My initial thoughts on Sleeping Dogs when I started it, as someone who tried Yakuza and didn't enjoy it, was that Sleeping Dogs is Yakuza, if Yakuza was good. The combat is nice, the fights merge with the morld instead of Final Fantasy interrupting you into a staged fighting arena. If it falls down anywhere I'd say it's in the execution of the romance subplots - the game throws five women at you, who you can date once and only once. Each one unlocks an in-game perk - extra races, collectives showing up on your minimap, etc. It seemed like a massive afterthought, which is a bit bizarre. Because the mechanics of this dating system aren't really explained to you you just date each one in turn as they became available in the story and half the girls get mad at Wei for cheating on them which leads to another side mission - but the game never made it clear you were actually in a relationship!Therumancer said:
Other than that, it's solid. It does everything it can be be a kind of HK action movie, generally flowing quite cinematically despite giving you complete control. The car chase sequences, something I normally dread whenever I have to shoot from a vehicle I'm also responsible for driving, are absolutely brilliant. You can also press a button to actually directionally ram/sideswipe vehicles instead of just swerving into them and hoping you do more damage to them than vice versa. The capacity to action hijack was a nice touch but I only ever used it when the mission called for it.
I wouldn't say I related to Wei at all, but I did find his journey quite engaging. Not the best game I ever played, but definitely very good, and one of the better titles of this year.
Edit: I just wanted to add this.
You know how in most sandbox games if your car is wedged and the doors can't open, your dude will just teleport outside it? In Sleeping Dogs Wei punches out the windscreen and crawls out over the hood. That's some awesome attention to a detail we wouldn't have noticed if they left it out, but makes it clear the designer cared enough about what they were doing to put some thought into this highly contextual circumstance. Once you noticed that, my appreciation for the little things in this game jumped right up.
