So, open world games… Yeah. A problem I have with most of them is that they just make a big world and think that that will do, but the problem is that they are big worlds with nothing interesting to explore and nothing fun to do. Even something small can make going through the open world environment more fun. And a simple but very effective example of this is the game, Sleeping Dogs.
Part of the unheard of True Crime franchise, Sleeping Dogs follows a hard boiled Hong Kong police officer as he infiltrates a Chinese Triad gang in order to get closer to the criminal underworld of the city. And it is all just some classic kung-fu goodness. The game has your choices of hand to hand combat or gun combat. The gun combat is nothing special. Just duck, wait, and shoot. The usual in these kinds of games. But then, you get to the melee combat, and suddenly, the combat goes from a zero to a ten really damn fast. You can just run down the street and kick a person a mile down the pavement, all while doing insane combos and finisher moves to small time thugs (Or pedestrians, but what kind of cop are you). The driving is real damn fun, especially when in chase sequences. If you are being chased, you can ram the side of the car into pursuing cars and send them crashing to the side. If you are the one chasing, you can open the car door and jump out, hanging onto the car before kicking the driver out and taking the car. And then there are the environment finishers. If you grab an enemy, you can take them to a part of the area and just mess them up. Beat them with a telephone, slam their head into a car door, shove their head into a buzzsaw… Okay, I think this counts as a form of police brutality. And the side content is also a lot of fun too. I hear people compare this game to Yakuza, and while it’s not as fun or insane as Yakuza (Trust me, we’ll talk about that later), Sleeping Dogs has a great variety for itself. You have missions of drug busting criminals by hacking into cameras, taking girls out on dates, and even singing karaoke to bands like The Clash and Flock of Seagulls again (Why are they appearing a lot). And with a ton of collectables like learning new fighting moves, collecting new cars, and getting new uniforms, even a Bruce Lee inspired one. And then there’s the DLC… I have not played through it, but I am told it is a really damn good time, so I will most likely get to that when I play the Definitive Edition of the game some time in the future.
Sleeping Dogs is such an underrated game that has a ton of fun to it for any fan of open world games, crime dramas, and kung fu movies. It’s got it’s dumb moments and technical issues, but it is still an enjoyable experience all around. I do look forward to checking out the Definitive Edition and DLC some time, but on it’s own, Sleeping Dogs is still a good time.