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Four-and-three-quarter stars from someone who loves FPS games, preferably with some combination of experience-based skills progression, an open world, engaging or humorous story, and varied gameplay (e.g., stealth). Think series like Deus Ex (first and third are my all-time favorite games), GTA, No One Lives Forever, Star Wars Outcast, Crysis, Far Cry, Thief. I've also enjoyed a recent exception to my norm, Just Cause 2 (which is guns blazing, no real progression, and ultimately too repetitive -- but wonderfully chaotic fun in the meantime).
Sleeping Dogs takes some of the best bits of these games, does those best bits really well, and then adds on fabulous kung-fu style melee. I don't normally play fist fighting/kung-fu games, but found myself totally enjoying this one. SD is not as polished or deep or long as, say, the later GTA games, but is nonetheless surprisingly fun to play. It's also much more bloody than I usually like, but the environmental attacks were, well, let's call them "creative."
What made it great?
- It's kung fu. It's frustrating in the beginning (I died many times) until you gain enough points through missions and side quests to acquire more moves and higher max health. Then it rocks. Action is smooth and the moves vary enough to be interesting. It's surprisingly satisfying to use the (limited) objects in your environment to smash your opponent during missions. (This alone has led me to actually replay missions.)
- The unexpectedness of it. If it were set in NYC and had more guns, this would not be a 4.75-star game compared to the depth, breadth, length, and polish of GTA (which, let's face it, is the primary competition). But it's in Hong Kong, you drive on the left, you hear Cant-lish, you use fists more than guns. You are a cop and a gangster, and have genuine relationships on both sides of that fence. And all that is surprisingly engaging.
- The story and its production. Solid story and voice acting, nice ambiguity between good and bad (lots of grey here). I found myself actually caring about some of the characters, even the gangsters.
- See first point. The kung fu is FUN.
Nice differences with GTA:
- More fists, fewer guns. And the fighting gets better and better as the game progresses. By the end you are The One and can defeat a parking lot full of foes with only your natural weapons.
- Though gun play is the exception, it's easier to use than on GTA, incorporating cover.
- Easier to get around when you set a destination on the map, thanks to the arrows that appear in the world when you're approaching a turn or exit. Helps for those spots where the route is a bit confusing.
- Car driving is itself nearly as fun as GTA (though it has much less variety in vehicles) and then improved upon with action-hijacking and the ability to slow-mo shoot at other cars' tires (resulting in an unrealistic but fun explosion that launches the target car into the air).
- You get apartments at various spots in the city fairly early in the game. That plus the smaller map means you spend less time driving just to get somewhere.
- Similar side missions as GTA (steal cars, collect extortion money, find various objects) but easier to complete them. Auto theft and money collecting are relatively short, but that helps keep them from getting too repetitive. And at some point in filling your face meter, you can see the lockboxes, cameras, health shrines, and jade statues on your mini map, then later you can see them on the full map. If you like a really challenging game, though, this will not make you happy.
- The clothes can actually give you bonus points, depending on what you wear. Plus some items aren't unlocked until your Face level is higher. Makes the integration of clothing in the game more interesting.
- Random mini-missions that reward you for exploring a bit, starting later in the game. See a random person on the street who wants to speak to you? Stop, because he might be selling a fish tank or carpet for your apartment. See an orange icon pop up on your mini map? Step on the brake because there's probably someone stuck in a car trunk, and you'll get a little cash for stopping to let them out. My only complaint is about how few of these there are; I would have loved to see much more of this feature.
What I wish it had:
- Decent boats outside of missions. It's hard to find anything other than a crappy fishing boat unless you're in-mission. So when you want to go hunting for the few health shrines and lockboxes that are only accessible from the water, prepare to be frustrated. Despite its setting on an island, the game doesn't really use the water well. You can swim (quickly, thank goodness), and there is a mission or two that happens on an island or boat, but it feels like a feature that isn't used to its best potential.
- More clothing options for the bonus-point outfits. I'm no fashion maven, but I hated having to wear an ugly puffy jacket (oh, but you can pick red, blue, or green! whoopee) to get that 10% triad bonus.
- Either no girlfriends, or a more interesting involvement of them in the story line. The girlfriend (and friend) "maintenance" chores in GTA became boring and annoying. Here it's the opposite extreme: basically you meet a girl during a mission, hook up afterward for one side-mission-slash-date, then she mysteriously disappears from your life.
- Better world interaction on foot. The ability to pull yourself up on crates or over walls is great, but has some odd limitations. I'd find myself stuck on top of a 4-foot wall, unable to step over its 6-inch railing, or swimming for minutes at a time because I ran into an unexpected edge of the map, unable to pull myself out of the water anywhere nearby. Another time I spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how the he!! to get at one of the jade statues in an apartment, only to later realize that you can't until the climbing path is opened after the mission that uses that apartment.
- Better/more/different music in the car. It got boring very quickly, especially since almost none of it was to my taste. It was paired appropriately in the missions, but made exploring less enjoyable.
The game definitely has some annoyances (the drug busts are fine until you have to go back to your apartment and do the lame dealer-ID part on camera). And it's much shorter and smaller and more limited than some other open world games, where you can literally spend weeks of your life. But it's well worth the time and money, certainly at $35 or less, as the price drops. Game play is smooth and graphics are great on my i5-2500K / 3.3GHz / 8GB / nVidia GTX 560 (the detail pack download on Steam does seem to help with crispness). I'm not sure how long I played, since I tend to leave the game running for hours at a time in the background while I'm doing something else, but it was many fun hours to do the main missions, the auto thefts, all object hunts, the collection missions, a few car races, and a couple of jumps. Replay value is probably so-so. I've played Deus Ex: HR through probably 3 times and probably will again, and bought a couple of DLC missions and played them through a couple of times. In Sleeping Dogs, none of the downloadable content seemed terribly interesting to me, but I'll probably play through most missions a second time, finish a few more car races, and call it quits.
In all, two thumbs up.
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One Star
It wont download since I bought this game. download error. Please see attachment