Sleeping Dogs is a dirty open world sandbox type game in the heart of Hong Kong China. The game catapults players into the role of undercover cop Wei Shen, tasked with taking down one of the world’s most fearsome criminal organizations from the inside, the Triads.
Sleeping Dogs isn’t your general Grand Theft Auto copy. This is a new take on an old genre with recent titans of the genre being, Fallout 3, L.A Noire and Mafia II, your character Wei Shen, doesn’t have Homicidal violent tendencies just because he’s a bad guy looking to make a bit of cash. Shen is a well thought out and complicated man as you will see throughout the game with his character evolving with his surroundings, an undercover policemen with plenty of experience in both the United States and Hong Kong who returns to his native land in order to help get the city’s increasing criminal enterprises back under control. But as Shen gets pulled further and further into the Triad underworld he starts to unravel, what he wants to do and with what side of the law becoming increasingly distorted about what is right and what is wrong.
Early on it’s explained that Shen is actually an undercover police officer, sent into Hong Kong to climb the ranks of the Triads and take them down from the inside, creating a conflicted character that’s easy to sympathize with. This what seems like little part in the game plays huge factors in both the story and the player. you work for an American Police agency trying to shut down a certain part of the criminals in the city, specifically the people wing used to run with Shen he was younger.
The early stages also introduce you to some of the atmospheric pleasures of this fictional Hong Kong. People believably appear to go about their business; cooks fry things up in restaurants, merchants hock their wares at the marketplace, and dancers perform at a street festival. What’s absent from the behavior of non-player characters is almost as important as what’s present. Strangers can sometimes be overheard discussing story events, but they don’t constantly call out to you as if their existences revolved around you. (They do, of course, but it shouldn’t seem like they do.) Unfortunately, close inspection can shatter the illusion. Character models look like plastic dolls when viewed up close, and some gestures characters make are rigid and unnatural, this needs to be worked on, but it isn’t much to sacrifice to the rest of the city.
The controls for this game do seem very similar to Grand Theft Auto, except when it comes to combat, specifically unarmed hand to hand combat. A series of clicking or button hitting will throw out light to med hits when a hold of the same would do a power attack like a roundhouse kick, or an uppercut. you can also grapple in this game which you cannot do in other like for like games, whilst you grapple your enemy certain things in the environment will glow red, this means you can do something to the guy you are holding. For example if you see a glowing fan on a rooftop you can slam his face into it and grind it along the blades whilst blood shoots out like a fountain. (if you’re into that kinds stuff)
You’ll constantly be shown new triads bosses or characters as you work your way towards the top of the food chain, all the while needing to balance out your work with the police, making for entertaining (slightly repetitive) missions. The characters you work for lack the colorful flare of those found in games like Grand Theft Auto and you’ll never feel all that connected to any of them, even if you fall for the undercover cop angle, which definitely adds to the tried and true open-world story formula. This mechanic of the game works well and the developers do well to balance this out.
Each part of the game has some rough edges, from an occasionally annoying camera angles to some collision detection problems, but the problems were never enough to keep us down for more than a few seconds. Melee is as brutal as it is well-developed, Wei can take on limitless foes, waiting until they’re about to strike before executing a counter-attack (which is the way to play this game at more than most points). He can go on the offensive, too, using dozens of abilities and combos to break the arms and legs of his opponents. The more varied his attacks are the higher his Face meter rises, eventually causing his enemies to flinch once they’ve seen exactly how powerful the Triad member is. Face meter makes you regain health faster, and any foes will tremble at the sight of you when you get it high enough.
Before this end’s we will warn you if you are playing on a PC with the ultra high graphics do not switch to another graphics property within the first 2 missions. This will either freeze the game or the shading will mess up and you will fall through the bottom of the earth. Good Luck.
All in all this game was a very sufficient new title, and one that may grow to be another franchise like other games in the genre. For this we are giving it a:
8.5/10
Written by Ben Burgess
Since there is no longer a NFLPA (union) they will coctarnt with a few stars and 90% of the players will be nameless and numberless. I’ve heard because of this they may not have a 2012 version.