It'll Take Your Breath Away

After about 32 hours of martial arts, high speed chases, bullets and explosions, I reach the end of Sleeping Dogs (PC). I have been anticipating United Front Games' open-world action game since it was announced as True Crime: Hong Kong and it has not disappointed me.

The setting of Hong Kong is used to great effect as a fresh and foreign environment. United Front Games has captured the density and visual overload of Hong Kong well. Almost too well as my frame rate takes a hit when I speed down streets that are dense with neon sights, traffic, and pedestrians. I don't mind it too much as the sights and sounds of the virtual Hong Kong are a pleasure to take in. In a nice and authentic touch, there is plenty of Cantonese chatter as well as Cantonese and Mandarin radio stations. The left-oriented traffic completes the package of immersing you in a virtual Hong Kong.

The martial arts combat of the game is reminiscent of Batman: Arkham Asylum with much of it revolving around a strike button and a counter button. Unique to Sleeping Dogs is a grapple button that is used for some gruesome environmental kills. The fighting is fast, snappy, and satisfying. The combat is usually easy, but some encounters and enemy types can be a surprisingly damaging. The firearms combat is competent and functional. A unique aspect is vaulting over cover and aiming to activate slow motion that can be extended with enemy kills. This creates awesome moments of clearing entire rooms of enemies in slow motion with a single gun magazine. However, it also creates weird and reckless moments of seeking the particular cover points that you can vault over. The game also has free running and vehicles that control nicely. The free running has a timing aspect so it is not a mindless exercise of holding the sprint button and going forward. The vehicles come with physics-defying directional ramming and action hijacking that look goofy yet are fun to pull off.

The story of an undercover cop infiltrating the powerful triads is carried out with the fine competency that exists in the rest of the game. It doesn't have anything overwhelmingly awesome, but it is a well done and fun story. A nice touch that I've noticed is that the vehicle radio is sometimes scripted to tune to specific songs for the story missions.

I hoped for this game to come out as I love the setting of Hong Kong. I'm glad and grateful that Sleeping Dogs has been released and has turned out to be a great action game. Kudos to Square Enix and United Front Games; I'm looking forward to their next game.