Okay so i got this game yesterday and have been waiting for it too drop since last October when this screenshot was leaked too the web
To me this immediately peaked my interest as a life-long fan of Hong-kong film and action Heroes my favorites being Chow Yung Fat and the immense Jackie Chan,if this game had half of the story telling those old movies had then it would be a home run but that in itself is no mean feat,
You'd be forgiven some trepidations about any game that's charted as ... unconventional a course to retail shelves as Sleeping Dogs.
It first went into development at United Front Games as "Black Lotus," then transformed to a reboot of Activision's True Crime series. Then, as the mega-publisher let the game slide into the hands of Square-Enix, it lost the legacy branding and was re-redubbed Sleeping Dogs.
The ship that emerges from those choppy waters is surprisingly seaworthy, but it's not without a few cracks in the hull. For some, Sleeping Dogs may be hard to ignore.
Hong Kong is a melting pot of Asian cultures and social classes that define each of the city's four areas: the crowded, seedy streets of North Point; the quiet, industrial Kennedy Town; the luxurious beaches of Aberdeen; and the busy, beating heart that is Central. Each area is connected by highways, filled with cars and pedestrians with convincing AI, and peppered with side missions and collectibles. It may not compare to the seemingly infinite San Andreas(in terms of size), but there is still a lot to see and do in Sleeping Dogs.
You play Wei Shen
Shen is a Hong Kong native who relocated to San Francisco as a child, and now he's returned to the ganglands of Hong Kong's North Point as an undercover cop. While this setup isn't any better than a Fast and Furious film, it grants a perfect excuse for Shen to do terrible things while remaining a sympathetic, level-headed lead. As the game demands the player to inflict more damage on rival gangs, Shen becomes more rageful and restless. The cops he thought were his friends become distant strangers, and the gang he thought he was fooling becomes the family he never had as a teenager.In order to deeply penetrate the triad and reach the current boss, Shen needs to play the part of a common thug and rise within the ranks. Being a cop and a decent person, Shen tries his best to remain ethical, and the game forces his mindset upon you through its ranking systems. Each of the forty missions ranks you both as a cop and as a triad member. As a cop, you must avoid harming citizens and damaging property. As a triad member, you want to deal damage to opposing gangs in the most creative way possible. At least one of these things comes naturally.
(COMBAT)
Combat in Sleeping Dogs takes influence from Rocksteady's counter-focused Batman games, but it isn't shy about tossing in combos, complex grapples, and weapons. Even from the start, the game throws some tough fights at you that require great timing and positioning. Like in Batman, enemies become highlighted when you are allowed to counter and follow up with a series of punches and throws.Unlike Batman, Shen can't magically latch onto a foe across the room. Instead, the player needs to be resourceful by using the environment to quickly take out enemies. You can pick up enemies and throw them on meat hooks, impale them on a swordfish, push their head through an air conditioning fan, or even toss them off buildings. It seems gimmicky at first, but they become a more natural part of combat as you upgrade your move set to include stuns, roundhouse kicks, tackles, and many others.It is stunningly reactive..
there are so many brilliant ideas and scenes in Sleeping Dogs that I haven't addressed. The subtle humor in one mission where you need to take a photo of a sunset, the genius gun tutorial, tracking a serial killer across the city, throwing a guy through an aquarium and then beating his friends to death with a fish -- ahh, so much great stuff! But some of these things you just need to discover for yourself.
I have also go too address the inevitable GTA comparison,
Calling it a “GTA clone” ignores how far advanced the gameplay is compared to even Grand Theft Auto IV. At first, it certainly does appear to be inspired by Rockstar’s popular series, with protagonist Wei Shen thrown into a life of crime and asked to do horrendous things to progress the plot. But quickly it reveals itself to be much more than that. Early on it's explained that Shen is actually an undercover cop, sent into Hong Kong to climb the ranks of the Triads and take them down from the inside, creating a conflicted protagonist that's easy to sympathize with.Sleeping Dogs comes at a time when every new open world franchise has been exhausted, and Rockstar is finally gearing up to renew its flagship series. The brilliance of Sleeping Dogs may come down to cherry-picking ideas from the best of the genre, but it's the first time an open world game has directly reached for Rockstar's crown.
I mean the combat feels like a beat-em up the racing feels like a need for speed title, the gunplay takes its lead from games like mass effect or uncharted (note guns are more of a power up than a fixture on the streets of hong kong) and i havent even mentioned the karaoke ,it's a jack of all trades and a master of most,
Sleeping Dogs is badder, faster, and more enthralling than GTA has ever been, and for the first time, Rockstar is going to have to teach its old dog some new tricks if it wants to reclaim the throne next year.
Okay so my Score for this game is....(Drum-roll please),.............
Okay so this game is pretty much everything i hoped for, in fact the only reason it fell short of a perfect score is because i am playing the pc version which at the moment is buggy and is in need of swift patching but with the hype behind this game that should'nt be a problem, also good news is that the company behind this bad-boy confirmed development of 6 months of dlc (to start with) so there will be no problem of replay value,
My advice is get it and dont look back, This game will more than pay for itself an absolutely great experience,
And hey if you guys have questions or views comment below
Phew....I was going to say, you must have been playing it constantly for the last 24+hrs. Even still, from what I've read, you'd just put a dent. Yeah, yeah...I'm lookin into it. lol
Thanks for the review. I still haven't picked it up yet. Reading many of the reviews online a lot of people said that the main campaign was great but it was short at around 20-22 hours. Is that true?
Well i can confirm that i have played 18 hours and finished the main-quest around 5 mins ago (OMG so frikken Epic i wont spoil), now that said i have been playing long shifts for the past few days simply because i couldn't put it down i became so engrossed in this game,
That in theory doesnt sound great but i finished Gta 4 (mainquest) in around 30 hours that said the Sleeping Dogs mainquest is infinitely more juicy plus i have so much more to do in this game to actually finish it not too mind all the main missions can be replayed in order too get a better score and just playing around in this world is a lot of fun,
also as i said in the review the publishers have confirmed 6 months worth of dlc is in production which will ensure BIG expansions in future game updates,not too mention the modding community is getting warmed up the people that brought you just cause 2 multiplayer are now working on Sleeping Dogs Multiplayer which will bring yet another dimension too this game,
Im really not worried this game has a long shelf life and a bright future, Alot of bang for your buck,
Just played the demo for about 20mins (out on xbox. not sure about psn) Not bad...Get the feeling it's just going around beatin people up, smashing their faces in fans, etc Which can be cool. Is there any other special moves, weapons or perks for combat? Or is it pretty much fists of fury the whole time? is there any stealth? is it nighttime all the time? get the feeling majority of it is. Stoked at least I got to play the demo cause I think I'll hold off on it. I know it's just a demo and I'm sure it would grow on me, but it didn't "grab" me right off the bat.
I'm with you, holding off for now. I played a little bit of the demo and actually got kind of bored and played skyrim instead. I don't believe there is any stealth, and there is a day and nighttime. You can pick up weapons that enemies drop but they don't stay with you. You can upgrade your character's martial art skills though. I agree it didn't really "grab" me either.
I just got this game today with darksiders 2. I haven't played darksiders 2 yet though, but I have been playing around with sleeping dogs and it is pretty fun. I like all the moves you can pull off and the story is engrossing. I also like the fact that it is in China, because I am in China heh. Makes me want to go visit Hong Kong again.
hey titan.............iv added a discussion on dragons dogma.........check ot out if you can please..........im hoping you have played it to give me an insigt/advice
I love this game, too bad it's so short, took me only 23 hours. If the game would have been a bit longer I would have seen it as an equal to Saints Row 3, since both of those games are great, unique and a lot of fun, but Saints Row 3 is just longer.
Yeah, but the DLC seemed a bit... pointless, for example, the drunk fighting style moves. Sounds really funny but not worth my money. I think there's only 1 big DLC for it that really add missions etc.