L.A. Noire

Genre: Graphic Adventure / Open-World Action-RPG

Players: 1

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

When LA Noire was first released in 2011 on PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, it was a surprisingly refreshing take on the world of crime coming from the Rockstar Games, best known for the Grand Theft Auto franchise, mixing Graphic Adventure detective work with Open-World Action-RPG gameplay. Where Grand Theft Auto was generally action-packed, satirical, and at times gleefully chaotic, L.A. Noire was straight-laced and serious, thoughtful and methodical, and intent of representing a somewhat realistic experience of a hard-boiled detective with gameplay that emphasized clue-gathering, questioning witnesses, and interrogating suspects, all just as much if not more than shootouts, fistfights, and thrilling chases.

In the time since its original release, this game has since received a port in 2017 to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, including all post-release DLC content. The Nintendo Switch release is particularly noteworthy as the first Rockstar Games release on a Nintendo home console since Bully: Scholarship Edition on the Wii in 2008, nearly a full decade earlier, and the first Rockstar title on any Nintendo platform since Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on Nintendo DS in 2009.

Before getting into the content of L.A. Noire’s Nintendo Switch release, we need to address one major hurdle regarding this game’s release on Nintendo Switch – the file size. LA Noire takes up a whopping 29GB of space in your Nintendo Switch’s internal storage, and even if you get the physical release you’ll still need to set aside over half that amount in your internal storage to play the game. This is understandable given the humongous amount of voiced dialogue within the game, not to mention the detailed textures the game’s 3D visuals use, but it’s still quite a lot, and players who don’t have a MicroSD card are strongly urged to get one before playing this game (and in fact, the game recommends getting a card with a specific read speed).

All of this is not for nothing. Even 14 years later, L.A. Noire is still impressive to look at, even if the graphics have aged some. The game’s locales are highly-detailed and filled with activity, and still to this day the detail of character faces is still impressive, especially with the way faces have been “motion scanned” to represent the way real human faces move while talking. In addition, you have numerous other visual effects, such as real-time lighting and shadows, glass refraction, surface reflections. On Nintendo Switch, this runs at 1920×1080 dynamic resolution (dropping down to 1440×1080 at times) in docked mode, with 1280×720 dynamic resolution (down to 960×720) in handheld mode (thanks to Digital Foundry for the numbers!). While it’s no longer at the bleeding-edge of graphics, it’s still a visually-impressive game, even on Nintendo Switch.

Unfortunately, on Nintendo Switch those graphics also come with some major caveats – somewhat long loading times, lots of aliasing, dithering, pop-in, and a strange effect where objects like telephone poles and buildings have a strange “shadow” or “halo” when viewed against the sky. In addition, the game’s normally 30FPS framerates suffer some slowdown at times when the game gets particularly busy, such as one of the earliest cases that requires you to chase down a fleeing suspect. Given that this game was running on hardware that is now two generations old, it’s disheartening to see this game struggling on Nintendo Switch.

At the very least, the Nintendo Switch version hasn’t had any sort of problems with its sound design, which combines good sound effects, superb voice acting, and great thematically-appropriate music that does a wonderful job giving this game the “noir” vibe it’s aiming for.

I suppose I should mention that the Nintendo Switch release of the game does include additional touchscreen and motion-controlled movement of the camera. Both of these additions are nice gestures, but the former is unnecessary, and the latter only works with Joy-Con controllers, is awkward to activate, and isn’t very helpful anyway. The Nintendo Switch version also supports HD rumble, which is actually quite nice and helpful with subtle vibrations when you’re manipulating evidence and looking for important details.

As for the gameplay itself, LA Noire does some things brilliantly, and other things not so much. The Graphic Adventure elements here are superb, with a really excellent simulation that does a great job putting you in the role of a 1940s police detective, interviewing suspects and looking for evidence. It’s a little irritating that some of the hints you’re meant to pick up on in interrogations are subtle and getting things wrong and wanting to restart will force you to restart the entire chapter you’re on. And sometimes simply walking within range of a character you can question starts the questioning, even if you’re not ready and haven’t inspected all of the evidence yet.

The game’s story is also fantastic, not only drawing you in to the mystery of each crime you’re investigating, but also building up an interesting backstory for the game’s central characters, dating back to their history during World War II. Plus, the characters all have distinctive personalities that are wonderfully fleshed-out.

That said, I’ve gotta’ point out this game’s waste of an open world. There’s just not much to do in this game’s detailed recreation of 1940s Los Angeles, apart from occasional side-missions, and a few hidden items throughout the city. While it does add to the reality of the game to have to navigate city streets to get from one place to another, far too often this is just padding that has little effect on the gameplay.

Also, what action is here seems extremely contextual – you aren’t allowed to pull out your gun at just any time, and can only start a fistfight when the game is already telling you to do it. Sure, this just reflects your character’s position as an upstanding cop, but the fact that these aren’t a part of your regular toolset means that when you can do them, it feels like a minigame rather than a full part of the overall experience. And let’s be honest, it would have really added to this game to decide whether your character is the violent unhinged loose cannon sorta’ cop, or the goody-goody by-the-book type, and even better if doing the former led to some nasty consequences. But alas, players are railroaded into the by-the-book route.

It’s a shame that we haven’t really seen an attempt to follow up L.A. Noire with something that realizes the ambition this game reached for but didn’t quite achieve. However, what’s here is still an excellent detective game with a great story, even if the other parts of the game are sub-par. And as for the Nintendo Switch port, what’s here is good but flawed, much as the game itself is. Still, if Nintendo Switch is your platform of choice and you’re looking to do some detective work, this is absolutely worth getting.

tl;dr – L.A. Noire combines Graphic Adventure and Open-World Action-RPG elements into an ambitious detective game that’s a bit uneven, with the detective stuff and hard-boiled story generally excellent but other parts of the game underbaked. Similarly, the Nintendo Switch version of the game does some elements of the game well, but other parts of the performance leave a lot to be desired. Still, this is a superb detective game, and this is a good way to play it on the go.

Grade: B+

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

L.A. Noire

Genre: Graphic Adventure / Open-World Action-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

L.A. Noire was a truly great but flawed game, and likewise its Nintendo Switch port was overall good, but also really flawed. However, a lot of what was wrong here seems ripe for improvement on Nintendo Switch 2, so is it?

Well, most noticeable right from the start are the improvements to loading times. On the original Nintendo Switch, it took 14 seconds to load the game to the opening logos, and another 29 seconds to load up your save file. On Nintendo Switch 2, those times are reduced to 6 seconds and 10 seconds, a pretty huge improvement.

In addition, we also see some excellent improvements to performance. Because the original game used dynamic resolution, there were occasional drops when things got busy, but not so here – the game consistently at its full resolution – 1920×1080 in docked mode, and 1280×720 in handheld mode. What’s more, the nasty framerate drops that the game suffered on Nintendo Switch are gone here, with the game running at a steady 30FPS.

Bear in mind, that still can’t compare to the game’s performance on even last-gen platforms like the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and this version of the game still suffers all of the other issues I pointed to above, such as aliasing, pop-in, and dithering, although that odd “halo” around objects up against the sky is apparently gone here. However, I do notice a bit of brief “freezing” that happens every now and then when characters are speaking in witness interviews. So overall, outside of the performance improvements, I would say that the grab-bag of graphical issues is about on par on the Nintendo Switch 2, even if those issues differ slightly.

In short, playing L.A. Noir on Nintendo Switch 2 is still no substitute for playing it on another modern platform. However, the improvements to loading times and the much more stable performance are a huge improvement, and they definitely make this a much better way to play the game than on the original Nintendo Switch. And if you crave an excellent detective game, this is not one you’ll want to miss.

tl;dr – L.A. Noire combines Graphic Adventure and Open-World Action-RPG elements into an ambitious detective game that’s a bit uneven, with the detective stuff and hard-boiled story generally excellent but other parts of the game underbaked. On Nintendo Switch 2, the performance is still far from what you see on other modern platforms, but it’s much better than on the original Nintendo Switch. Overall, this is a superb detective game, and this is a good way to play it on the go.

Grade: A-

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