Sleeping Dogs (30/60$)
Sleeping Dogs is a good game for its current price, albeit a lackluster value when it was released. Personally this game scores extra well with me as it reminds me of a Jon Woo movie. The player takes the role Wei Shen. An undercover cop raised partially in America giving him a 100% american voice, and sent to clean up the streets that addicted his sister to drugs. A typical maverick-esque bad boy, Shen eventually meets up with his childhood friend and joins the triads with the goal of taking it down from the inside out. Launching into a wonderful story that has emotion, makes sense, and is incredibly well acted, especially from the voice actors. The amount of talent that went into these performances can’t be understated, which makes one wish that had the graphics to match. Still it is enjoyable enough to be a fun ride the whole way down which takes around 15 hours.
Within that time the player is able to explore Hong Kong that feels great to walk and fight in. Fighting itself takes a front and center role with the majority of the game play focusing on a decent melee combat system stylized after games like Batman Arkham series or Assassins Creed. Only Sleeping Dogs feels much better to play than those games because the kung fu moves are way more fun visually. The martial arts moves pull from styles used by kung fu icons like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. The combo system is simple to pick up and rewarding to use. The environmental takedowns are a joy to pull off even if they are slightly repetitive. The movement through the world also feels great, you might not be able to parkour, but sliding through a street vendor's stall and hearing the crashes of dishe taking down the guy you're chasing is fantastic. Even better when you finish him off with a drop kick to the face. The gun play is serviceable and luckily the game typically has you shooting through set piece filled galleries that help mask the lackluster aiming. The world itself has some minigames to partake in. Which can help past time.
However, they don’t feel as good to play as GTA’s or Yakuza’s activities. You have to drive these games to use them and the driving in this game is comically bad. Which is especially odd since the studio has worked on the Just Cause series which features significantly better driving mechanics on the same engine. This is actually a massive negative in the game because Hong Kong is huge, and offers side quests that are interesting and rewards for exploring it. But you’ll never want to because the driving just doesn’t feel good. The missions where you are forced to drive are the most painful, even the racing specific ones.
The downloadable content for this game was a gold standard for what DLC should be and I recommend anyone look into them. Nightmare in North Point is my absolute favorite and actually goes into some Chinese folklore and the Year of the Snake DLC adds fun abilities to arrest people and more content to play through. These great DLC also suffer from the same short length as the main story, and only bring the total content up to around 25 hours. Fortunately they are now bundled with the new edition of the game. That being said, I encourage people to check out this game when it is on sale. Especially if you are itching for an chinese action flick (30/60$).
