Zero Punctuation: Sleeping Dogs

[yellowmage]

Excellent as always, Yahtzee.

And I think we can safely include "flipping out the buttered fuck crumpets" in the list of Yahtzee's BEST LINEZ EVAR. Also, the image that goes along with it.

 

[Lord_Gremlin]

I hate how escapist videos are broken in Opera now. Forcing me to use IE, the only other browser I tolerate...

 

[duchaked]

being forced to karaoke...yep sounds like every other time I decided to hang out with Asian friends...sigh

 

[Itsthefuzz]

I just finished the game and thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

[PoorCollegeLad]

Was the spiders on fire barrel a subtle nod to the LRR video Fear Itself? I do certainly hope so, but probably just a coincidence.

 

[Therumancer]

Hmmm, the only thing that surprises me here is given the focus on hand to hand combat (to begin with at least) it's not being compared to say Yakuza as opposed to GTA. I haven't played it yet, but from the descriptions it sounds a LOT more like Yakuza than GTA, especially given the mention of mini-games like Karaoke.

That said, having seen what they did with City Of Heroes/Villains and Champions Online, not to mention games like Prototype and Infamous, I've been waiting for a single player third person sandbox RPG based around super heroes where you can create your own character and select powers and such as opposed to being handed a guy with electricity or bio powers and told "play this". Basically the hero MMOs, but with the depth that you only get from a single player gaming experience.

I'll also say that "Saint's Row" seems to have taken the sandbox insanity crown, where "Grand Theft Auto" has gone in the "realistic" direction. That said while you have jet bikes in SR 3, you don't yet have Jet Packs. I'll also admit that they kind of ruined a lot of the insanity by making the world a bit too silly, as many have said, the insanity works best when the world plays straight man for you (so to speak).

 

[min6char]

What's so great about Yahtzee's reviews is that whatever his take was, I always walk away knowing pretty well whether *I'll* like the game. This is nothing like an endorsement from him, but now I really want this game. What can I say, Arkham Asylum meets Assassin's Creed meets GTA is good enough for me...

 

[Woodsey]

It's almost entirely unimaginative, although I did manage to derive some mild enjoyment from it. Needless to say, the critical-wanking it's received has been somewhat perplexing.

[a
href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.386571-Woodsey-Weviews-vs-The-Summer-Aftermath-2012-Part-2]I has review here.[/a]

Yeah, it's quite well polished; but then it's pretty much just copying GTA IV (a 4-year-old game) and adding an incredibly lazy undercover-cop plotline. Hell, it doesn't even steal the most interesting aspect of the original True Crime.

What's so great about Yahtzee's reviews is that whatever his take was, I always walk away knowing pretty well whether *I'll* like the game. This is nothing like an endorsement from him, but now I really want this game. What can I say, Arkham Asylum meets Assassin's Creed meets GTA is good enough for me...

The difference being those games all have well-defined personalities. It's Assassin's Creed meets Arkham in the loosest sense possible. I.e. you fight people, there is occasionally a 'free-running' section. (Although really it's just a quickened-up jump mechanic.)

 

[MonkeyPunch]

Bah. I'm quite happy there isn't a whiff of jetpacks or the like in Sleeping Dogs.
There are other sandbox games like Just Cause 2 and Saints Row. It's good to have diverse(ish) sandbox games rather than each one just be ridiculous.

I was also super disappointed with the security cam thing. It was ages before I twigged that it was just always the same thing.
I was closly inspecting every aspect of the peoples behaviour trying to tell which one might be the supplier and was always surprised that this time it happened to be the guy with the suit again. Until I twigged :/

There are a couple of similar minor disappointments in Sleeping Dogs but overall it's quite fun and the voice acting and characters are really good and I enjoyed the setting and style too.

 

[head desk tricycle]

I remember in the intentionally bad classic game Takeshi's Challenge, there was a mandatory karaoke minigame, I guess that's where they got the idea.

 

[ExtraDebit]

San Andreas remains the best GTA esque game in my heart. There hasn't been a game since san andreas that provide the atmosphere and freedom. GTA4 was a real let down, I was in a city all the fucking time!

 

[Joriss]

So Yatzee, Darksiders 2 next week yes?

 

[nanaholic]

Good idea mediocre execution actually sums it up pretty nicely. The game was fun for the most part but it could've been a lot more. Couldn't agree more on the whole guns thing though - it's like the writers want to escalate the feeling of danger towards the end but don't know how to do it any other way so they stick with the good-ol boom sticks, but totally ruined the original Hong Kong setting which they spent more than half of the game setting up.

Anyway I think the main draw of the game and why people finding this game good is mostly because of the exotic setting, and as a Honkie myself who grew up watching quite a few of those Hong Kong triad movies I do find that I have a huge soft spot for this game that let me overlook a lot of the flaws. If not for this I would say this game is just merely ok as it is a fairly run of the mill sandbox game which took a few good pieces of game mechanics and just stitch it up in a presentable but not completely polished way.

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

I loved Sleeping Dogs. I originally got it as a time sink until Darksiders II was out and I ended up loving it way more than I thought I would. The only real complaint I had for Sleeping Dogs was that the dating was quite misleading. Wei mentions more than once in the game that he's not looking for a steady relationship so when I was getting the phone numbers from the women you could take on dates I was phoning them all.

Then about halfway through the game I had a side mission to follow Tiffany who was apparently cheating on me, that one confused me considering we weren't going out. So when I did the mission then confronted her she started screaming about me cheating on her and I was just sitting thinking "Sorry, but when was it ever implied that we were going steady?!" a few missions later Not Ping (never found out her real name) calls me and starts screaming at me over the phone about cheating on her with Tiffany. So yeah, the dating was misleading.

 

[uchytjes]

Everything is better with a jetpack. EVERYTHING.

Also: once you have a jetpack, you never go back. Its impossible to do so.

 

[Azaraxzealot]

No love for original games Yahtzee? This continues to send a bad message to developers/publishers once again that developing original IPs over sequels is a bad idea. Couldn't there at least have been the mention of the fact that Sleeping Dogs was its own original game before Activision decided to attach the True Crime name to it?

 

[Kargathia]

Then about halfway through the game I had a side mission to follow Tiffany who was apparently cheating on me, that one confused me considering we weren't going out. So when I did the mission then confronted her she started screaming about me cheating on her and I was just sitting thinking "Sorry, but when was it ever implied that we were going steady?!" a few missions later Not Ping (never found out her real name) calls me and starts screaming at me over the phone about cheating on her with Tiffany. So yeah, the dating was misleading.

Quite so. During the first two missions involving Tiffany's cheating I actually thought she was cheating on a fellow gang member.
Not-Ping heavily implying you had sex also must've happened in another universe, as I only was aware of a single date. Shame, really - she was the hot one of the set.

On the whole I really enjoyed the game, even considering its flaws. The voice acting being terrific did help a lot though.

 

[Scrustle]

Yahtzee made a mistake on the origins of the game. It originally wasn't supposed to be a True Crime game. Activision decide to slap the name on it when they saw that it was very similar, but it wasn't originally conceived as that.

It also didn't change developers. United Front Games were always the ones developing it, it just changed publishers. That of course meant a name change was necessary.

 

[Gammayun]

I would love to say something funny and witty but all that seems to come out is, "naaaaaaaawwwwwwwwww look at the doggy woggy".

 

[RJ 17]

"8 years ago, San Andres had a jet-pack."

I believe that should officially be the new bar by which all sanbox games are measured.