SLEEPING DOGS (2012) REVIEW

Another Grand Theft Auto copy cat, or a new breed of its own?

PC version reviewed.

Sleeping Dogs is an action open-world sandbox game published by Square Enix and developed by United Front Games for the Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC.

This review has spoilers!

GAMEPLAY

The melee combat in this game is fun, and similar to the Assassin's Creed or Arkham series, although Sleeping Dogs also allows you to use your immediate surrounding environment to your advantage and taking enemies out with these extra additions can make combat a bit more satisfying at times. Guns are also in the game however they all feel very similar, but the game prioritises melee, which was probable a wise decision, as most player will probably prefer the melee encounters.

Other more unique aspects include things like jumping on vehicles, something I found to be a pretty nice edition.

The game does have its annoyances though, certain missions can make you drive across the city numerous times because of poorly placed checkpoints, made even more annoying by Wei Shen refusing to move into cover, meaning you can sometimes die unfairly and then be hit by a double whammy.

Cars feel clunky and the way they handle can be frustrating, especially in the chase segments where you're supposed to knock other cars off the road. Instead of simply slamming into targets, such as in Grand Theft Auto IV, you have to press specific buttons to swing your car over and make sure you smash into them, even pressing this button with a little shove in the back will do damage, but when you smash into them at full speed without pressing this magic button, you'll do minimal, if any damage.

Some missions are very simple point A to B things, carrying other characters around in your car and collecting things for them, often ending in a small fight between you and some enemies. I felt there were a few too many missions where I was sat there thinking why I should care, especially as so many missions don't actually involve the main characters, but people who are just brought in as seemingly random plot points before being forgotten about, never to appear again.

A few bugs caused me some issues too. The most frequent offender was the camera getting caught and refusing to move off a fixed location, usually during certain missions, causing me to have to exit the game and replay them all over again.

STORY

The characters were really generic and boring; I can’t think of one stand out character, they were all so bland. I didn't even realise who the main Triad antagonist was before having a final showdown with him.

Bizarrely there is no choice between the Police and the Triad at the end of the game, even after everything you see of the two and  I can't really understand why there is no option. The game even seems to be setting it up throughout, but in the end makes that big decision without you. The Triad bosses even realise Wei Shen was a police officer all along but just shrug it off because they must have thought he was a pretty chill guy, I thought they were supposed to be ruthless, as they had been portrayed throughout the game.

Late in the game, after being brutally tortured Wei Shen crawls around for a few seconds in pain and then proceeds to punch and kick his way past all his captors, which is something like 20+ men. The logic behind the whole scene fails to make much sense. Why bother to set it up like that if it was just going to turn into another segment similar to many before it, when we could have perhaps had more unique, a stealth section or something, just to give the game a bit of fresh air from the similar levels preceding it.

GRAPHICS

The game looks pretty nice at night and in the rain. However some textures don’t look that good, such as a couple of boats seem to have textures from an early Playstation 2 game. The buildings in the centre of Hong Kong look a bit odd sometimes, whether they're failing to correspond with the lighting around or just sticking out and looking different from the other surroundings.

SOUND

It was nice that most of the voice actors actually sounded like they were speaking with a Chinese accent, rather than the usual generic accents we see in both movies and games. Since so many things do that these days I think this game deserved some recognition for that.

Like the Grand Theft Auto games, Sleeping Dogs doesn't really have many prominent songs that play outside of the radio, and the radio stations seem to fine, with plenty of genres covered.

VALUE FOR MONEY

Main story should give you at least around 12 hours, add in all the side missions and things and you could possibly be looking at around 25 hours. If you enjoy the first few hours you'll likely enjoy the rest of the game too.

OVERALL

Sleeping Dogs seems to try too hard at being a game, that it forgets that it’s also art. They get the basics right, but they miss those big steps to make this game much more than your run of the mill action game. Every positive turn it takes it’ll usually proceed to show you a negative moments later. If you like open world games then it might satisfy your itch for a few hours, but being so generic and boring in some segments, you probably won’t remember the game long after you turn it off.