Los Angeles, the city where crime never sleeps. Good thing you're the best detective the LAPD can offer. Your job is to investigate, find clues in the scene, and interrogate witnesses (most of them are liars).
IIRC, this is the only R* published/developed game where you're on the right side of the law, not counting Table Tennis of course. This means you can legally steal cars and drive over pedestrians but you CANNOT shoot a fleeing suspect, he must first take a hostage before you can actually kill him :P.
Developed by Team Bondi(their first and last) and directed by Brendan Mcnamara who is also responsible for The Getaway series on the PS2; This game uses the revolutionary MotionScan(?) technology which captures actor's facial expressions accurately which makes interrogations/interviews great and fun to execute.
L.A. Noire is a solid game but with flaws, first is the open world city - there's nothing to do aside from finding exotic cars, you can't even shoot peds since your gun only pops up when on a mission. I've also noticed slowdowns when roaming but not much and also AA is poorly implemented, there are still noticeable jaggies even on the highest especially on buildings. A bad port I guess just like GTAIV (¬_¬).
