L.A. Noire: The Complete Edition coming to PC

David Kenkel 29 Sep, 2011 at 1:12am ET Article published in Gaming

Get excited PC Gamers, Rockstar is paying attention to you, too.

Rockstar announced today that L.A. Noire: The Complete Edition will launch on PC on Steam, and OnLive on November 8, 2011 and in Europe on November 11, 2011.

In addition to the original full game, L.A. Noire: The Complete Edition for PC will include all the previously released downloadable content from the console versions, including the “Nicholson Electroplating” Arson case, the “Reefer Madness” Vice case, “The Consul’s Car” Traffic case, “The Naked City” Vice case and “A Slip of the Tongue” Traffic case. Limited details are available for now, but Rockstar has promised more in the coming month.

This is great news for PC gamers, who have traditionally been left out in the dark by Rockstar in favor of the console counterparts. Now, when can we expect to see Red Dead Redemption?

System Specifications:
•    Operating System: Windows 7 / Windows Vista Service Pack 1 / Windows XP Service Pack 3 / OnLive for PC or Mac
•    Processor: Intel Dual Core 2.2GHz to Quad Core 3.2GHz / AMD Dual Core 2.4Ghz to Quad Core 3.2Ghz
•    RAM: 2GB to 8GB
•    Hard drive space: 16GB
•    Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT 512MB to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1536MB / Radeon HD 3000 512MB to Radeon HD 6850 1024MB
•    Sound Card: 100% DirectX 9 Compatible
•    DVD Drive

Comments

29 Sep 2011 ~ 12:12pm Cliff_Forster Hell Yes! My brother has played it on console, he says its more of an "interactive experience" than a game, but that is actually a really great thing. I'm a huge fan of the film genre, so I'm pretty confident I'll love this. Can't wait.
29 Sep 2011 ~ 12:27pm Koreish Eh. If you don't know anything about the Black Dahlia murders and you enjoy repetitive game play then I guess it's for you.
29 Sep 2011 ~ 4:20pm NiGHTS I've no idea why people expected this thing to be an action packed adventure game with tons of shootouts. If it's got Rockstar in the title, everyone somehow assumes it's GTA ____. Red Dead Redemption was GTA with horses, LA Noire was GTA 1950...

The game's amazing for what it is, an interactive Sunset Blvd./Chinatown/Maltese Falcon/etc. I mean, noir is even in the title, I feel like you should know what to expect. I'll have my review make believers of you all, yet, see?
29 Sep 2011 ~ 6:08pm UPSLynx I LOVE noir, and I've been wanting to play this game since it was released. Wasn't willing to touch it on consoles.

That being said, this is Rockstar. They've become notorious for abusing the PC market. As much as I hate to admit it, this is going to be a shoddy port with terrible DRM.

The story of GTAIV on the PC is one of the most insulting moves to PC gamers. Red Dead was skipped entirely. I have no reason to believe that this port won't suck.
29 Sep 2011 ~ 6:16pm UPSLynx Side note - I just re-read that GTAIV blog post for the first time since 2008. I couldn't help but notice something I said in my second comment on the thread:

"You know, this game WILL be good on PC. Eventually. They'll probably patch it enough until it works. And once that happens, it'll be worth the money. BUt in the mean time, we're stuck with a very unpredictable mess.

Because of all of this, early reports are showing poor sales figures for GTA4 PC.

And do you know what'll happen next? Rockstar will come out and say it- 'PC gaming is dead.' and they'll probably limit, if not stop selling their games on the platform.

Honestly, they'd probably be doing us a favor. But Mark my words, it'll happen."

Everything in that statement was a proper prediction. The game was patched over the course of a year and a half, and now it's an awesome experience on the PC. Furthermore, the low sales actually prompted Rockstar to cool it on the PC. They didn't release Red Dead, and they originally didn't want to release this on PC. And if my unfortunate prediction is correct, this port will continue the cycle.

All that in 2008.
29 Sep 2011 ~ 6:42pm primesuspect
29 Sep 2011 ~ 6:44pm Winfrey NostradamusLynx

Hopefully they don't eff up the port, L.A. Noire was always intriguing to me.
29 Sep 2011 ~ 8:00pm Koreish

NiGHTS wrote:

I've no idea why people expected this thing to be an action packed adventure game with tons of shootouts. If it's got Rockstar in the title, everyone somehow assumes it's GTA ____. Red Dead Redemption was GTA with horses, LA Noire was GTA 1950...

The game's amazing for what it is, an interactive Sunset Blvd./Chinatown/Maltese Falcon/etc. I mean, noir is even in the title, I feel like you should know what to expect. I'll have my review make believers of you all, yet, see?

Never said it was a bad game. But it does get repetitive and as I know a lot about history and the Black Dahlia murders the story wasn't as intriguing to me as it certainly could be for others. It's a beautiful game and it controls well. And the technology behind the face and motion capture is really interesting and something I hope other games will start to pick up.
30 Sep 2011 ~ 11:55am Cliff_Forster Bobby,

That all occurred to me too. I'll hold onto hope that we are wrong.

What I would guess, they will correct the DRM issues this time. I think the market is headed that way, they risk so much PR and headache for something that is more or less pointless. I think publishers are finally getting wise to this, and I at least mildly optimistic they will not make that error again.

As far as it being a shoddy console port, I think that's pretty much assured, the question will be, how shoddy?
30 Sep 2011 ~ 1:19pm Butters I absolutely loved the GTA4 series on PC. Being the late to the party-wait-4-discounted price PC gamer I am, I bypassed all the issues and was injected into a game where I couldn't get enough GTA4 & EFLC. It creates fulfulling criminal world that I couldn't possbily dream about.

I'm the front in line for this retail and only wish RDR can be had on PC.
1 Oct 2011 ~ 5:13am RootWyrm It just.. confuses the hell out of me.

GTA: Great on PC.
GTA2: Also, that.
GTA3: You guessed it.
GTA:SA: Hmm, could be a trend here, yes.

Then comes GTA4. What the hell. Did Michael Dell kick Rockstar's entire board in the balls in 2006 or something?
1 Oct 2011 ~ 4:04pm UPSLynx Lines up perfectly with the era of console gaming really challenging the PC in the graphics/functionality department. There was more money to be made in this latest console generation than any prior, so developers refocused.
17 Jan 2012 ~ 11:10am Cliff_Forster Just gonna give this a bump because I'm playing this game on PC now. Picked it up for $12.50 during the Steam Holiday sales.

The Good = The narrative is as good as any game I have ever played. I can't wait to see what happens to these characters next. I could make a solid case for LA Noire being as good as any big budget Hollywood film after the first couple acts alone.

The Bad = I'm not sure it's that bad, but depending on your point of view as a PC gamer, this game just feels allot better on a 360 controller than a mouse and keyboard. If you are thinking about picking it up for PC, I highly recommend having a USB 360 controller. It's completely plug an play that way. The mouse and keyboard interface just feels wonky to me, it makes driving and 3rd person action sequences cumbersome.

The Ugly = This is one of the worst console ports I have ever played. I have really nice PC hardware, a six core rig with a nice stable overclock, two Radeon 6850's in crossfire, 8 GB of performance RAM, heck, I even have it installed on a fast sandforce based SSD, yet this games framerate lags something awful. Even if I drop the resolution and tune down the settings it lags. I've tried a variety of things from messing around with console commands, to changing the number of active cores, to disabling crossfire, you name it, I've tried it, and no matter what you do the framerate sucks (I believe it tops out at 30 by design). For those of us used to hitting monitor refresh in most games we play, dipping down to 20 FPS in spots is just unbearable, not to mention the occasional sudden hitches when you are turning , it makes it nearly unplayable. Fortunately this game does not seem to require allot of precision and twitch reactions so I'm going to soldier on through it, but, I am disappointed by Rockstars porting effort. Not only is the framerate an issue, sometimes cars will just suddenly disappear, other times the horizon pop up is some of the worst I've ever seen in a game (Think, some of the vegetation in Crysis, except, now, its a giant building that just comes out from nowhere all at once). I'm not sure how many of those issues are prevalent in the console version, but the PC version is definitely buggy as hell. It's a shame, because there is so much to love about LA Noire. I hope Rockstar is working on patching it to make the experience better. I won't go so far as to call the game broken in a technical sense, but it is extremely shoddy.
17 Jan 2012 ~ 11:51am Basil Yeah, it's a pretty horrific port, runs like a powerpoint presentation on anything like decent settings here.

Still, the gameplay is novel and story engaging. Cole's a massive douche but fun to play.
17 Jan 2012 ~ 12:18pm NiGHTS I'm incredibly biased when it comes to Rockstar titles, but I really feel that any of their most recent releases could easily be made into a very compelling movie without any adjustment to the characters, the story, or the way it all plays out in the end.

Red Dead Redemption's ending was nuts*, Grand Theft Auto's was compelling, and LA Noire was as it should have been (doing a great job of wrapping all the different storylines together - provided you collected the newspapers along the way).

They are, however, also well known for terrible PC ports. While this doesn't affect me very much (I have a 360 I play most Rockstar titles on first) I can see how it would definately be a turnoff. Which is a shame, really, because I honestly feel these guys could be PC powerhouses if they put their time and effort into it. For games as amazing as theirs, poor ports is really a terrible injustice to the experience you SHOULD have with them.

*and to a certain extent how it REALLY ends about 30mins later