Video Game Review: Sleeping Dogs

Okay, let's discuss Square Enix's open-world action-adventure game called Sleeping Dogs released in August 2012.

It's very much GTA: Hong Kong, only with emphasis on fighting mechanics. In the first tutorial, you are shown how to counter enemies when they wind up a punch and flash red, how to grapple enemies and throw them into dumpsters, turbines and, on occasion, the ocean. It also has combos for when you mash the attack button and heavy attacks for after you've finished mashing and hold the button down.
In terms of combat, this game gives you a choice of three different food platters and then leaves the room. You're encouraged to mix and match to get more exp, but you're generally left to find out what works for you.
I like that.
Most games will offer you a choice and then hover around the table and it decides to either move some of the plates away, to force you to try out new things, or just beats you around the head if you so much as look at something other than what you're offered.

You will not find better combat in an open world sandbox game. You will not. You have already failed.

Another thing it does well. COLLECTIBLES.

Get all the 11 Jade Statues and increase your melee! Health shrines! For every five you find, you get a health boost! Hack all the cameras! Find all the lock boxes which contain money and items! Beat all the fight clubs/martial arts classes! It's collectible heaven. Seriously. I got this game when it came out and I still haven't found everything. There is no such thing as too many collectibles. In any game. The more there is, the better.

Now enough about that, let's get playing!

Tonight's playthrough is sponsored by Smarties Mix. 

Not even a Smarties bag. Just a full on industrial-size "this-was-meant-for-the-mcdonalds-milkshake-machine-and-not-your-face" Smarties bag. You can tell by the way it has almost no branding.

Because fuck it, if my coronary bursts in my mid-thirties, you may as well all be here to read, support and encourage. I expect nothing less of my dear, dear, readers. I'm shortening my life expectancy by the mouthful, but hey, this is the way gamers are supposed to eat. Like a fucking hamster on methadrone.

So you play as Wei Chen, an undercover police agent (Don't worry, that's totally not a spoiler. It's revealed after literally five minutes of gameplay.) as he tries to infiltrate the notorious Sun On Yee, which is responsible for more organised crime that the sunburn you'd expect it to be causing. It's like the super-Triads, I guess.

Like Super-Aids is to Aids.

I don't particularly know why Wei Chen can mingle with the triads when he seems to have it all upstairs but no member of the triads does. And why does he help them out by murdering other triads? That's not being undercover, that's being a triad and being paid by the police. 

Actually, no, that makes perfect sense. Chen has the best job in the world.

He's also got to deal with his past all coming back, after one of the triads killed his sister, Mimi, by introducing her to illegal substances and stuff. And then the police are all "Aw, be more sneeeeeaky Wei." whenever the police haul his ass in after he's arrested whilst punching up a Yakuza chain gang.

Vehicles are fun too. You can throw your vehicle into chase cars at the touch of a button, perform action highjacks and jump from one car to the other and when you're on your phone and enter a car, you DON'T HAVE TO HANG UP THE PHONE, GODDAMN IT GTA IV, I'M TALKING TO YOU.

Other touches are nice too. Certain clothes give bonuses to mission cash, melee bonuses, gun bonuses and enemies might try and run away if they're the last two standing after a shoot out. Tracking them down and finishing them off is always a joy. A dark, primal, joy which lurks in some farspace in the back of my head.

You can pick up a used copy for £7.99, which makes it a good buy if you still can't afford the fifty quid GTA V which will never go down in price from now until the very end of time, when all consoles cease to exist.

I should mention though, it doesn't have flyable heli's or planes.

Oh well, maybe you'll like the game on the next review, eh?