Sleeping Dogs

Greetings from Lithuania.

"Sleeping Dogs" (2012) is a game that can not be not mentioned in one sentence with GTA. Is it was good as GTA5 lets say? No. Given the reportedly 250 million $ budget of GTA5, "Sleeping Dogs" simply couldn't be better. That said if you do not compare it with GTA series, "Sleeping Dogs" is a pure fun game.

I liked many things in it - story, fighting, driving, voice acting, city. City itself is a big enough but not to big - i liked it because you don't need to drive like 10 minutes from point A to point B. Fighting is a fun thing, i liked the whole kung fu" and that stuff. Shooting mechanics were also solid, but i didn't get it what was wrong with weapons - one moment you have a gun, next time after you get in a car load a game - you don't. But what "Sleeping Dogs" in my opinion did much, much better then GTA is driving mechanics. Driving is much more fun then it was even in GTA 5 - and i loved GTA 5 totally. Although there isn't big car variety, its enough get make for some fun driving. I liked the collectibles in game simply because they add to the game health, money. But there isn't really what to do with the money itself in this game unfortunately - you can buy clothes, cars and some decorations for your room o flat.

Overall, i finished "Sleeping Dogs" and had much more fun then i thought i would. This is a very fun game with some good if not the most original story, cool open world and some dragon kicks moments that never got old. Fun game in all directions.

I was really skeptical about this game because it looked just like another GTA clone. You can definitely feel that formula, but it's improved. I read reviews about this game through other websites and got a general idea of what I was getting into.

The story is top notch as well as the voice acting. Controls are really responsive. I think the focus on the fighting engine is the best part. I try to find reasons to fight people in the game. I'm not a big racing fan, but the vehicle controls are smooth and realistic feeling. The authenticity is what I love. I enjoy the Chinese culture and have many Chinese friends so playing the game felt familiar.

The main issue I have with the game is the camera control. While driving, fighting, or just generally traversing the the game there are times when the camera gets all wonky. Other than that I can't think of any reason not to at least play the game. Good job Square-Enix for picking up this game instead of letting it die.

This game feels and plays like an over the top Chinese cop movie, aided by well done voice acting. The general atmosphere of the open world really strengthens the feeling of being immersed in an older pseudo fictional representation of modern Hong Kong.

The story: it plays in a really tight and controlled manner which allows for a great feeling of fitting into it all. There is no need to feel lost or bored in a vast city. The player can go out and do a lot of missions, and many side quests. This game defeats a lot of other open world games simply by those means alone.

The acting: The voice acting is top notch, and as previously stated - The voice acting really is at a high level. The actors and actresses really hit the nail on the head.

It isn't perfect: It has a few irritating issues with its control system when playing with a keyboard. Buttons tend to shift meaning while playing, making it possible to miss a few important counters while playing. It goes against muscle memory. Though that's figuratively the only true issue with its design.

When I first tried to play Sleeping Dogs, I did not like it. The combat was frustrating and I never felt like I was doing it right. I took some time away from it and started it up last week and I loved it!

This isn't your typical open world city game. It focuses on fighting combat more than guns. There are a decent amount of missions with guns, but since it is Hong Kong, they're hard to come by in the open world. The main focus of the action is fighting like you're in a Hong Kong action movie.

The combat is essentially a version of Arkham Asylum. There are counters that can be done when an enemy lights up and is about to hit. But it goes deeper as you can almost do fighting game combos to fight enemies. The flow of the combat isn't as graceful as Batman as you're not really able to connect counter after counter together. This one is more strategic as some enemies you can only counter before damaging, or ones you can only grapple or land heavy attacks.

The shooting combat is probably the weakest. It doesn't feel 100% as smooth as it should, but it suffices for the missions you need it. Normally it's just cover shooting and lock on to enemies until they're dead.

The main draw for me is the story it tells. You are an undercover cop with the Sun On Yee triad gang. You have to balance being a cop and a gangster. The side missions for the cop side are alright, they get super repetitive, but they're still fun. The side missions for the gang are more fun and varied.

It's cast of characters are fantastic and Wei is much more enjoyable to be than the generic GTA characters.

My only gripes with it are that the gunplay seems undercooked, but the focus is the hand-to-hand combat which is what makes up for it. The combat takes a moment to get used to, but it's essentially a brawler done right in an open world which really hasn't been done as all the GTA fist fights were terrible.

This is easily one of the top non-GTA open world games. Its fun to play and has a fantastic story to progress through.

(Excludes the dlcs Nightmare in North Point, Zodiac Tournament, and Year of the Snake, as I already reviewed each dlc on their separate IMDb page)

Being a huge fan of True Crime: Streets of LA, this video game was much anticipated to be one of my favorite games. Sadly, that's not what happened. The game is great; the combat is fun, and the story is intense, but some of these mechanics (for example, driving and camera panning) were too clunky for me, and the game itself felt completely different from True Crime. Whatever, it was still fun and visually beautiful, although I would say it's a bit forgettable. What I didn't forget was that pork bun vendor. "Why you don't have pork bun in your hand?"

Edit: I ended up coming back to play this video game once again for an array of reasons; for one, there's a few dlcs I've never got around to completing, second, it was 2014 since the last time I've played the main story and forgot almost everything, so I decided to start from the beginning, and third, I needed a break from Dragons Dogma, and this game seemed like a great game to play in between. Revisiting this game has been a great experience for the most part. This story of Wei taking on the Hong Kong triads by becoming a triad was a dynamic campaign, doing missions for the Sun On Lee, and also doing missions for detectives. While the story is fun, the landscape of vibrant Hong Kong is where this game grabs me. Some truly mesmerizing scenes, with plenty of fun, cool sites to explore. While I do think the driving was a little off, I was able to get used to it fairly quickly, and was able to navigate the highways and backroads with ease. The main campaign was lots of fun, although it seemed kinda short, and all the extra side missions and collectibles to find was filling, although repetitive.

There was a couple random dlcs I got that just added police missions, a random swat team mission, and a survival mission where you kick monks ass. All 3 were extremely forgettable, and probably could be avoided as they are just replayable missions that don't do or give you anything neat except either police or triad skill points .

In all, I'm really glad I decided to give this game another go, as I actually found myself more entertained than the first time I played it. The main game and all the dlcs took me a little over 40hours, but it really only felt like 15. Gonna bump my score from 3.5 Stars to 4 Stars.