Sleeping Dogs (formerly True Crime: Hong Kong)

Another bug. Went to meet Uncle Po (voiced by the guy who played Po's dad in Kung Fu panda... see what they did there?), and had a checkpoint marker to go speak to someone about my next job. Only, when I get there it triggers nothing. The guy, Roland, just stands there and I cannot interact with him at all, even punching him does nothing. Had to reload last save and retry to get the scene to trigger.

Just beat it.

Unsure what to make of it all really. The story is really well told, and the supporting cast is brilliantly fleshed out; you'll love a few, hate a few, but very seldom does someone not leave at least some impression. Voice acting was great too, though given the cast that perhaps shouldn't be too much of a surprise; Tom Wilkinson, Robin Shou (Liu Kang in the MK film), Emma Stone, Kelly Hu, Lucy Liu... sure, many of them were bit parts but it all adds to the overall sense of quality.

That said, it is pretty short, I reckon you could do story mode in ten hours if you ignored all the side missions. The side missions, while initially varied, do get repetitive after the tenth time, though that's a criticism that can be levelled at any sandbox game so Sleeping Dogs shouldn't be overly criticised for it, especially when it makes a point of putting so little emphasis on guns in combat and concentrates on the decent (if a touch imprecise) combat system.

Graphics were a mixed bag - some of the facial models were great, others less so and generally there's a slight murkiness to the textures that stops everything looking clean. It may well have been intentional, but it looks a bit odd when you're driving through a city and there are big slabs of badly textured buildings all over the place. Oh, and the driving wasn't great either. Get up to any kind of speed and all the vehicles understeer horribly, the camera takes abut five seconds to follow your lead - seriously, there were times my bike was off screen during some high speed chases. Driving is a mean to an end here, not something you do for the sake of it.

I enjoyed it, I did, and there's still more to unfold in the main story if the ambiguous ending is to be believed, but I'm not sure I'd actually justify buying it. A rental has taken me three days to beat, and while the story really was strong, there's not much left once you're done to really entice you back. I guess you could alternate the side missions a bit, that might net you another ten hours or so, but ultimately without the story to pull you along, the open world isn't that compulsive. A good game then, but not a great one. A solid seven out of ten.

The soundtrack to this game is really good.
http://sleepingdogs.wikia.com/wiki/Soundtrack

Is speeding around the blocks and being in a shootout to Khachaturian's Sabre Dance or Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries as amazing as I imagine it to be?

There's actually been very little shooting for me so far but yes. It's more Jackie Chan simulator than GTA.

Very much so. Sometimes you have to do a drug bust where the guys have guns, and then there is mostly cover and a pistol for you. However, more guys come out, and so you have to stay moving, but also take them out quickly, instead of waiting for them behind cover. Some of them will successfully flank you. Shooting is decent (better than GTA IV, at least), and there are cool disarms and melee attacks and stuff. Shooting out tires is really fun, mostly because of the over-the-top explosions and flips that follow.

I do all available drug busts as soon as possible, because I like them, and so I got a lot of shooting, and a couple of guns. However, you lose the guns pretty quickly, sadly. I did unlock an upgrade that let me steal them from police cars, but I didn't get to use it.

Slow-mo vault is incredibly useful when you've got a gun. Vault over a surface, hit L2 to slow down time, then you've got a few seconds of bullet time to pump the bad guys full of bullets. You deal hugely increased damage, and take greatly reduced damage during this time so you've always got more time than you'd think to take out four or five bad guys then leg it for more cover, possibly using the always-very-cool vault disarm in doing so.

under 25 at tesco entertainment.

Might be worthwhile at that price, though I still reckon you can see the majority of the game with a rental.

Oh i'm not getting it that was just in case any of you guys wanted it. Its the limited edition.

With lollipop chiansaw i should be tided over till one piece and DOA5 bikini edition are out.

Forgot to say I beat this yesterday. Ended up completing everything except the race missions, because I don't like how the cars handle, in about 19 hours give or take so it's quite short for a sandbox and has pretty much zero replay value. That said it was a lot of fun while it lasted, had an okay, if extremely generic, story, and did a good job of making use of all the mechanics they built into the game. My biggest criticism is how powerful the slow motion vault is, most of the time it would only take me a single vault to headshot and kill every enemy in the area as your time is refreshed with each enemy you kill, I forget whether that was an upgrade or not.

Overall it's a good game and worth a purchase but not at full price.

Yeah, I'd agree pretty much entirely. The car and bike handling is pretty awful - everything just wants to understeer all the time, so it's not any fun, and once I'd beaten the main story I didn't really want to go back and do the other side missions.

Neo wrote:

Overall it's a good game and worth a purchase but not at full price.

Agreed, I paid full price wish I hadn't. Don’t get me wrong I had a lot fun with the game, but it was rather short for a sandbox. There was a lot to enjoy but also a lot of what was enjoyable was only fun once or twice so I don't see much replay value here.

The story was a bit generic but I still enjoyed it. I found it strange (POSSIBLE SPOILER), how some characters show up then rather abruptly disappear never to return again without explanation, (END SPOILER).

The vehicles were atrocious in terms of how they handle, some do get better with time though, and if you’re not used to driving on that side of the road it takes a little getting used to.

One more thing to add if you want an easy Platinum trophy, this game will provide. It takes very little effort to get. But it is enjoyable enough to not become tedious if going for the Plat. Just keep an eye on your stats via their social network menu and complete some of the challenges in between story missions.

That shouldn't take you too long, 18 to 25 hours tops. One thing I have to tell you though, but you may already know this about the “Pure Gold” trophy.

The money you earn from gambling takes into account the money you have lost. But the social hub where you track your stats won’t show you a negative number. This is not a glitch; it’s just stupid.

For example if you’ve won 100 but lost 500, it won’t show as –400, it will just show 100. So I hope you haven’t done too much betting and lost yet as you will need a NET earning, (winnings minus losses) of One Million. The Gold Gambler Stat is required to get your “Pure Gold” trophy and ultimately the Platinum. Fastest most feasible albeit still frustrating way, (Especially if you’re as deep in the red as I was) to achieve this stat is to go to the cockfights in Kennedy Town and save your game. Place a Max Bet and if you win save your game. If you loose reload the game (You’ll have to drive a few blocks from the closest safe house but whatever.)

If you didn’t do any betting yet you should only have to win 10 times with a max bet. There is no pattern to which Cock to pick btw it’s completely random. Maybe you’ll get lucky and pick the winner every time.

This to me wasn’t the most difficult thing to do in the game, but for me at least it was the most frustrating until I figured out this strategy.

“Event Planner” was annoying too, only because it takes forever to find all of the open world events.

I think “Safe Driver” was the hardest for me, but just find a mini-van (the slowest car in the game), and drive at night so you can see headlights and drive into oncoming traffic on the Highway (not side streets.). I think the route I took was in the southeast part of the map and drove counter clockwise right after the tunnels, then after I got through Central and the tunnels after that area I would make a u-turn and go back the way I came. Took me like 7 or 8 laps.

I did Safe Driver in my first few hours. It was simple; I'm quite good at driving.

I only have the Reckless Driver left, and I'll be good to go, I think.

I like this. The map seems very small compared to most sandboxes, but it feels more densely populated and it's nice to have a different kind of city with a bit more character to it.

I don't really get how countering grapples works. Sometimes it prompts to press circle, and that works, but sometimes it prompts to press triangle, and that never works.

I don't like Wei Shen. He's getting all annoyed because because Tiffany is "cheating" on him, but all he's done is sing some karaoke at her. It's barely a relationship. Plus he's dating at least two other girls at the same time himself. What a nob.

Well that was quite nice. Wei had a go at Tiffany for her cheating, but then she had a go back at him for his cheating, and they broke up.

Well I can't say I didn't see that coming.

Spoiler:

It's cool to have a character/plot driven sandbox game where the sandbox isn't a distraction. Even RDR had that problem. All the side activities in this game make sense within the story and go hand in hand with the character's motivations. To build his reputation in the criminal underworld while simultaneously helping the cops bring it down.

Everything fits together really nicely.

This game has the best foot chases of any game I remember playing. Even more so than Assassin's Creed, because you don't have to run around people that are in your way. Just run straight at them and then flick the analogue stick left or right and Wei does a little dodge move and keeps moving. Plus you have to press a button to jump over stuff, so it's a bit more engaging than AC's chases.

A_Nonny_Moose wrote:

This game has the best foot chases of any game I remember playing. Even more so than Assassin's Creed, because you don't have to run around people that are in your way. Just run straight at them and then flick the analogue stick left or right and Wei does a little dodge move and keeps moving. Plus you have to press a button to jump over stuff, so it's a bit more engaging than AC's chases.

Really? I kept bumping into people. Oh well...

I quite like the races. The vehicles have very arcade-ey handling and the other racers make a lot of mistakes, so they're not very hard.

My least favourite thing about the game is that every single time you leave a clothes shop the exact same audio clip plays of a guy saying "Takes guts to wear that!".

First game i ever heard someone be called whitey

Got all the Face and Cop upgrades now. Only a couple statues left to find, and I think they're in story locked locations.