Modern gaming meets old-school detective play
Interesting story and sub-stories, with some interesting characters.
Face animation does look great! (when it works. Main character isn't the best example)
Varied action, with some "novel" sections, such as interrogating and investigating, and even car chases have something unique to them.
The Lows:
The best part would be the interrogations.. everything else could be quite a chore sometimes.
Driving, shooting and chasing seem impossible to fail most of the time (never died on a shootout, actually. chasing, well, damn the stupid balancing mini game)
The story is interesting.. but not all of it.
Had to get used to the interrogation mechanisms (multiple choice of truth, doubt and lie (which prompts for which clue to use to support accusation)), especially as in the beginning I could hear myself shouting at Phelps when he changed the topic as I chose doubt. If you choose lie everytime and then back out, not only you will know what accusation phelps will throw at the poor guy (because yes, it might be only vaguely related to the conversation you were having) as well as make you realize you actually have the clue that will support your accusation (even if some are quite bizarre).
and the doubt... jesus. that's evil phelps button. me: "i don't think you're telling the whole thing..." phelps: "PEOPLE ARE DYING AND YOU ARE PROBABLY THE KILLER AND A RAPIST!"
got a bit bored between missions, and spent a lot of intuition points on investigating crime scenes as i just couldn't be bothered (as much as I laughed with phelps picking up the whisky bottle with a quizzical look, while a gun could easily be written off as "irrelevant").
Other random complaints: all the women are unattractive. Ok, I'm not too much into the 40's style and whatever, but it was just wrong. Their hair was always held up tight (which I hate, sure) but even their faces.. they were supposed to be attractive women and they mostly looked like 40yo's with wrinkles and hard edges.
And for the people that complain that interrogating is too difficult and makes them want to restart from scratch.. yes, I felt the same way. Then I figured out you can just quit the mission and come back (takes a minute) and you're usually right before the questioning and then you can do it right.
Ah, and I almost forget: game performance. I mean, jesus, I'm running cod:mw3 pretty flawlessly and some dumb LA noire makes me run with everything on minimum.. and still run bumpy as hell?
Not cool.
All in all, an interesting game with some novelties, definitely worth a play, but nothing extraordinary.