Good
Wei or No Wei?
Our hero, Wei Shen, is an undercover Hong Kong cop who's in too deep with the Triad gang he's sent to infiltrate -- to the point where he doesn't seem to mind offing pretty much anybody he's told to in order to prove he's not a cop. Despite the emotional-yet-predictable tale of Wei's conflicted loyalties, with Wei himself, his sidekick Jackie, and his police handlers as standout performances (marred only by some distractingly iffy lip sync), I can't shake the feeling that an open-world game like this simply clashes with playing the role of a police officer.
GTA4's Niko Bellic can get away with casual vehicular manslaughter because he's an outlaw and a sociopath.
Why? Because every time I ran over a civilian, whether accidentally while in pursuit of a target or intentionally, the complete lack of consequences other than a "Innocent Killed -15 Police Points" notification highlights the absurdity of it all -- and even that slap on the wrist only happened when I killed someone while on a mission. GTA4's Niko Bellic can get away with casual vehicular manslaughter because he's an outlaw and a sociopath; Officer Wei Shen is only pretending to be one, and at the end of the day he's not above the law. (Which reminds me, the ending is more than a little hypocritical.) I found myself mostly forgetting that Wei was not actually a rising star in the ruthless power struggle for control of the embattled Son On Yee Triad, and I liked it better that way.
There may be some collateral damage.
That said, some of my favorite missions were optional sidequests where Wei covertly assists police investigations into human trafficking and a serial killer. Those involve actual detective work, as opposed to the "go here and kill a bunch of enemies" assignments that Wei's Triad bosses typically send him on. Though to their credit, most missions are punctuated by minigames of some kind -- many, many different minigames, from hacking (ok) to karaoke (ok) to lockpicking (die in a fire) -- which keep them from feeling too cookie-cutter.
Enter The Dragon
One time I beat a guy to death with a fish.
Unlike most open-world action games, guns are sparse in Hong Kong, and Wei's primary method of killing everything in his path is good old-fashioned martial-arts beatdowns. He's no Batman -- whatever Rocksteady's secret sauce is, United Front hasn't quite figured it out -- but Wei's gradually unlocked combos give me a similar feeling of badassery when everything goes smoothly. Countering enemy attacks and dealing nasty bone-breaking strikes to knees and elbows works as it should, and Wei's also great at using the environment in combat. There are some really rewarding animations for shoving Triad thugs into dumpsters, smashing their heads against railings, electrocuting them with loose wiring, and even impaling them on meathooks. One time I beat a guy to death with a fish. I do wish there were more enemy variety, though -- I must've beaten down the same eight Triad thugs a few hundred times, and that's more noticeable when you're up close and personal than when picking them off at range.
Cue the Bruce Lee noise!
Speaking of which, when you do come across a gun, the cover-based action is simple and straightforward, with easy headshots and slow-motion (triggered by vaulting over cover) bringing enemies down quickly and cinematically. It's probably for that reason that Sleeping Dogs developed a terrible habit of stealing guns to keep certain missions from being too easy -- many times I went to great effort to acquire a pistol, only to have it vanish from Wei's pocket as soon as a mission began. I was using that!
Hong Kong Drift
There's a button that performs a delightful, physics-defying sideswipe move.
Most missions involve at least a little driving, which is extremely arcadey -- there's a button that performs a delightful, physics-defying sideswipe move (also handy for dodging oncoming traffic) to bash any pursuing police or fleeing targets off the road, a goofy but very useful Just Cause 2-like Action Hijacking move where Wei leaps from one speeding car to another, and high-speed collisions feel like bumper cars. Also, I've never been to Hong Kong, but apparently over there they pump their tires with about 50,000 PSI of pure hydrogen gas. That's the only explanation for a single bullet puncture sending cars and motorcycles flying 15 feet off the ground and bursting into flames in an absurd but entertaining display of pyrotechnics. Plus there's this crazy bug where everybody's driving on the wrong side of the road! (I kid, I kid.)The main problem I had with driving is the camera -- it does not want to let me look around freely. Half the time it fights me as I try to swing it around to look at my surroundings while driving, the other half it wildly overcorrects.
Pop the tires and watch'em catch air.
I definitely appreciate that all of the keys are remappable (even to mouse thumb buttons) but Sleeping Dogs makes the same mistake that Mass Effect 3 does: assigning too many functions to the same button. I do want the combat counter assigned to my right mouse button, but the command for getting in and out of a car might be better bound to the E or F key where I'm less likely to accidentally tap it when speeding down the freeway. Unfortunately those actions are inseparably tied together, and as a result Wei bailed out of a fast-moving car more than once, whenever I forgot that left shift is the key to hold to fire out the window.
That's less of an issue for gamepad players, of course. I have to give Sleeping Dogs a ton of credit for transitioning between mouse and keyboard and gamepad on the fly and at a whim, including changing on-screen button prompts, which makes using the former for shooting and the latter for driving and fighting as easy as picking up a gamepad when needed.
The Thrill of The Chase
Freerunning chase missions are a good break from the typical driving and fighting.
On foot, Wei distinguishes himself in his Assassin's Creed-like freerunning, where he leaps over obstacles and gracefully pulls himself up ledges to navigate the urban landscape for fast-moving chases. The skill element is mostly simple timing, where you must hit the spacebar right before Wei hits an obstacle or jump in order to execute a smooth maneuver; failing will still do it, just slower. The many freerunning chase missions are a good break from the typical driving and fighting ones, even though I don't know if you can actually catch your prey before he reaches his friends and gangs up on you.
Some fences are more easily vaulted than others.
It's when I went off of those predefined running and driving courses that I hit trouble. Sleeping Dogs' Hong Kong serves well as a course for street chases, both in cars and motorcycles and on foot, but the only reward for exploration is typically getting stuck on geometry that shouldn't even slow down an athlete like Wei. It's as if the developers hadn't expected us to try to go everywhere we can see -- which is a mistake. Hong Kong (at least this version of it) also just isn't that interesting a city, even if it does look strikingly good when a rainstorm hits and sets the wet streets glistening with reflected headlights. Relative to the cities of Grand Theft Auto 4 and Saints Row: The Third there are few landmarks, and it frequently feels more like a maze of walls than an open world. Too often, when I missed a turn I'd have to do a 180 and go back the way I came rather than improvising a new route through a park.
That lack of exploration or any multiplayer options means that even though there are plenty of minigames, races, clothes shopping, dating, and sidequests in which Wei helps people (usually by beating up some thugs or stealing a car), there's really nothing pulling me back in now that I've completed the roughly 20-hour story, other than seeking out collectables for achievements. If that floats your boat, there are plenty of them, but I'd rather be roaming the bigger, more interesting maps of other open-world games. Though I don't expect I'll be back, I can say that I've left satisfied that my gaming time has been well-spent.
Check out the next page for an in-depth rundown of a the quality of the PC version of Sleeping Dogs.
Spy Guy says: I dunno about that title, except that they missed a massive opportunity to have Snoop Dogg do a cameo taking a nap on a couch. Anyway, what's the most important part about an open-world game for you? Driving? Combat? Story? Or interactive toilets?
