L.A. Noire
Switch

L.A. Noire

(ESRB - Retail Version)

Nov 14, 2017
  • Shooter
  • Strategy
  • Adventure
Developers:
  • Rockstar Games
Offline play
Yes
Download required
Yes
Comments:

Version 1.0, without the 13.1 GB patch. As soon as the game is started, it tells you on the top left hand corner that a download is required to get the full experience. The game cart indicates the download is 6.45 GBs, but since the Switch doesn’t allow to just download certain data, it will download all patches available and currently (July 2023) will download to version 1.2 at 13.1 GBs.

Barely any content is available on the cart which indicates that they used a really small cartridge size.
To start, you can play through every case within “Patrol,” which is your starting title. There are four cases below “Patrol” and all four are available.
From there, you get upgraded to “Traffic”. Here, there are only 3 cases available and those are the following: “The Drivers Seat,” “The Consuls Car” and “A Marriage Made in Heaven”. Once the case “A Marriage made in Heaven” is complete, the game throws you to the main menu and it shows that the 6.45GB patch is required for the full experience. If the option “resume” is clicked (to start where you left off) a black screen appears saying a download is required and an internet connection is needed to acquire the rest of the content. Even when hitting resume, since this is a progressive story game, you aren’t allowed to do anything at all because the black screen appears and nothing else happens. This means you can't explore the world freely.
The previous cases can be replayed under “cases” in the main menu, but that’s the only options available.
Every other case after that is unavailable without the download.

As far as performance, the game runs really well.
Only had one instance where the game seemed to slow down a bit, but it fixed itself rather quickly.
Another issue noticed is in the flashback cutscenes, where the main character is in the military. The lip syncing in those is pretty bad. They don’t match up at all within these cutscenes.

Tested by Nintendo Revised on Switch OLED