"Sleeping Dogs packs a wonderful setting and story, along with a very enjoyable open-world experience."
Positive
- Beautiful atmosphere of Hong Kong
- Engaging story filled with murder and corruption
- Hand to hand combat and shooting work incredibly well
- Driving, hacking and other activities are a blast
Negative
- A variety of bugs and glitches
- Some minor camera problems while driving
Most open-world action game generally put you in American settlements and work with its ethnics, like how popular franchises like Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row do. Sleeping Dogs offers a different perspective, taking advantage of its distinctive Hong Kong setting, packing a gangster story full of murder, corruption and money that is more compact that most open-world games.
Placing you as Wei Shen, as an undercover cop, he is tasked to infiltrate the dangerous the Sun On Yee triad, in order to break the organization from within. Originally a native that had spent time in the United States, Shen is back to familiar grounds and dangers, rising from a lowly member to an influential member, all the while assisting and gaining respect, and even seeking vengeance for his sister’s death long ago. The story development is impressive, casting a good mixture of Shen’s involvement with the triad, as well as his double identity as a cop. It features shocking deaths and bloody battles against other triads and corrupted villains, similar to what PS2’s Yakuza did long ago with its setting and the typical double agent setup is here, but Sleeping Dogs packs an engaging 20 hours or so of story and side quests.
Sleeping Dogs is an open world, sharing the similarities of typical open world games (without exaggerations). The festive Hong Kong setting is a highlight in the game, giving the game a distinct style when in markets rather than the plainer looking highways and city areas, even though the areas are very densely populated with people and activity. As Wei Shen, you will be doing activities for the police and the Triad, each which will give you points depending on the missions. Triad activities revolve around more violent activities such as fighting, killing and chasing events, while the police activities are more covert, some with hacking and investigations. Plus there are a ton of side quests to do when not occupied with normal missions such as hijacking cars, retrieving stolen vans, doing favours and even races, that easily rack up your cash to buy even more cars, and clothes to fashionably customize our charming protagonist.
There is plenty of combat in Sleeping Dogs, divided into two main portions. There is the fast and addicting hand to hand combat, successfully implementing the easy usage of the mouse, with the left button for striking punch, the right button for countering when the enemy flashes to perform quick counters. Combat is fun and rewarding, with some brutal environment attacks, some of which murderous and occasionally gruesome to behold. Then there is the shooting. The third-person shooting is nicely implemented without feeling forced or overused. With a cover system and the time-slowing movements, the shooting is both fun and furious, though most of the times you can’t avoid fire fights if faced with armed enemies.
Driving is an option to explore the big city, which is arcadish and has a liberal feel, without emphasising too much on realism. Driving suffers from a bit of an annoying camera that doesn’t completely cooperate well once you change the angle with the mouse. And there are some escaping activities and some shootouts as well. People sometimes behave unrealistically or just literally fly away, since the AI suffers from some problems, and the game suffers from some rare crashes, and even a loss of data in one case, which can obviously be diabolically frustrating, especially since in my case it was right before the final phase of the game. On driving again, taxis can spare you the need of backtracking to a location easily for a small fee of course. Exploring you will find the Jade Statues for sensei, where you’ll learn new moves, finding street races and new shops, hack cameras and even lockboxes scattered around. Some of these are locked and need to be hacked with a different mini game than when hacking cameras. These get repetitive eventually, but they are strangely addictive without being too easy or difficult.
Wei can easily do some slick parkour stunts on small walls and barriers, but he can’t jump. With the space bar you can run and when up against a wall, you will need to repress the button for Wei to avoid making clumsy actions which is crucial in the plenty of chases you will be doing in the game. Alternatively the game is a bit too easy, something that eventually might benefit for some players who might regularly be stuck in uninteresting or pointlessly difficult main quests in open-world games.
The setting gives Sleeping Dogs a unique feel, but it is quite a wonderful looking game. Character models look robust and realistic, and the environments look fine, despite lacking a bit of variety. The city is quite lively, sprawling with activity, in the market especially. Cutscenes are realistic and pack a lot of suspense and movement, without giving Wei a quiet moment. Sleeping Dogs mixes the English language with the local language, which recreates what Assassin’s Creed did with merging Italian. It’s good, and it feels natural on the locals. Music is sublime and refreshing.
Sleeping Dogs isn’t here to be the next Grand Theft Auto or any other famous open-world action game, but from what was original True Crime, then a scrapped project, which turned into a very successful and entertaining action game. The issues are minor, such as some annoying glitches, and that it doesn’t last more than 25 hours, even with all its missions, and its average ending, but it stars a great protagonist accompanying an interesting story of gang corruption.
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Graphics = 8.5
Sound = 8.2
Presentation = 8.4
Gameplay = 8.9
Story = 8.6
Recommendation Level = High
I’m not a big fan of modern open-world action adventure games, but Sleeping Dogs is easy to get into, without the aggravating and overwhelming exaggeration of games like Saints Row. If you didn’t like either that much, chances are Sleeping Dogs will surprise.
Difficulty = Easy
Combat is quite simplistic with easy reversals. Plus missions are rarely to never frustrating.
Play Time = 30 Hours
Story is of decent length clocking around 20 hours, with very little filler, so mostly thrilling and flowing story. Plenty of side missions to do, which earn plenty of cash and experience points.
OVERALL = 85 / 100
Sleeping Dogs packs a wonderful setting and story, along with a very enjoyable open-world experience.