You play an undercover cop named Wei Shin. The story follows his exploits as he attempts to infiltrate and destroy a Hong Kong triad. Though the Idea of the story is interesting and it even tries to get some deep moments with Wei as he struggles not to lose sight of himself in his undercover role, it constantly feels like you the player is missing something. Wei seems to know things and people that hadn't ever been mentioned before. At first I figured I must just be missing something in conversations but the further I got in the game the more I noticed it. As the game got close to the end my immersion had totally eroded to the point I just wanted to it and get it over with and see the end. Sadly the end was easily the worst part of the game, in all respects but, especially in story. (Quick spoiler) One mission has you saving someone only for the next mission to start with them already dead. Perhaps this was to make you feel powerless, but all it did was make me feel like the writers didn't care and after that, neither did I.
Sleeping dogs Is an open world action role playing game in the vein of GTA. The world is perhaps the best part of this game. Its big and there are lots of things to do, If you get tired of the main story you can always play karaoke, do side missions, street race, bust a drug dealer, or do some backstreet brawling. The world is a good size without any given destination never being more than a few minutes drive away. Even if you don't want to drive you can grab a taxi and be at your destination after a quick load. I did this very rarely though, because driving was great. Even the starting cars go relatively fast and are fun to drive.
Once you got to your destination in the world the missions themselves were fairly enjoyable. They didn't usually feel to repetitive. Sometimes your missions would be to beat down a group of thugs, other times you might just be driving around a bride to be to get ready for her wedding. That variance was very refreshing and was the only thing that kept me playing given my issues with the story. However, like the story the missions started to get less and less enjoyable as the game went on. The worst were missions with weapons. The gun play is, simply put, boring. With the last few missions degrading into little more than shooting galleries and quick time events the end was less than epic.
I feel like I don't have a lot to say about this game aesthetically. Its not great but its from the last generation so it shouldn't be expected to look great. Animations are perhaps the worst of it. We live in an time of motion capture walk cycles and looking back at the clunky key frame animated people of yesteryear can be somewhat difficult, but even looking at its peers, Sleeping Dogs animation isn't great.
My only other thought is that there is a lot of language, violence and derogatory talk. Its an M rated game it should be expected to have such things to some extent at least, but only to serve the story or the game play in someway. People were commonly impaled, stabbed, shot, sliced or otherwise, and even worse things were talked about but not shown, it was gruesome. After you got though that the only billboards in the game seemed to be for women's underwear which to some extent is fine, that exists in the real world too, but maybe have one for something else from time to time. Also, I understand the setting of a mostly male gang would likely include lots of derogatory comments about women, but realism doesn't always make for an enjoyable gaming experience.
It might sound like I really didn't enjoy Sleeping Dogs and that would be because I didn't. But I could have, It could have been a great game. It was loaded with potential, the world was great, the cars were great, and the story was good in concept. I even finished it purely because of its potential, I wanted to enjoy it but between the story falling apart, the missions getting overly dull, the distasteful violence, and treatment of women it lost all sense of enjoyment for me. If even one of those had been good all the way to the end it could have held up the rest and made the game worth it, but as it stands its not. When the credits finally rolled I was so ready to be done with Sleeping Dogs that after closing the game I immediately uninstalled it and will probably never install it again.
-AT
