Sleeping Dogs (PC)

Super Adventures' run of spectacular semi-recent story-driven sandbox games starting with 'S' concludes at last with Sleeping Dogs! Here, you can listen to the theme while you read: youtube link.

The game didn't used to start with an 'S', that only happened relatively late in development. It actually began life as a new IP with title Black Lotus (no relation to the Lotus Turbo Challenge games), but publisher Activision decided they'd like to revive their True Crime franchise and relabelled it 'True Crime: Hong Kong' instead. Then three and a half years into development they decided that they'd rather cancel the whole thing altogether, and that was the end of it... until Square Enix stepped in like a big damn hero and saved the day, in a similar way to how Deep Silver saved Saints Row IV. They then retitled it to Sleeping Dogs, which is a decent enough name I guess, though personally I think they should've gone with 'Final Fantasy XV' just to see the reaction they got.

(Click the pictures to view them in an epic screen-filling 1280x720 resolution... well, screen-filling if you've got a tiny little monitor like I do.)

The game begins on a dark and rainy night in Hong Kong, with a pair of cops watching a drug deal go down on surveillance monitors and discussing in Cantonese (with subtitles) how it'll be good to finally catch the nefarious Wei Shen.

But then the deal goes bad and I find that I'm now playing as Wei himself, with a bag full of cash on his back and the cops just a few steps behind him. In the absence of any better ideas I think I might try following Naz, while holding 'A' to sprint (I'm using an Xbox 360 controller this time by the way).

Saints Row 2 began with a jail break followed by a boat chase, Saints Row 4 began with me saving America from terrorists before trying to fight off an alien invasion at the White House, and The Saboteur kicked off with an exploding fuel dump, a Grand Prix, and the Nazi occupation of Paris... with Zeppelins. Sleeping Dogs starts off with me running along the docks in wet clothes, very much trying not to imagine how the place must smell right now.

Releasing 'A' for a split second lets Wei smoothly negotiate any obstacle in his way, whether it's a box of fish or a wall. The guy definitely has some free running skills, which is good because I don't have a jump button.

What the fuck, I just failed the tutorial? It told me to follow Naz, I have literally been given just a single goal in the game so far and I carried it out to the very best of my abilities... it's not my fault he stopped in the hallway for no reason and let the police catch up to us.

I tried it again, this time trying to find a place to hide or escape, but no luck there either. It turns out I was supposed to leave him behind and keep going, to force him to teleport in front of me again.

Not that it made the slightest bit of difference in the end as I got arrested ten seconds later in a cutscene! Fate apparently demands that I get captured at this exact doorway, no sooner.

Gotta say, this is not making a great first impression on me.

Later in lock up Wei runs into a childhood friend, Jackie Ma, and the game reveals that our protagonist is only just back in Hong Kong after a 15 year absence. Jackie on the other hand stuck around and grew up with a couple of people who eventually joined the Sun On Yee triad gang, people that might have work for a guy like Wei.

First though Wei needs to get out from behind these bars. Somehow I don't think the 'A' button is going to work this time.

Fortunately Wei was actually a cop the whole time and getting locked up was just part of the plan! Well that explains why he had to get arrested at that specific door I guess... wait, no it doesn't!

Pendrew on the left is the most British man in Hong Kong, but he knows what it takes to get things done on the streets. Raymond on the other hand (the guy in the background), tries to be professional and ends up coming across as patronising instead, earning Wei's immediate wrath. Those two really don't get on, which is going to make things awkward as he's going to be his handler as Wei goes undercover in the biggest triad gang in the city.


TWO MINUTES LATER.

Man, my old friend Jackie must have had a great life in Hong Kong these past few years. I only met up with the guy two minutes ago and I'm already fighting off a room full of people from the lock up earlier who want to kick his head in.

I know that everyone says that the combat in this is similar to the Arkham Asylum games... and it really is. Apparently it's also like Bully as well, which makes sense as some of the same people worked on the game.

So far it's all been pressing X for light attacks, holding X for heavy attacks, and hitting B to grab people. There's a few heavy attacks I can pull off, like roundhouse kicks or knee strikes, and what Wei decides to use depends on how many times I've hit X in current combo, so I've got to be careful about how many times I hit the button.

When I've got someone in a grab I can punch them a few times, throw them into people, drag them around... though the game's pretty insistent that I push this particular thug into a window.

Damn Wei! He pulled that shutter down with so much force that it kicked up a cloud of dust! There's like an inch gap under that thing right now, so the man's waist is now thinner than his wrist.

My work done for now, the game takes control away again and cuts to Jackie and Wei meeting Winston, leader of the local Sun On Yee group.

Winston's not particular trusting of outsiders right now, seeing as he had to deal with an undercover cop recently, but he's willing to give Wei a shot. His lieutenant on the other hand hates me from the start and the second I'm out of Winston's sight he sends a bunch of the gang to beat me to death. You know, as an initiation.

Here I got to learn about hitting the counter button just as an enemy is about to attack, indicated by them glowing red. Again it's a lot like the Arkham games, except that the the window for me to react seems smaller and it's encouraging me to repeatedly tap X for combos so I'm getting distracted by that.

Despite fucking up at every turn I eventually managed to survive the fight with just the tiniest amount of health remaining...

... only for the game to tell me I lost! Uh, no I didn't mate, I finished that fight standing and I have the screenshots to prove it.

But suddenly the game relents and jumps ahead to the next section as if I had won! Which I had! Well, okay then.

Alright, my first job for Winston is to get protection money from some of the local businesses in the night market. But before that I'm buying one of these Dragon Kick drinks, because they sound awesome. So many of these kinds of drinks are sold on the fact that they give you 'more energy', but I'm not sure I've ever seen that's claimed to make you better at hitting people before. Well, except for Irn-Bru.

$30 sounds like a lot for a can, but that's in Hong Kong dollars, in American dollars it'd be more like... wow, $4? Man I got ripped off, I'm such a tourist.


A FEW MINUTES OF WORK LATER.

Huh, my health only regenerates halfway unless I buy something? That sounds so awkward and pointless.

The last few business owners handed over their protection money without much hassle, but seems like the next one is actually going to have to be protected from someone first. Beating up five rival gangsters isn't really in my job description mate, I'm just here to threaten you and take your money.


ONE SHORT INCIDENT LATER.

Great, now I have to go change into a new vest with less blood on it. There's about four clothes shops in this market alone but barely anything for sale in them, so it's kind of gone the Saints Row 2 route there, where I'll never be able to remember where I saw a particular coat I wanted. Unlike the Saints Row games however there are zero customisation options for clothing, so when I actually do find a good selection of t-shirts it's usually just a set of different colours.

On the other hand, I can receive RPG style stats boosts for collecting certain sets of clothes, so maybe... nah, I'll just stick to my jacket.

Also what's that text scrolling across the top of the shop inventory, a DLC advert? Seriously? I'm deducting 15,000 points for that right now.


ONE MISSION LATER.

Fortunately the game menus seem pretty advert-free.

I've seen social hubs like this in a few games and never been all that interested, but this one seems worth mentioning. It doesn't just let me compare my stats and records with others on my friend list (or globally if I want to gaze into the maw of total despair), but it lets me replay missions for a better score, or challenge other people to beat mine.

Anyway like the mission list says I eventually finished extorting vendors and then moved on to another free running chase level. But that's over with now and I'm finally free to explore Hong Kong!

First though I have to choose how I want to customise my ride. I can press X to cycle through paint jobs, or... well actually that's really all I can do here. I can't mod the bodywork, change the wheels, add a nitro, or even trick it out with neons.

Still, it's a nice bike just the way it is.

Man it's nice to have a whole new set of radio stations I'm not entirely sick of yet. No comedy talk radio though; no one seems to dare taking on the GTA series at that particular game.

Also this street looks amazing. This is possibly the best looking sandbox game I've played this fortnight, or at least the one I can push the settings highest on without it turning into a stuttering mess on my ancient rig. There's an optional high res texture download available for it as well, but I didn't want to push my luck.

It's interesting that they've resisted the temptation to make the road permanently wet for the cool reflections; seems like there's going to be some variation in the weather.

Hey, I've got half of Hong Kong Island to play around on here (the other half must have fallen into the sea or something). I'm down at the bottom corner right now in a place called North Point, which is interesting as on the real Hong Kong Island, North Point is at the... northern point.

Looks like the island has a more interesting road layout than Saints Row IV's Steelport, though I can't help but notice that they forgot to give me an airport! Seems like the only way I'll ever get airborne is by hitting a ramp.

Right, I've got three kinds of missions available to me right away: cop missions, triad missions and favours. It seems that Wei shares Superman's ability to hear people in need all across the city, and can come to their aid to earn respect (here called 'face'.)

The closest favour is called "Fashion Advice", so I'll ride over and see how I can help with that.

Nice one Wei, falling for the old "Do you think this shirt is too tight?" trick.

"That'll teach you to be a pervert." the woman says, as her partner runs off down the overpass with my HK $500. Hey lady, you asked me for help! Just for that I'm not even going to tell her if I think its too tight. Also I'm going to chase down her partner and beat the crap out of him.


ONE BEATDOWN LATER.

Wow, seems like I parked my bike too close to this food vendor and I can't get back on! Now I have to try to push it back out of the way somehow while this guy yells at me for not having a pork bun in my hand.

"A man who never eats pork buns is never a whole man!" he insists, oblivious to my struggle.

Fine then, I give up on the bike. I don't even need it anyway, I've got infinite sprint! Plus it's cool just to walk around for a bit, soaking in the atmosphere.

Man, I miss my bike right now. There's a few parking garages marked on the map so I'm going to try running over the nearest one and see if my bike's reappeared in it. It's a GTA-style game so there's nothing stopping me from walking over and taking any car I see out here, but like in The Saboteur it just doesn't feel right here. I'm an undercover cop, I'm only playing at being an asshole.

Actually I suppose I could just take a taxi.


LATER.

This favour came with its own car! Though it also came with a car chase, so I'm not sure how much of it's going to be left hanging off the chassis when I'm done with it. Escaping the police seems as straight forward as these games get, seeing as all I have to get outside of the red circles surrounding each of their cars on the mini-map for a few seconds.

What isn't so normal is that I have the Driver: San Francisco-style power to fling my car a meter or so forwards or to the side to ram other cars out of the way. It's weird that the developers would add something so unrealistic to a game that's been relatively down to earth so far, but I'm not complaining.

Uh, let me in to the parking garage you asshole, I've finally got myself a new car to park!

Apparently these places are only good for spitting out infinite copies of the vehicles I already own, so I can't just claim cars I find on the street. Guess I'll need to earn more cash so I can afford to buy the cars legit.

Here's another side activity I can do: drug busts. Wei apparently slept through this course in the academy though, so we're just going to have to improvise and single handedly kick all their asses instead.

I'm not sure if I'm getting worse at the game, or if this fight is meant to be tougher, but even after eating an extra health regen pork bun to make myself into a whole man I'm still really struggling to stay on my feet. The counter timing really does seem harsher than the Arkham games to me, as I have to hit that Y button the second I see an enemy turn red. That's made even harder by the fact that I'm usually in the middle of trying to pull off a combo when it happens and my brain can't switch gears from 'X, X, X, hold X' to 'for fuck's sake press Y!' fast enough.

I'm not just tapping X to show off by the way, I need to bring out the heavier attacks sometimes to get past a thug's guard.

So this drug bust is a multiple stage operation huh? I had to follow the cable leading from the security camera to this box and now I'm trying to hack it with my phone.

As hacking minigames go this variant of Mastermind isn't so bad. Though it's less of a game, more of a series of routine steps that inevitably lead to success, so I can see it getting old fast. In the unlikely event that I manage to guess it wrong too many times, the password is changed, which is an... interesting approach to security.

Huh, now I have to go all the way back to my house to watch the surveillance camera and catch the drug supplier in the act? How is that good gameplay?


A MINUTE OR SO LATER.

Alright now I'm back home, watching TV, waiting for the supplier to appear so I can point a crosshair at him and call in the cops.

There he is. Now he has been arrested. Drug bust #1 has been completed. Wow, I certainly can't wait to do this... holy shit, 35 more times? Right I'm getting back to doing story missions then. My next job for the Winston is to go take a message to the manager of a nightclub, but first I'll need figure out a way to get past the bouncer.


SOON, IN A NIGHTCLUB AFTER GETTING PAST THE BOUNCER.

I pretended that I was here for karaoke; seemed like a good idea at the time.

Actually Wei is depressingly good at singing, as long as I keep my arrow on the right lines. It's a little tricky with a controller as I have to hold the analogue stick tilted halfway to hit lines 2 and 4, but fortunately Wei was apparently wide awake during his karaoke course at the academy and managed to nail it.

Oh right I'm supposed to be talking to the manager aren't I.

The manager didn't respond well to my message and now I'm hiding behind the bar trying to figure out how I'm going to take on five goons with less than a third of my health bar left. All I need to do is hit them enough times for my 'face meter' to fill up and that should trigger full health regeneration, but that means stepping out to where they can pummel me.

I kind of wish I had Saints Row IV super powers right now, or at least a way to somersault over their heads and kick them in the back. I've finished three Arkham games dammit, I shouldn't be this bad at fighting!


EVENTUALLY.

Well that's over with now at last and I now I get to count my winnings: HK $5000, a field report to read from the cops, some new karaoke songs and a woman's phone number, nice.

I also got enough triad experience for an upgrade, which is cool. My cop xp bonus starts maxed out at the beginning of a mission and is chipped away as I cause property damage and make an ass of myself, (you know, things that the boss would yell at me about if this was an 80s cop thriller), and my triad score starts at nothing and goes up as I inflict hurt upon others.

Once I get enough cop or triad experience I get a point to invest in one of these two lines, making me tougher in combat and giving me extra moves. Face experience unlocks its own line of upgrades, though there's no choices there, and I can upgrade my melee and health level by finding certain collectables.

Upgrades are nothing new for a GTA-style sandbox game, every one of the games I've played this fortnight has had them in some way, but it's rare to see one with a such a focus on hand to hand combat.

Alright, the nightclub was a triad mission so I figured I should do a cop mission next. This time I'm dressed like a vagrant, sneaking around in the shadows and throwing up all over my shoes to maintain my cover. I knew that being a cop would be less glamorous than being a gangster, but I'm starting to miss all the karaoke.

As soon as I'm done arresting this drug dealer I'm going back to hang with my Sun On Yee bro Winston and see what he's up to.

Oh. Apparently the triads are a bit annoyed about the fact that their guys started to get arrested right after I showed up. Also they couldn't help but notice that I keep finding reasons not to kill our rivals, which is a sure sign that I'm a cop.

It's a tense moment for sure, but I find that I'm just a little distracted by how fake his gold gun looks. Also there's a collectable jade statue glowing on that table in the background and it's ruining the mood. Seriously, don't put collectable items in serious cutscenes, that's just dumb.


BUT THEN...

Anyway stuff happened and now I'm taking part in a little bit of illegal street racing, during daytime! Hey I don't want to ruin the story for you.

The car handling in this is really... low stress I've noticed. There's little chance of this car ending up anywhere I don't want it to be, unless I start taking risks with handbreak turns, but that suits the game just fine. In fact this racing reminds me a lot of the Need for Speed series, which makes sense I suppose as I heard that some of its developers left EA Black Box to join the team that made this.

Best racing in an open world crime 'em up ever, in my humble estimation, and I'm not just saying that because they let me keep the car afterwards.


LATER.

Alright, more cop work means another opportunity to use my awesome phone, this time to calibrate a bug by holding both analogue sticks steady in the correct place until the bars fill up.

Crap, now I have to screw the vent back on by rotating the analogue sticks like I'm turning a screwdriver. When did this turn into a David Cage game anyway? Oh well there's no rush, 1m 30s left until I get a meat cleaver in the back.

Oh c'mon, now I have to pick the lock to get out as well? Time's ticking away here! Actually this is really easy compared to the system used in something like Oblivion, as I just have to slide a pin into the correct position before moving on to the next instead of tapping them upwards.

Man, the game has a surprising love for minigames. Fortunately these timed missions are definitely the exception rather than the rule.

My reward for all my sneaking: a Bruce Lee Game of Death jumpsuit! The only problem is that I can't wear it until I've reached face level 8 and I'm only at face level 2 right now. I guess it makes sense that you'd need to build up a serious amount of respect before you can go out in public like that. Man, even when I find something more interesting to wear than a t-shirt, the game's not interested in letting me put it on.

I understand that this face system is meant to restrict the cars and clothes so I'm steadily unlocking new things as I progress through the game instead of being able to have everything from the beginning, but there's already a system in place for that. It's called money.

Also is it really a flaw to be able to wear almost every outfit right from the start? I definitely never got bored of buying new clothes in the Saints Row games. I changed my whole look every ten minutes.


SOON.

Hey it turns out that the game does have guns after all! It's illegal to purchase firearms in Hong Kong, so there's no gun shops around, but when I find one I get to make use of it however I see fit until the bullets run dry. Though I really shouldn't, as I'm a cop and it's frowned upon for officers of the law to go on GTA-style kill frenzies here.

The game has cleverly gotten around that though in this case by having me take part in a crime scene reconstruction with Pendrew. All the gunplay is imaginary so I can gun down who I want! And because I keep fucking up this slow-motion gun vault move I get to do it over and over and over again until the game's satisfied I've got it right. It's hard to aim quickly with a controller, okay?

I think that's it then, I've I seen enough of this now to know what kind of game it is and how it's going to play out from now on.


LATER.



Actually there's one more thing I should show off before I shut up: I can action hijack vehicles by leaping out of my car while driving up to them! But I don't want to, because I'm a nice guy.

What's funny is that I can steal cars and run people over all I want without the game freaking out about it at all. I get -15 cop points every time I hit an innocent pedestrian, which means that human life is worth as much to the HK PD as hitting three lampposts. Somehow I still give a shit about it though and I've been reloading my last checkpoint every time I accidentally run someone over. I love that the game lets me do that by the way, checkpoints are a fun alternative to having to replay entire missions, but I kind of wish that people would just leap out of my way instead like in the Driver games.

I don't know why my other screenshots seem to be at night by the way. There's a whole lot of sunlight in the game I promise you; a proper day/night system in fact. Just thought that needed to be mentioned after Saints Row IV's eternal twilight a couple of weeks ago.

Anyway this seems like a good point to turn the game off, before these screenshots end up in the triple figures. Assuming they're not already.


CONCLUSION

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People told me that Sleeping Dogs was one of the good games, THEY WERE NOT LYING.

I like how I was encouraged to make use of the environment in combat in ways beyond just finding a wall to hide behind. I could finish off enemies by shoving them into fans or carelessly placed pallet of upturned swordfish heads, or vault over tables to shoot in slow motion; it definitely tries to give the feeling of being inside a Hong Kong action film. I'm not so keen though on how I was encouraged to go find food or drink before starting a fight though, and the collectables did get a bit intrusive when they started showing up in cutscenes and during my thrilling action scenes. 'Hang on, just need to park the car for a second to pray at this health shrine.'

Though despite the occasional moment of video game weirdness I'm surprised how seriously it takes itself compared to the other games I've played this fortnight. I mean sure it jokes around on the shop screens, some of the favours are played for laughs, and man it's insistent that I have a pork bun, but the main plot is played very straight and gets very dark, with any humour coming naturally from the characters. It doesn't really do the GTA satire thing.

Despite the tension of being torn between loyalty to the cops and the triads, there's no way to influence how the story plays out and no alternate endings. This works in the game's favour though I reckon, as Wei Shen is a good protagonist and I'm getting concerned about how the poor guy's going to end up. There's nothing I can do to change his fate, all I can do is work to make sure he gets to the end with the fewest innocent deaths on his conscience and the recommended number of fingers remaining per hand.

Sleeping Dogs is nothing revolutionary as an open world sandbox game, but the city is fantastic, it does the action thriller thing as well as any, and even felt like a spy movie at times with all the gadgets, sneaking and car chases. Crap, now it's got me wanting to play an open world James Bond game, how come that doesn't exist yet?

    

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That's it, I'm done with Grand Theft Auto style sandbox games now for a long while, but Super Adventures will be back in a few days with... something else. Until then, why not leave me a comment?