I was initially on the fence about purchasing LA Noire as I knew that I was probably suffering from the effects of Day 1 syndrome coupled to just normal boredom until MK gets a patch to deal with some of the netcode issues (by the way I will be updating my review of MK shortly). Anyway, I bought LA Noire this afternoon and I can already say that the game is making me fall into the same patterns I fell into with Heavy Rain. While its true that I haven't gone back and replayed many of the cases I already have a good sense of things I need to do differently within each one after I screwed up. 

The world of 1947 LA is amazing. I can't get enough of it. The cars drive great, the sirens sound realistic, and gangsters will shoot at cops in broad fucking daylight all because one of those cops mouthed off to some low level mafia goomba. While the action in LA Noire takes a backseat to the investigative aspects of the game it is well scripted and fits in really nicely with the overall story. I also like how each case shifts and changes depending on questions that you ask correctly and the amount of evidence that you find. One of the early cases has you investigating a hit-and-run. I wandered around the area listening for the musical cues and managed to find a knife sitting in a trash can covered in blood. The corpse also had puncture wounds on his chest. But were those wounds caused by the hood ornament of the car that hit him or were they caused by a knife?

LA Noire is shaping up to be one of those games that plays on everything I love about noir crime thrillers. Cole Phelps feels like the classic detectives Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe with a hint of Bogart's Rick Blaine from Casablanca. I'll definitely be writing up a more extensive review for this after I finish it. Also on my agenda for this week I will be updating my Mortal Kombat review with some more material regarding the multiplayer content, but here's the one word review....laggy.