Sleeping Dogs

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Sleeping Dogs

PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2012 4:37 am

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M.Steiner
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Well I just finished Sleeping Dogs last night. Looking at steam I think I may be the only person here to have bought and played it so far?. So, here's some thoughts & info:


The game is a lot of fun. Plenty of side activities to do like Martial Arts, street racing, hacking street security cameras to catch drug dealers, favors for people on the street (mini side missions), car jacking, Karaoke...

Most of the collectibles in this game are actually worth getting too unlike a lot of other games and at least for me didn't feel like a chore; Collecting & returning missing statues to your old kung fu master will unlock new moves for you to learn whilst visiting the health shrines scattered throughout the city will increase your max health. (Your character will also level his triad and police exp and each level will let you spend a point on unlocking new buffs/combat improvements)
There's also a handful of "dates" you can go on throughout the game. These don't really lead anywhere which is a shame but they're not entirely pointless as they do serve a purpose. The different women you can date will unlock the locations for some of the above on your map. One may add race locations to your map, one may add lockboxes, health shrines etc.
(I actually got the achievement for completing 100% of all missions, cases, favors, events, jobs & street races which says a lot for me as I very rarely bother unless it's a particularly great game and I feel there's a point in doing everything)

The game has a selection of food & drink shops/stalls too which also serve a purpose. Little street carts selling Pork Buns, Noodle Bowl's, Roast Duck etc and shops for Herbal Tea and such. These give your character temporary buffs like faster health regen and extra damage.

You have apartments and a garage attached but it's not like GTA or Saints Row where you can just grab any car off the street and save it to your garage for future use. You only start off with 2 vehicles (iirc) to your name, the rest you have to buy for yourself from shops. I liked this as for most of the game money was actually useful to have especially if you wanted a large collection to pick from. - Driving is arcadey like a mix of Saints Row & Just Cause. Personally, I tend to prefer the more realistic approach to driving physics and handing like GTAIV and Mafia 2 but I still enjoyed the driving in this. The camera when driving did bug me at times mind, like when I wanted to take pictures as you can't really take it all the way around the car and it self centers itself. Can overlook that though.

Lots of clothing stores in each section of the map too ranging from street type gear to luxury suits. You do unlock some full outfits from playing the story unlike with cars (and can be found in some lockboxes) but some of these give bonuses too. E.g. Wearing one full outfit may give you extra police exp, another may give you 15% off when buying vehicles.

Combat - Took a bit of getting used to at first but it's absolutely fantastic. The comparisons it has been getting to Arkham are spot on and it's honestly just as fun, fluid and satisfying as AA/AC were and is one of the best melee combat systems I've seen. Really good.
There are firearms too but gun-play doesn't really come into play until later on in the game as there's a much bigger emphasis on the hand-to-hand combat thankfully. Not that the gunfights are bad or anything (little similar to Max Payne with the slow motion bits and vaulting over stuff) but the melee combat is killer. (You can't buy guns or ammo from shops or anything but you pick them up during certain missions, this is a good thing though as it keeps the focus on hand-to-hand 90% of the time).

Chasing people on foot can be a bit like Assassins Creed but not as good. To run you basically just keep hold of space bar which is fine but when you have to vault over an obstacle, jump over a fence, climb up a wall or whatever you have to tap space bar again. I did find this quite annoying at first but did get used to it. Not sure if you can remap them separately (keep run as space bar and have jump as something else) as I didn't think to look.
-Hihacking another car from your moving vehicle was also a bit tricky at times too I found but this can be easily fixed. When you're driving along in your car you can hold Q (by default) to open your door (or sit up on your bike saddle) and when you get close enough if you let go of Q again you'll jump from one vehicle to the next and hijack it on the move. I found this difficult to do at times when holding down WSAD to drive as well. Was fine on straight roads but when it came to turning corners at fast speeds, not so much. I remapped this to my middle mouse button though and I'd recommend others do the same. Much better!

Story - It would have been nice had the player been given some moral choices to pick from themselves with a couple of different outcomes to a few of the missions - especially late on in the game when you're... pretty deep in. That being said it was surprisingly good actually, pretty great infact. For a game of this kind at least.

The setting, graphics, optimization etc - Fantastic setting and although it's much smaller than say, Liberty City, I'd say the Hong Kong setting of Sleeping Dogs has to be one of my favourites from an open world title like this and reminded me of Shenmue from time to time. Matched with the graphics too which really are stunning as you can see below. The game really does look amazing especially when it's raining and it runs silky smooth too. - Also had no issues as far as crashing, bugs or anything like that either and according to my steam profile I've played 39hrs, though a small part of that will be when I paused and went afk.

Some of my screenies. Click to enlarge:
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Sooo yeah. Think I've about covered everything I wanted to there lol.
All I'll say now is to put any negative preconceptions you may have with past "True Crime" games aside and give Sleeping Dogs a try for yourself. When one thinks of True Crime most will think "mediocre GTA wannabe" but that is not the case here so I think it's a good thing that it's not associated with that title any more, but Sleeping Dogs. It won't be GOTY when Dishonored & co release in a month or two but it really is a great game and the biggest surprise of the year so far as far as I'm concerned. I hope those of you who give it a go too will enjoy it as much as I've been doing, I think/hope you will be pleasantly surprised by it.
Really hoping for a sequel now which may actually be possible considering it seems to be doing really well in both sales and the positive reception it has been receiving, fingers crossed!. Also a big FU to Activision for canning this when it was originally TC:HK. Good job on Square Enix for seeing the potential :)
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Re: Sleeping Dogs

PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2012 5:52 pm

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Anubis
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So the story was good enough to recommend, eh? Interesting - I'll have to look into picking it up after I get done with Torment, Baldurs Gate, etc :)

Also, I really can't say this enough - whilst the screenshots look lovely, they really did an AMAZING job on the floors. My eye is drawn to the floor on every image you share :lol: So pretty.
"Perhaps this is what I have always wished for since that day. The loss and destruction of all. That's right, one must destroy before creating. In that case, if my conscience becomes a hindrance to me, then I will simply erase it. I have no other choice but to move forward....therefore!" - Lelouch vi Britannia/Zero, Code Geass: Hangyaku no Lelouch

Forever an eXile and proud of it!

Re: Sleeping Dogs

PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2012 10:22 pm

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M.Steiner
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Aye hehe. I was quite surprised to see how good the PC version looked and performed actually.
Speaking of which, you may be interested in this PA article: http://penny-arcade.com/report/editoria ... s-is...-sq :)
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Re: Sleeping Dogs

PostPosted: Fri Aug 24, 2012 9:26 am

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SL33PY
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Hey MS,

Thanks to you I bought my copy through shopto.Net (dl key from steam but half the price :D)

Performance at start on my pc was shit. Soon after I noticed that my SLi wasn't activated within the game. Some google searches later I found a way to fix the issue.

I'm now happily playing sleeping dogs at 1920x1080 with Extreme settings. Which is nice.

I only have about 2 hours worth of game time under my belt at the moment and so far I have had some fun. I hope I'll get to know the blonde girl better, she actually looks hot even tough she exists only of bits, bytes and triangles :p

Sometimes I feel that the characters don't really blend well into the scenery. All in all I have liked my time spend in the game

Also I hate your time without hitting shit, been trying to reach it... never got close... so ... well... yeah... f*ck you ;D

Re: Sleeping Dogs

PostPosted: Fri Aug 24, 2012 1:53 pm

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M.Steiner
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SL33PY wrote:I only have about 2 hours worth of game time under my belt at the moment and so far I have had some fun. I hope I'll get to know the blonde girl better, she actually looks hot even tough she exists only of bits, bytes and triangles :p
About Amanda.
You get a mission to go and take photographs of her which when you've finished will unlock the locations of all the health shrines on your map for you but unfortunately that's where it ends with her iirc. She's basically used (like the other women you can date) as a tool to unlock map locations (health shrines, lockboxes, races etc) which was one of my complaints. More so with her as I got the impression when Wei first meets her that she'd have a bigger role to play in the game tbh. Tis a shame but thankfully most everything else kinda made up for it.
Maybe they have more planned for her in DLC perhaps, since they supposedly have 6 months of DLC planned apparently.
Also I hate your time without hitting shit, been trying to reach it... never got close... so ... well... yeah... f*ck you ;D
lol ;)

Also regarding performance. I started off running the game with extreme everything (1920x1080) which ran very well except for driving which was a little choppy at times. Lowering Anti-Aliasing from extreme to high in the advanced display menu fixed that for me though and I left everything else as high as they would go. Really smooth now.

Hope you continue to enjoy ;D
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Re: Sleeping Dogs

PostPosted: Sun Aug 26, 2012 7:24 pm

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BlackDove
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It's kinda obvious that the dating and womanizing thing was something they cut.

They'll probably restore it in the DLC.

I had the impression Amanda was actually a prostitute/hooker/informant.

Re: Sleeping Dogs

PostPosted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 12:02 am

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SL33PY
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Joined: Wed Oct 27, 2004 7:25 pm
25 hours down, main story done....


i wanne be a gangsta again =(

Re: Sleeping Dogs

PostPosted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 1:00 am

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Anubis
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SL33PY wrote:25 hours down, main story done....


i wanne be a gangsta again =(
The main story is 25 hours? Or have you done a lot of side stuff too?

If the former, that's really impressive for a modern game.
"Perhaps this is what I have always wished for since that day. The loss and destruction of all. That's right, one must destroy before creating. In that case, if my conscience becomes a hindrance to me, then I will simply erase it. I have no other choice but to move forward....therefore!" - Lelouch vi Britannia/Zero, Code Geass: Hangyaku no Lelouch

Forever an eXile and proud of it!

Re: Sleeping Dogs

PostPosted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 7:09 am

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SL33PY
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Joined: Wed Oct 27, 2004 7:25 pm
I've done plenty of side quests too. I think if I focus on the main story it will be around 10 hours or so.

Re: Sleeping Dogs

PostPosted: Fri Oct 19, 2012 4:49 am

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M.Steiner
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Just a tiny bump and a heads up.
Just incase there's anyone here who has been waiting for a price drop before they gave this a look, Sleeping Dogs is currently the weekend deal on steam for just £14.99 (50% off). Offer ends monday ;)
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Re: Sleeping Dogs

PostPosted: Fri Oct 19, 2012 9:48 pm

Lee
Posts: 137
Joined: Tue Dec 28, 2004 5:53 pm
i saw the half price jobby earlier and started to be tempted... given the time scales you guys have put on here i may have to get it. I do like the idea of games lasting (without endless collection that i'm never going to do), quite glad there isnt much moral choice - walking dead has broken me down!

if i get bored over the weekend maybe i'll go kungfu some folks. (also, comprehensive synopsis/review btw :thumb: )
Eeks.

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