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Is It Worth My Time Playing Sleeping Dogs?

Posted by Edward Drummond on Sat, Sep 22, 2012


Grand Theft Auto: Hong K– umm, Sleeping Dogs shows you all the joys and trials of organized crime with a beautiful backdrop of modern-day Hong Kong in a energetic, movielike look at the open-world 3rd person action-adventure genre. But how strong truly is its Kung-fu? Enter Wei Shen, an undercover police officer who is given the herculean task of infiltrating the Sun On Yee, one of China’s many organized crime families, or Triads. Wei is deep undercover (read as nearly in over his head), in an underworld where snitches and police are executed with impunity. Any mistake will end up with him floating face down in the island’s surrounding waters. His charade is a difficult one, but our Wei is driven by revenge, so his road into the depths of the Hong Kong criminal world is dark and twisted.

Anyone who has played the Grand Theft Auto series (GTA 1 through somewhere around 15 I believe) will notice some familiar mechanisms (car hijacking, the entirety of the island-city of Hong Kong to explore on foot, moped, street bike, sports car…) in Sleeping Dogs, making the inevitable comparison: can Sleeping Dogs survive in the shadow of GTA or is it worth playing Sleeping Dogs? The answer is a resounding yes, very much Yes. Not only does the game survive in GTA’s shadow, it makes some drastic improvements which means RockStar Games (the creator of GTA) needs to step up its “game” so to speak if it wants to keep at the top of the charts. Sleeping Dogs puts itself ahead by quite a few methods but one stands out:

Body. There is something beautiful about a game that so immerses you in the game that you feel yourself physically leaning in your chair as you round a corner on a street bike, or moving with your character in the
 middle of a particularly graphic street fight with 5+ thugs. When the game is written like a well written action movie, there is a certain magic that happens, drawing you into the main character and letting you get to know those that surround him. You get to feel the hard choices and consequences of the atrocities Wei must commit to be part of an organization bound by spit blood and an antiquated sense of honor and duty despite his police background and his own family issues which brought him to that specific point.

There is a fine balance between being undercover and running amok, something that factors into every mission. In true RPG fashion, you earn experience during missions. There are two experience bars, one for your Triad based actions and one for your police actions. Each side has their own unlockable abilities ranging from being able to steal cars without setting off alarms to doing more damage with melee weapons. Leveling up really does improve your character as well as add to the variety of shenanigans your character can engage in. In addition to this, you are responsible for keeping face, a level of status in the community. Completing missions (or “favors” in the game parlay) results in more people liking you, allowing you access to better clothes and faster cars.

Back to the duality of violence and discretion, police experience is often subtracted for things like property damage (although you lose police experience but gain money for running over parking meters at high speed, a narrative on the joys of parking in Northampton perhaps?), killing innocents, being clumsy and the like. This results in a very distinct line between getting results in a car chase scene and using some discretion to avoid killing civilians and destroying everything you see.

Run, Gun, Drive and Roundhouse kick!

There would be no point in playing Hong Kong Action movies without gratuitous martial arts. Wei Shen is a student of Kung Fu (and, in proper action movie style, in one scene you encounter your old teacher who is saddened at your apparent Triad affiliations), who uses the environment around him to devastating effect. Using a hand-to-hand combat system similar to Batman: Arkham Asylum/City free-flow system, you have an easy to control fighter capable of taking on MANY baddies at once. Using your feet, fists, purses and counter moves, Wei can keep the bad guys under control even when surrounded.
The environment provides many other ways to dispatch your enemies via smashing them into urinals, A/C extractor fans and aquariums (like in the image to the left). As you use more creative methods, your Triad experience bar rises as they reward your “bad” behavior with more ways to dispatch the endless onslaught of thugs. Performing combos is simple, although timing the button presses can be a slight task on a PC, meaning less time is spent on learning moves than using them to master the combat situation. There are food vendors all around the city which can each provide different bonuses ranging from melee attack boosts to speeding up your health regeneration. Since the city is a big playground, you can use the built in parkour movement system to explore, as well as chase down snitches and find items to boost your health and compliment of hand-to-hand tactics through the Health Shrines and Jade Statues scattered around the city.

A bit of the ol' ultra-violence

When we said “kung-fu, we probably should have said GUN-fu (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GunFu), although shooting does not make up the majority of the combat in this game.
Hong Kong has fewer guns than the 2nd amendment touting USA, meaning that the use of guns is much more surgical, their inclusion in a fight making a large impact in the gameplay. There is limited ammo for the ranged weapons and melee weapons are used very little, making the unarmed combat never lose its value. There is a decent cover system for the use of firearms, and you can use the parkour system to vault over objects in movie-star slow-mo to take out the baddies in cinematic style. Streetraces are a part of this game, and the driving style is far more arcade then realistic which is perfectly fine for the balance. As a result, the driving is faster with easy handling, which comes in handy when you go into Matrix-like slowed time to pop your head out the window to shoot out another car’s tires or to jump on another vehicle at 60 miles per hour and hijack it by jumping 10-30 feet from your moving car onto theirs. Yes, just like in the action movies.

EXTREME TOURISTING!

Beyond the simple fighting, there are many sights to see while on your brutal digital vacation in Hong Kong. Bored? Take in the sights and sounds of the cock fights in the bay, or racing bikes and sports cars through the crowded streets. Need to
earn some money? Why not steal and fence some cars, or run collections for the local crime lords. Need to feel the thrill of performance? Why not try your hand at some karaoke while you date one of the many lady-friends you can meet in game. Final words: This is a fantastic game with amazing depth. Each fight makes me feel like I am living out a John Woo movie and the characters are immersive and realistic. On the downside, some of the key press timing is difficult for parkour and fighting, resulting in the occasional slipup and curse at your mouse. I hear this is a common problem across all gaming platforms for this game, so perhaps it is something they can patch in any of the future updates they have planned over the next 6 months.

Downloadable content has been announced to be release over a 6 month track, ranging from SWAT vans to new street races.The developers have stated that they are using player feedback to design and produce new content to not just extend the lifespan of the game, but make it more immersive and increase the over-the-top Hong Kong action!

Rating: 8/10 – Highly Recommended!

Played on PC with keyboard and mouse

Available for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360

Tags: PC Gaming, Sleeping Dogs, Action Pc games, Square Enix