Sleeping Dogs Review

Hey guys and gals for this review were are journeying to the Far East, our destination Modern Day Hong Kong.
Sleeping Dogs around the time of its release in August 2012 was a highly anticipated game that focused primarily on the martial arts style combat. A fun fact about Sleeping Dogs is that it was originally the 3rd True Crime game called True Crime: Hong Kong but due to high development costs the game was shelved in 2011 until Square Enix stepped in and acquired the publishing rights.

Original box art for True Crime: Hong Kong

In Sleeping Dogs you play as Wei Shen a recently transferred officer from the San Francisco Police Department to the Hong Kong Police Force, your mission is to infiltrate Triad society and take down the Sun On Yee. As Wei is deep undercover he will have to act just like a genuine member of the Sun On Yee this can be in the form of taking out key targets from other Triad gangs such as you in-game rivals the 18k. 

As you play though the game you will have to act like a law enforcer and a member of the Sun On Yee at the same time this sounds difficult and it is for after each mission you are scored on your Police XP and your Triad XP. if for instance you steal a car or destroy a railings your Police XP will decrease, this is a pain in the side on levels where you are pursuing a target though the busy streets of Hong Kong where I always either smash into a dozen cars and railings. Your Triad XP is earned by being basically a badass from doing combos to slow-mo Max Payne gun fights, if you collected enough XP you have the option to upgrade Wei in all sorts of ways from the Slim Jim which allows you to steal cars without your Police XP suffering to doing awesome slow motion stunts. 

As well as Police XP and Triad XP there is also Face XP which unlike the previous two can only be acquired via Wei's reputation which can be increased by buying clothes and doing side missions, each level of Face XP gives its unique advantages such as food consumed effects will last longer, Face XP are purely for cosmetic additions for Wei but are advantageous mentioned are quite useful during the latter part of the game.

Now the combat in Sleeping Dogs is much like that of the free flowing action that we all loved from Batman: Arkham Asylum/City, you start off the game with just the basic punch, kick and grab moves but as you progress though the game you will be able to unlock devastating moves that literally leave your surrounding enemies in shock however you can only acquire these moves if you find 11 jade statues for everyone you collect you can learn an additional move. The statues themselves are not difficult to find but some are mission locked so you have to play certain missions in order to retrieve them for out of the mission they are inaccessible. During combat you will encounter different types of enemies these include the Grapplers who cant be grabbed but cant block, the Strikers who are your basic thugs, Armed Thugs who will be your bain for if you miss your counter then they will deal serious damage and finally we have the Brawlers who are the tanks of Sleeping Dogs for they can absorb a lot of damage and deal quite a bit of damage. 

Combat can be challenging but when you know what to do it's a hell of a lot of fun. 

In sleeping Dogs you will be doing a lot of shooting and it does this quite well because it follows the Gears of War style of moving from cover to cover, blind firing and vaulting over cover and into slow-mo Max Payne style. You also have the ability to shoot while driving using the shoulder buttons which at first feels strange and unnatural but after a few car shootouts you will soon master these mechanics. Talking about driving Sleeping Dogs has one of the best driving mechanics Iv'e seen in a open world game for unlike Grand Theft Auto VI where you can drift totally out of control Sleeping Dogs feels more refined however the best thing about driving in Sleeping Dogs is the ability to open your door to jump onto other vehicles and hijack them, I however use this ability to knock people off their motorbikes and Triad members.

Sleeping Dogs is one of those games where you can lose hours upon hours due to its vast open world and the option to try and collect the collectibles scattered around Hong Kong. Even after you have finished the game maybe you haven't maxed out your Face XP this in itself may take you either minutes or hours depending on how much XP you have collected, then there is the choice to just create havoc and have car chases with the Hong Kong Police. So over all Sleeping Dogs is one of the best open world games that I have played but with GTA V being released on September 17th  I may have to rethink my verdict.