Sleeping Dogs

The other day I described Sleeping Dogs to a buddy as excelling not at any of its individual features, but at its cohesion and density of activities. Upon some review, that's not completely accurate -- but I'll get to that in a minute.

Sleeping Dogs definitely has a greater breadth of activities than most open-world experiences. There are hidden lockboxes with money and bonus items, scattered health upgrade stations, hidden cameras to bug, low-level drug dealers to bust, people locked in car trunks to rescue, collectible clothes and cars, gambling dens, random favors, street races, plus others I'm forgetting to mention -- and all of this is aside from the core Triad missions and HKPD cases.

Sleeping Dogs has some good drama - getting much better toward the end of the game - but its characterization isn't as good as a Rockstar game. It's got a ton of activities, but nothing as zany or pure-fun as Volition's sandboxes. Its free-flowing melee combat is better than any traditional competitors, but not as tight and solid as Rocksteady's Batman games. And yet because of how all of its contents flow into each other, and how well they're integrated into the Hong Kong game world, Sleeping Dogs is much more than the sum of its parts. Clearly there's room for improvement, but United Front Games has really come out swinging, here.

As for my earlier statement not being accurate, I later recalled that there's one thing Sleeping Dogs does better than anyone else: car chases. Not only does the game have the best-yet implementation of driving and aiming (with some skillful use of slow motion tossed in), but two of the best possible key features -- shooting out tires to absolutely ruin a pursuer's day, and action-hijacking a vehicle to capture a target on the run. These don't come up too many times in the story missions, but they're always a real treat.

Better than: The Saboteur
Not as good as: Saints Row: The Third, Grand Theft Auto IV
And extra kudos to UFG: for doing an admirable and stellar delivery on the PC version. Much bigger developers could learn a thing or two from these guys.

Progress: 100% mission/etc completion