L.A. Noire

This one has been on my "Games to Platinum" list for quite some time. LA Noire is a fantastic, quirky, open world detective game, set in the 1940s and first released in 2011 but most importantly for me, no online trophies!

I originally played the game back in 2011 but since lost my original save file and so I played it again in 2016. After having just beat the game I put it back on the shelf and decided the platinum would have to wait for another day. I had acquired quite a lot of the trophies during the first and second playthrough and the main trophies I had left were achieving a five star rating on all of the cases, finding all of the collectables and then a few trophies relating to some random specific activities. It was time to don my detective hat and get going on finding some trophies.

Cases

Shamus to the Stars
Complete all story cases with a five star rating

This is the trophy for getting five stars on every case in the game. To obtain five-stars in a case you have to, pretty much, find every clue, get every question right in the interviews, and cause very little damage to vehicles and the city property. This is quite a time consuming trophy because for some people it will require you to replay every mission in the game and you'll likely need a guide as some of the questions and answers are not that intuitive and you can easily go wrong. Fortunately for me I only had a handful of cases with which I didn't have five stars so, using an online guide I was able to get through these and they were a fun refresher. The only challenge I was finding was that some cases had a car chase in. This is tricky when you don't want to damage your vehicle and rack up the costs to avoid getting five stars so most of my pursuits were very leisurely, fortunately if you just tail the suspect they will usually spin out and crash, you don't have to ram them off the road. If you have a lot to do make sure you look at your other trophies as it makes sense to collect some vehicles and make sure you use all the guns as you play.

The Long Arm of the Law
Complete all street crime case

The game has 40 very small cases called Street Crimes, you can respond to these whilst you are driving around the city either on a case or in free roam. I had done about half already and managed to work through them in the free roam sections. They are all really simple, usually just shoot a bunch of people or do a car chase. Occasionally you'd have a few on-foot chases which can become a bit tedious but another simple trophy in the bag.

Collectables

Hollywoodland / Star Map
Find and inspect all gold film reels / Discover all landmark locations around the city

These collectable trophies are for finding all 50 gold film reels hidden throughout the city and for finding the 30 landmarks. The landmarks are much easier as they are tracked on the map so you can easily see what you have done. The film reels are much more tedious. Nothing for it but slowly working your way through them. This map is really great for following along . Whilst you are driving around collecting all the film reels, take the opportunity to find the hidden vehicles and to keep commandeering vehicles as one of the worst trophies in the game is to drive all 95 vehicles!

Auto Fanatic
Drive every vehicle in the city

This is one of those trophies where you wonder why you bother to platinum games. Drive all 95 vehicles in the game. In the main menu there exists a "Vehicle Showroom" which does keep track of the vehicles you have driven. But there is a problem, to our eyes all of these cars look so similar. It becomes really difficult to tell which cars you have been in and which you are looking for. At one point I caused a 20 car traffic jam and I just systematically commandeered every single car hoping that one of them was one I needed.

Fortunately there is a trick. If you go into the vehicle showroom and hover over a car you need and then go back into the free roam for the homicide, it will load that car in the car park opposite. It's fairly reliable. There are some great guides online but sadly, another tedious trophy.

Random Activities

Roscoe and Friends
Kill at least one bad guy with every gun

This is by far the worst trophy in my opinion. You have to kill an enemy with every weapon in the game and there are only 9 weapons, should be simple. Sadly there is no way to keep track of what you need and most of the weapons are buried in specific locations during specific cases. For example the flamethrower only appears a few times. So I found myself replaying lots of cases to get back to the weapons. But the cases are not easy to speed through, you still have to find clues and perform interviews to progress the cases. If you are planning a run, make sure you do this during your 5-star cases run as it will save a lot of time.

All in all I reckon it took me about 10 hours to come back and platinum the game and I don't think I can recommend this one. If you are a big fan of the game, which I am, and you enjoy just driving around then you will have a good time. I was enjoying my time with the game for the most part but a few of the trophies are just plain annoying. So this platinum is definitely for LA Noire enthusiasts.