Sleeping Dogs was a game I wasn’t extremely hyped to play. While I love sandbox games, this one just seemed like ‘just another one’. I picked it up out of curiosity, and a lack of any other games to play, and found myself pleasantly surprised at how good it was.
It doesn’t bring much… anything new to 3rd person sandbox games, but the setting, combat system, and general feel of the game got me to enjoy it. There aren’t any of them flying machines, but the games boasts.. a ton of shitty cars and only about 5 good ones, actually. The combat is really good though. I’m told it has an Arkham Asylum/City fight system, but I’ve never played those, so I can’t compare it. Still though, it feels fluid and good enough to not just mash buttons. Guns are said to be rare in the game, but after about the halfway point in the story, everyone you’ll ever meet suddenly has guns. Killing in this game is weird, too. The game doesn’t inhibit your ability to kill pedestrians and cause chaos, but with the storyline, it sort of discourages you from doing it. You’re a cop undercover. Running over people makes you feel a bit strange on the inside, at least for me. It’s fine to jump out of your car at 80 mph to steal some random person’s vehicle though. Although the story leaves a lot to be desired, and the ending is completely abrupt, everything else is pretty good.
Basically, this game doesn’t have the craziness of other sandbox games like Just Cause 2 or Saints Row, but it has more of a new GTA feel. It doesn’t do much, but what it does, it does great, and I, for one, enjoyed it.
