The Story was pure and utter garbage,the flashbacks and people motives are all over the place, many parts are hilariously funny like the betrayal other make absolutely no sense,the Cole story is one of the worse in video game, the way Cole and Jack Kelso story line clash is really weak you can read shit on fanfiction.com better than this crap, the characters are not flashed out like Cole himself and the whore or Cole's wife,Also that ending..that fucking ending.
McNamara was writing for headless monkeys apparently ( that or for zombies), because in the cases when evidence or clues point their fingers to a suspect then he is not the criminal, very poor writing from McNamara here, hell some of the suspects even ran away in the streets from the cops, put himself and other people in danger,or trying to burn their crap, or even admitting they did it during the integrations,when in the end they are not the real criminal/killer.
As for the "cinematic experience" part..McNamara use actors and it has "face acting" maybe but it's really not cinematic at all,the presentation is years away from from being anything close cinematic,the integrations parts are pathetic as Oblivion conversations, it's one camera on that face the other on the other face,this is some George Lucas shit right here, even that abomination called Heavy Rain is more cinematic than LA Noire and has actually cinematography,real camera work and shit, McNamara game have nothing at all.
Also the gameplay is the worst thing in this thing called a "game" the shooting/gun play is poor,driving is bad, the control is even worst even the heavily scripted almost on rail chase sequences are completely awful, the street crimes are repetitive as fuck too, and why the most soulless dull city in the history of open world games is even here is beyond me.