Sleeping Dogs was originally released in August of 2012 for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360. It was well received and oft compared to a crossover between Rockstar’s GTA and Sega’s Yakuza, the latter of which I am a huge fan of. I have never played a GTA game and have only played a handful of open world games before, such as the inFamous, Prototype, and Crackdown series. Still, Sleeping Dogs has long since been in my back catalog and I can’t say I’m surprised that an “ultimate” edition was finally released given the popularity of re-releases, especially for games with a ton of DLC like this.
Note that a day or so after this review goes live, Eric Layman will post his review of the PC version. Eric has played through the entirety of the original release, so his ability to notice smaller changes and differences far surpasses mine. But as a first time Sleeping Dogs player, the Definitive version is clearly the way to go due to a variety of gameplay and visual improvements. Yet, there are still plenty of miscellaneous bugs and imperfections that would have ideally been ironed out with this Definitive release. Granted, this is a massive game with “a lot going on,” and some patches, like every other game, are likely in the works. But there are a lot of AI goofs such as NPCs walking blindly into each other, or walls, and continuing to walk in place. Or various vehicle driving/interaction glitches, the worst of which can cause a side quest to fail. Nothing I have experienced in my time with the game has been game-breaking, but for a re-release of a game that was handled by the original developers (not a third party, as is often the case), I expected something more polished, especially given the MSRP of $60 for the console versions.
On the other hand, the core game is still great fun and there is a whole lot of interesting things to do. The story puts you as Wei Shen, an undercover police detective who is trying to infiltrate a powerful triad in Hong Kong. It’s incredibly dangerous work as you might imagine, and Wei finds himself in the unique position of playing both sides of the law, as most of the Hong Kong police do not know he’s undercover. Because of that, if you start killing innocents or driving nuts or otherwise cause too much havoc, the police will go to impressive lengths to get to you. Similarly, you’re on the frontlines of turf wars with rival gangsters, which means there is plenty of physical combat in your near future.
Fortunately, Wei is a badass when it comes to fighting and has unrealistically awesome stamina to boot. I really appreciated the realism and focus of the combat and, given that it’s a game with some exciting chase sequences where you run and parkour your way around town, I didn’t mind the lack of a stamina mechanic. The fight system, one of the core features of the game, is similar to the Arkham games in that you face multiple enemies at once and the only way to survive is to get good at countering. An enemy who you can counter turns red a moment before he strikes, allowing you to press Triangle and move the left stick in their direction. Chaining attacks and combos builds up a meter in the lower left of your HUD, once full, enemies become intimidated and disorganized (and you get some health back). Attacks are performed by pressing Square, using combinations of pressing and holding it to execute different moves, all of which look great. Grappling is done by pressing Circle, great for enemies that spam-block. When you have someone in a hold you can run them into the nearest wall, shoulder throw them (into other nearby enemies, too), or use the environment. The environment offers plenty of interesting ways to get your point across, be it by running someone’s head into a fish tank or throwing their back onto a metal guard rail for a satisfying crunch.
Before getting into fights, it’s usually not a bad idea to purchase some drinks or food that instantly give you a pretty long-lasting boost in stats like damage resistance, improved hitting power, etc. These boosts appear as a small circular meter in your HUD. They cost money, but not a whole lot, and it’s not uncommon to be carrying around a hundred thousand yen anyway. Note that if you die, it does cost some money to respawn. Speaking of which, I read an article suggesting that United Front tweaked some areas of the original game to smooth out spikes in difficulty, although I couldn’t tell you where these were having not played the original.
Combat is a major and also very well done portion of Sleeping Dogs, but there is a lot of driving, too — afterall, Hong Kong is a large area. Just make sure to pay extra attention to all of the pedestrians, there are apparently a significant number more NPCs walking around Hong Kong at any time than in the previous versions of the game. You can (inadvertantly) kill civilians with your driving (or any other method), which you could argue gives the player more freedom, but I would have preferred a way to toggle this option off, or at least suffer a bigger penalty for it. As it is now, you can go completely psycho and you’ll lose some points towards your Cop XP, but it seems like Wei Shen’s character is completely compromised by this indifference to innocent life.
Wei’s reputation depends a lot on how you handle yourself in between story missions. You can press the touchpad at anytime to pull up a nicely detailed map with an easy to read legend. Points of interest are marked here and on your persistent mini-map in the HUD, so it’s easy to find activities you want to do, be they Favors for the locals or operations that are of a more gangster persuasion. There’s really never any shortage of things to go out and do, and most of these are fun and challenging, and also varied enough to keep things fresh. A considerable selection of vehicles, clothing, apartments, and stuff for your apartment ensure you always have somewhere to spend that money, too, and a long list of upgrades in both the Cop and Triad paths give plenty of reason to play both sides of the law more or less right down the line.
With that, let’s get to the summary…
