Sleeping Dogs

Sleeping Dogs is a 2012 open world action-adventure video game developed by United Front Games in conjunction with Square Enix London Studios and published by Square Enix. I usually don’t buy AAA title the year they are released because the price is usually too high. But when Steam accidentally offered Sleeping Dogs at a 91% discount during their Christmas sale, I decided to go for it.

From the Sleeping Dogs Wikipedia article:

The game takes place in a fictional modern day Hong Kong with players assuming control of Wei Shen, an officer of the San Francisco Police Department, who had been seconded to the Hong Kong Police Force. Wei has been assigned by the Organized Crime and Triad Bureau to go undercover and infiltrate the Triad society called Sun On Yee and take them down. There are two subplots contained within the main storyline: the first is Wei’s personal struggle between completing his mission as a police officer, and having to commit crimes to prove his worth to the triad. The other subplot consists of completing missions set out by a triad lieutenant, such as killing triad members who are loyal to competing lieutenants. The island is divided into four fictional districts which are named after real areas.

Hong Kong is a fantastic backdrop for this game. It’s huge, but not too huge and you’ll soon start to recognize parts of the city and find your way around without using the GPS too much. The GPS works brilliantly, by the way. The city looks beautiful in the sunset, and if you’ve never been to Hong Kong yourself, I recommend that you drive to Victoria Peak in the game and have a look at the city in all its glory. The developers have made sure to build a digital version of Hong Kong that resembles the real thing. I’ve been there twice in real life, and recognize the Soho area and the escalators from Central. There is attention to detail everywhere; Soho is flooded with Gweilo; foreign devils.

While similar titles, like Grand Theft Auto and Saint’s Row, are focused on gun combat, Sleeping Dogs is mostly about personal melee and boot-in-face combat. You do get access to firearms now and then, but only to a single weapon at the time and you’ll usually not use the gun outside of a mission. When levelling up, you’ll get access to new marshal arts actions that can be used to take out your enemies in all kinds of imaginative ways. Trying to perform these new actions with the keyboard, however, feels really awkward. You should definitely play this game with a Xbox 360 controller or some other game pad. With a game pad, controlling Wei, both in combat and in a vehicle, feels so much smoother than with the keyboard. I’m guessing the analogue sticks help a lot.

There are very few things wrong with Sleeping Dogs. There are the occasional bug, though, like the heads of people sticking out of cars roofs and the camera some times have a hard time following Wei. Every now and then he disappears off screen completely, which can be a tad annoying in the middle of combat. At one point I also managed to crash Wei’s so that he was thrown out of the vehicle and got stuck inside a large cage there was no way he could get out of. The only solution was to cancel the current mission and start again.

But all in all, Sleeping Dogs is a great open world game. It plays great, it looks great (even on my three year old system on medium settings) and it sounds great (there’s a wide range of radio stations and some of the cars sound - and handle - absolutely beautifully). With the release of GTA V this year, it’s quite possible that Sleeping Dogs will be quickly forgotten, but that’s a faith it doesn’t deserve. It’s one of the best games of its genre.

Don’t steal a police car unless you’re prepared to floor it all the way to Mexico.
Don’t steal a police car unless you’re prepared to floor it all the way to Mexico.
We’re in Asia, of course you can sing karaoke.
We’re in Asia, of course you can sing karaoke.
Massage.
Massage.
Missions often mean playing some high tech mini games.
Missions often mean playing some high tech mini games.
You can hijack cars by jumping on to it from another vehicle.
You can hijack cars by jumping on to it from another vehicle.
Hong Kong.
Hong Kong.
That’s gotta hurt.
That’s gotta hurt.
Hong Kong’s North Point in the sunset.
Hong Kong’s North Point in the sunset.
The ambulance drivers from GTA moonlights in Sleeping Dogs, it seems.
The ambulance drivers from GTA moonlights in Sleeping Dogs, it seems.
The escalators.
The escalators.
When you do get access to firearms, it gets nasty.
When you do get access to firearms, it gets nasty.
All the cars you own are accessible from garages scattered across town.
All the cars you own are accessible from garages scattered across town.

Feedback

This post has no feedback yet.

Do you have any thoughts you want to share? A question, maybe? Or is something in this post just plainly wrong? Then please send an e-mail to vegard at vegard dot net with your input. You can also use any of the other points of contact listed on the About page.


Caution

It looks like you're using Google's Chrome browser, which records everything you do on the internet. Personally identifiable and sensitive information about you is then sold to the highest bidder, making you a part of surveillance capitalism.

The Contra Chrome comic explains why this is bad, and why you should use another browser.