Sleeping Dogs™

[aflycon]

Hi, everybody! I just thought I'd go ahead and make a thread for discussion of Sleeping Dogs™, the new(ish) open-world game from Activison Square Enix set in Hong Kong. Here, have a photo.

Sleeping Dogs.jpg

Sleeping Dogs tells the story of Wei Shen, a Chinese native who grew up in Hong Kong before moving to the United States in hopes of helping his sister kick her drug habit. Returning to Hong Kong, Shen is tasked with infiltrating the Sun On Yee, a Triad group based on the real - and infamous - Chinese gang, Sun Yee On. Getting into a gang like this isn't easy, but luckily, Shen already has some connections in town.

I know that Blackadder has this game on Steam, and apparently Invunarble has it for the Xbox, but I was wondering who else has purchased it? If you haven't, I recommend that you go do so right now if you're into games like the Grand Theft Auto or Saints Row series. Sleeping Dogs isn't quite as ridiculous as Saints Row, but it includes some very fun mechanics not included in either of the aforementioned games that make it particularly fun.

The first (and perhaps best) of those mechanics is the combat. As you'll hear from Superintendent Pendrew (voiced by Tom Wilkinson) while playing the story, "guns are something of a rarity in Hong Kong." Most of the combat you will experience throughout Sleeping Dogs is melee-based, and it is fantastic. String together devastating combos and counters reminiscient of Batman: Arkham City to take down your foes, and learn new Kong Fu moves from the old sifu who taught you martial arts as a child to beat even more ass. Intimidate your foes enough and you'll find your attacks unstoppable and particularly brutal, and sometimes even in slow motion. Hell, you can even use the environment to fuck these guys up. Somebody tell me the last time they beat someone's face in with a payphone. (My favorite "finishing move" is to put a thug in my trunk and dive out of the car as I drive it into the ocean.) One caveat to the combat system in this game is that you will never keep a gun for too long: While handguns are concealable, Wei has a habit of losing them inexplicably, and heavier weapons like pump shotguns, SMGs, and assault rifles cannot be concealed on your person (realistically, I suppose) and will attract unwanted attention from the police.

Next on the list is the driving. As an undercover police officer, you will soon find yourself in the illegal racing scene, competing against some of Hong Kong's greatest drivers. Make use of the game's unique ramming mechanic to bash your opponents out of your way, into each other, off of a bridge - you name it; one of the greatest things about this game is all of the possibilities with these features. Like many other racing games (Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition comes to mind) cars and bikes are classified from D Class to A Class, with A obviously being the best. As you progress through the storyline you will find yourself able to purchase nicer and nicer cars until your garage (well, all the garages in town, really - you can pick up any of your vehicles from whichever one you'd like) are overflowing with the finest Ferrari-, Lamborghini-, and BMW-inspired rides around. Races become progressively more difficult and the racers progressively more intelligent, so this part of the game can always be a challenge, but the cash rewards are hefty and the respect you gain for winning even heftier.

The third great feature and the last I will list today is the Face system. This system denotes the amount of respect Wei has in Hong Kong, and with each level-up you will receive a cool and generally very useful bonus (for example, at Level 4 you can call a valet to bring you a car of your choice any time, almost anywhere in town). Wei's Face level also determines whether or not he can "pull off" wearing certain outfits (generally particularly classy, expensive, or just plain weird ones), and while wearing these he can in turn gain a higher percentage of Face experience than before. Though generally slow to level, their are many opportunities around the town to increase Wei's Face. You will find many map markers indicating favors that you can do for people you know - and even some that you don't - like helping Triad friends escape the police, shooting a parkour video for a vagrant under the influence of shrooms, and vandalizing the cars of cheating street-racers. There are also similar systems for gaining Triad and Police experience, for which you receive similar bonuses, but who cares about that? :p

Okay, now, discuss! If you've got any questions about the game, feel free to ask.

[Sti_Jo_Lew]

Will have to pick this game up eventually. Saw TB's review of it, looks awesome. Also, cock fights. Why? Why the hell not apparently.

[Invunarble]

Speak of the devil, I was just playing this right now, hunting down Face missions.

One thing I will bring up that pisses me off a ton with this game, is that guns are ridiculously difficult to get. I often have to beat the crap out of a few cops before one manages to drop a gun, and by then all of Hong Kong is after me. Once I manage to get that out of the way, I end up losing it to a glitch or dropping it. Very frustrating ._.

[vallorn]

Thats because its supposed to be about kung-fu-ing people in the face not shooting them.

[Invunarble]

Thats because its supposed to be about kung-fu-ing people in the face not shooting them.

But 3/4ths of the entire story campaign is filled with mainly kung-fu-ing people, and in desperate situations when you DO need guns, you can never seem to find one.

[Lord_Mountbatten]

Welp, I completed this game today. Very enjoyable, the combat did feel a bit "wait in line to get your arse handed to you" though. Batman sort've had it but the combat was too fast and fluid for it to be an issue. Here it's somewhat noticeable. Wei wins so many melee fights because the Hong Kong triads seem to have very strict rules on fighting manners.

I was also very happy to guess who the voice actor of the Chairman might be before I'd even met him. Sure enough it was James Hong, who plays old authoritative Chinese man very well.

in desperate situations when you DO need guns, you can never seem to find one.

Not true. Whenever I found myself needing a gun (so basically in situations where other people were shooting at me), there was always either a gun conveniently left on top of some cover from the entrance, or one guard on his own and easy to disarm.

[aflycon]

I was also very happy to guess who the voice actor of the Chairman might be before I'd even met him. Sure enough it was James Hong, who plays old authoritative Chinese man very well.

I have to say I really liked Po's dialogue. If I can say this without spoiling anything, my favorite was "The only difference between you and I is that I know what I am."

Concerning the combat: Did you a) find all the Jade statues and b) remember to incorporate the moves from the statues into your combat? I found that the combat became less arse-handy and more Bruce Lee as I began to use the more complex moves and combos.

And about the guns, it seems that in recent patches, guns appear more often (like the handgun in your apartment after completing the story - that wasn't present in other patches). They also seem to be more common throughout the game world.

[Lord_Mountbatten]

Yes, I did find all the Jade statues, and incorporated the moves. It's just that everyone you fight takes it in turns to get the shit kicked out of them nonetheless. In reality Wei would be getting a beatdown from the large groups he's taking on, but their extreme manners keeps this from happening. Of course I know the game would not be very fun if you got beaten down all the time, so it's mostly just an amusing observation.

One thing that might have helped however is including special animations involving Wei taking on multiple people.

[Invunarble]

Yeah, the one thing I sort of disliked with the combat in game was how invariable and straightforward it was. In most fighting situations, you have a group of people thrown at you who just end up throwing consistent kicks/punches that your character just ends up countering, then you perform some new combo from a new Jade statue (Which in most cases, is just a longer string of the "X" button being linked together to perform an extra kick or something) to KO the opponent, then move on to the next person.

I personally just found these combat situations to be very indifferent from each other later on in the game, and my excitement from learning a new ability or counter just slowly dulled more and more as I found out they were all practically just longer string-togethers of the "X" button.

Of course, I was a bit more enthusiastic when I found out about gun combat, but that dulled somewhat quickly as well when I found out how sparse and rare they were, and how the only real use for them was in the few story missions that involved you clearing room to room of enemies with one of the pistols.