felt all and it is inevitable to find the typical shortcomings of the past generation of consoles.