Sleeping Dogs Review

I played Sleeping Dogs a couple of years ago and some part of me remembers liking it but years later I never could recall the game for the life of me, it's just that all the talk of in recent years of it being some kind of "underrated masterpiece" has gotten me curious in trying it out again, I got to wonder, was I just not consuming the game properly or there was a reason why I couldn't recall the game 5 years after beating it? Turns out, it's because Sleeping Dogs is really just a style over substance kind of game, I don't condemn style like many, you need it to bring people into your product at all but SD is a game that really feels like it adopts the same game design philosophy that the Uncharted games do in that it wants to make you *look* cool in spite of the fact mechanically and design wise overall, the game is very simple in every way.

I'll start with what I liked in which I will say the game does look very nice visually and the character models for the main characters do look pretty detailed without looking too overly realistic. The story and voice acting is pretty solid stuff, as far as game narratives especially in open world games are concerned, it did do a decent enough job at making me pay attention to it especially with how conflicted Wei Shen is and how is voice actor does a geniunely great job at selling me on all of it, the rest of the cast are decent and the character interactions are entertaining enough in that Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie kind of way or just any movie or show where the characters, writers and actors know what they are doing and unlike say some of the Grand Theft Auto games, there is an actual overarching plot here where in GTA 3 and 5 feel like they are episodic crime dramas maserquading as game narratives.

The next few paragraphs of the review is where I am much more lukewarm on the game.

First I'll start with the open world, much like GTA, why is this even in the game especially when the main campaign missions are so unbeliveably scripted? You have lots of freedom in the open world but it's super scripted during missions, you might as well just make the main missions its own linear campaign like Mafia 1 or Destroy All Humans. The open world is basically filler especially when the main draw of the game is the story, writing and character interactions. You could cut the open world out and the player can get to the next story beat faster. This is like watching a TV show or movie where the viewer has to watch the protagonist alone with no one around with no immediate danger head to his next location like say if an Indiana Jones movie, you are watching the titular character riding the plane to the next destination instead of just showing in the background that he is heading there.

The next issue is the fist fighting, this is the part of the game that gets quite a bit of praise, but I didn't like it that much. The biggest issue is that it's too easy and this is coming from someone who doesn't demand games to be hard. SD's combat however is focused on making the player *look* cool more than anything. Wiping out an entire group of enemies in melee combat doesn't require much effort, and there is no hard mode either. This is also coming from the guy who doesn't mind Batman Arkham combat. Outside of having better looking moment to moment animations, the combat in SD doesn't even surpass Batman Arkham Asylum. In SD, environmental takedowns are easy to do on weaker enemies, and your "face" meter gets a massive boost when doing them, on top of every enemy is beaten by punching them, weapons can also fill up the face meter fast. I didn't even need to unlock the later moves because it's that easy. Since the face meter can get filled with ease, every enemy can be countered with triangle, the game stops introducing new enemies types after the first few hours and as a result combat melee combat gets monotonous pretty fast. Compare this to say Batman Arkham Asylum, some enemies need to be caped stunned, others need to be jumped over, some enemies can throw things at you, and titans are huge and can take quite a bit of damage, on top of this, you need to build up a combo multiplier in order to perform free takedown on enemies instead of Sleeping Dogs, environmental takedowns where it's a free kill with a meter that makes the combat even easier, and every enemy be can be countered using triangle and beaten by mashing square. The hardest parts of combat is when a grappler grabs you and the triangle prompt that pops up as he grabs tends to be a 50/50 guessing game of whether or not the input will actually register but then I figured out just to press triangle seconds before the prompt pops up so even that gets trivial since the command to break out of a grab is always triangle. 

Since melee combat isn't that great how does the rest of the gameplay fare? Not much better, the gun combat is a typical cover based shooter of the era and to the game's credit, the damage animations and sound design for the guns do get the job done but like the melee combat, it lacks any depth, there is an optional bullet time mechanic but enemies go down with ease and it's easy to build up face while shooting without bullet time so shooting is just there because the game needed shooting. On top of this, you don't need to keep weapons with you at all times since an enemy will have their back turned to be disarmed and you will be able to defeat gun enemies. Apparently bullet time makes the shooting sections even easier. 

There is car driving and these parts are also lacking, outrunning the cops is easy and they might be a little persistent but 2-3 rams of their cars or any enemy vehicle and they get taken out. On rails combat with cars is easy since you got to shoot car tires once and they are down, motorcyclists get beaten with ease too.

There is "persuading" npcs but those are a QTEs and outside of timed missions, you can screw up hacking as many times as you want. The only parts with geniune tension is the bug planting sections since timers in any game puts me on edge. 

Overall, SD's greatest "strength" is how many gameplay styles it but it's all focused on making you "look" cool, the actual gameplay the player engages is just enough to barely sell itself as a game rather than a game pretending to be a movie but at the same time, the game gives you so little to do earn the power fantasy. I'm not asking for much, but SD could've been more considering how much I heard it was an "underrated masterpiece". It goes to show how little that term means.