Just barely gets a 2.5/5 from me because of nostalgia. Story and characters are both great, the atmosphere is there, the music is incredible, but the gameplay is utterly worthless. It's a detective game where you don't actually have to do any detective work to win. You don't even need to ask the right questions during interrogations. There are sequences where you might have to do something (like tailing a suspect or something) and they literally give you a button prompt to skip the sequence. This barely qualifies as a video game.

An ambitious title from Rockstar, who aimed to push the PS3 engine to its fullest with gameplay that requires reading subtle facial movements of characters to decide whether they're telling the truth in aid of solving various crimes.
The results were rather mixed and sadly the game is seen a bit of a joke nowadays (just search for 'LA Noire VR, not now Phelps!' for a good laugh). But when I first played it, I was gripped and there was simply nothing like it, at least in terms of gameplay (the 40s film noir aesthetic was well done but not entirely new ground).
Regardless of the likelihood of it actually happening, I certainly wouldn't mind Rockstar doing a follow up, especially considering the new possibilities of graphics with upcoming consoles.

LA Noire is a game that I really hoped would be more interesting than it ended up being. It is entertaining enough, it has that typical Rockstar charm (and Rockstar's tendency to burn money on the screen for the most minute things) but it really feels like a missed opportunity.

The game takes place immediately after WW2, which is a great setting, but it feels like the devs were so enamoured with it that they forgot to put any substance in any part of the game.

The gameplay itself is so simplistic and scripted that it may as well not even be there, the investigation segments are really basic and the interrogations are sort of interesting but really badly handled (and it never matters how well you do in any of them). Same can be said for the open world, which was a complete waste of money and time to even have, it looks great but it serves so little purpose that I ended up just skipping the car rides every time.

So all we're really left with is the story, but I felt like it was paced all wrong. The game introduces its characters in the first hour, then everything stops for a solid 10 hours, and at the very last couple hours a story starts to materialize. And even then you're not given much to care for considering that by then the game is scrambling to get some kind of structure back, but it all feels very hollow, especially the very anti-climactic ending.

What I will say about the game though is that the creators really cared for what they were making, and it shows on every aspect of it. Too bad that it didn't really translate to a compelling experience.