Sleeping Dogs Review PS3

Story

Wei Shen is an undercover cop who works as one of Triad members of Sun Oh Yee.​

This game takes place in Hong Kong. Wei Shen, an undercover cop, works as a member of a Triad gang called Sun Oh Yee for both official police mission as well as his own personal vendetta against the gang. Wei Shen infiltrates his way in the Triad and tries to dissolve the Triad gang itself.

The story is pretty dark and gritty as well as full of realism, where the game has themes of morality, violence, prostitution, and etc that connects with the Triad activities. The story is pretty interesting and it also deals with Wei Shens confused morality and side as he delves deeper into the Triads activities.

Many of the characters in the game are interesting such as Wei Shen, Winston Chu, Jackie Ma, and many others, and they are voiced professionally by various voice actors. Notably, the games dialogue is a mix of English and Cantonese, which gives off the authentic feeling that the game is really set in Hong Kong.


Gameplay

i) Exploration and Progression Section

Explore all four areas of Hong Kong and undertake a variety of missions in the game.​

This game is an open-world game, where it plays like Grand Theft Auto games and Saints Row games. The city itself consists of four different areas, and each area has distinct atmosphere and outlook. For example, the North Point area can be seen as a less developed area, compared to other three areas like Aberdeen and Central. You can walk or run on foot to your next mission, or drive vehicles such as a car and motorcycle to travel there faster. You can also use taxis to fast travel to a destination, at a small fee.

Story progression is similar to other open-world games, where you need to go to the mission markers to start a mission. There are two mandatory types of missions, which is Story Missions and Cop missions. Both must be completed in one way or another for you to progress in the storyline. Story Missions mostly involves Wei Shens Triad activities, whereas Cop missions involves official police investigation of cases.

Each mission in the game has variety of objectives, such as collect protection money form vendors, car chasing, escorting people, hacking a camera, tracking a persons location via a phone call, plant a bug in a location, bring a person to a certain location, etc. The good thing about the games missions structure is that they are fairly unique and fun to do.

Wei Shen also has access to certain freerunning skills, such as quickly climb high platforms, vault over obstacles, and etc. You need those freerunning skills to chase a target, escaping the police, and infiltrating a place in the games missions.

In the game, you have access to your cellphone, and has several options such as Contacts, Messages, Reports and Social Hub. In many of the Story Missions as well as Cop missions, you need to use your cellphone to contact people, as well as take important pictures. You may also use your phone to contact several other people for optional events or jobs, such as carjacking.

ii) Upgrading and Customisation Section

There are many upgrades for you to enhance Wei Shens abilities and stats.​

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There are five Upgrading sections in the game, which are Triad, Cop, Melee, Face and Health. Triad Upgrades mostly involve striking moves and weapon moves, Cop Upgrades involve weapon abilities and other useful abilities, Melee Training focus on special and brutal melee moves, Face Advantages focus on useful passive abilities such as Face Meter, and Health Upgrades is for upgrading Wei Shens health bar.​
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Unlike other games, each category of upgrades require different Experience Points (XP) or ways to upgrade it. Triad Level can only be increased by performing violent and brutal Triad moves during Story Missions, Cop Level can only be increased by not doing any actions that devalues a polices reputation such as hurting an innocent civilian during Story Missions and Cop Missions, Melee Level can only be increased by collecting Jade Statues scattered in the games world, Face Level can only be increased by doing side activities such as Favors and other jobs, and Health Level can only be increased by praying to every five Health Shrines.​
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There is a certain degree of customisation in the game, where you can customise Wei Shens appearance in the game, such as his shirt, pants, etc. Of course, you need money to buy those clothing. Certain sets of clothing can provide bonus effects to Wei Shen, such as wearing the Master Negotiator clothing set allows Wei Shen to buy vehicles with 15% discount. Vehicles can be stolen on roads, or can be bought from various illegal car vendors in the game. Each vehicles are unique in design and type, and can be cheap or expensive depending on the type of vehicle itself. For example, a sports car costs more than $300,000. Once you bought the vehicles, you can choose a different paint job on the vehicle and set it as the default vehicle for your valet to bring. Money can be obtained by completing Story Missions and Cop Missions, or completing other side activities such as carjacking and street races.​
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iii) Melee, Shooting, and Driving Section

A brilliant mix of melee combat and shooting, as well as excellent driving sections.​

The melee combat is the main combat featured in the game. Wei Shen has access to a variety of attacks, including strike attacks, counter, grab and throw attacks. Once you have upgraded Wei Shens abilities such as his Melee Training and Triad Upgrades, he can use even more powerful moves such as Armbreaker and other brutal moves. Wei Shen can also grab enemies and kill them using the environment, such as telephone booths and boxes. Wei Shen can also use weapons such as knives and batons to defeat his enemies quickly. There are several types of enemies in the games, such as light enemies, heavy enemies, and armed enemies. Not all moves may work against them, such as heavy enemies and armed enemies can counter your grab and throw attacks. A strategy is needed to beat those enemies, such as counter their attacks before attacking them relentlessly.

Using brutal melee moves increases Wei Shens Triad score in a Story Mission. Using the same move repeatedly will reduce the score gained after using a move. It is encouraged to mix as many as different moves you can to get the maximum Triad score to upgrade your Triad Level faster.

Shooting gameplay is similar to other shooting games such as Grand Theft Auto series and Saints Row series. Firearms are very scarce in the game, and can only be obtained playing certain Story Missions, opening certain Lockboxes, or get them by killing the police. You can use firearms on foot or in vehicle. There are few varieties of weapons, such as handgun, shotgun, machine gun, etc.

In this game, there is a certain degree of slow-motion mode, where Wei Shen will enter into limited bullet-time mode when he disarms an enemy or by other actions. During the slow motion mode, you can shoot enemies more accurately while the time slows down around you. By scoring multiple kills, you can gain additional time in slow-motion mode, allowing you to kill more enemies.

Killing enemies using firearms also increases Wei Shens Triad score in a Story Mission, and it is recommended for you to score headshots to get maximum Triad score as much as possible. You will be playing many shooting in many of the Story Missions on-foot as well as carchasing sections.

While free roaming in the game, there will be gang enemies as well as polices and innocent civilians around the Hong Kong. You are free to attack gang enemies anytime, but doing improper actions such as killing an innocent in polices presence will cause them to chase you.

Health in this game functions a bit differently than other open-world games. Wei Shens health wont regenerate completely, and can only be restored fully by resting in your hideouts or buying food. You can buy food for health regeneration, damage reduction, and etc. This is a nifty little thing to do, since it somehow realistically shows that the character you are playing also needs to eat.

If you die during Story Missions or Cop missions, you can restart from recent checkpoints to retry. If you die during free roaming, you will need to pay a certain amount of medical fee. If you are also caught by the police during free roaming, you will also need to pay a certain amount of bailout money to be released.

You can drive vehicles during free-roaming and playing missions. As you play on, each vehicle have their own pros and cons, such as sports car has great speed for both chasing and escaping, and etc. In certain Story Missions and side activities, you can hijack an enemys car by using the Action Hijack. This highly stylish move allows you to commandeer a different vehicle driven on the road, and takes out the driver at the same time. You may also do this on innocent drivers, but it is not recommended doing so at the presence of the police.

iv) Side Activities Section

Play a variety of side activities such as carjacking, street races, drug busts, doing favors, collect collectibles such as Lockboxes and Jade Statues, and many more for various bonuses.​

There are various side-activities for you to do when you are free roaming in the game. You can compete in Street Races for extra cash, bust drug activities by hacking cameras, fighting waves of enemies in Martial Arts Club, opening Lockboxes for extra cash and clothing, completing Favors from other people in the game, steal other peoples car for cash, and many more. Doing these activities will reward you various things, such as Face Level XP, cash, clothings, etc.

I highly advise for you to do these activities if you are having trouble in certain missions in the game, such as getting new melee upgrades via Melee Training and Health Upgrades. The game is not hard for average players to complete, but it requires rather a fair amount of playing skills to complete missions successfully, such as in-game driving skills.

v) Gameplay Conclusion

Excellent combination of melee, shooting, exploration and driving gameplay features as well as loaded with lots of side activities.​

I am extremely impressed with the developers well made gameplay, where it mixes melee, shooting, exploration and driving seamlessly with lots of variety of missions and side activities. The fluid melee combat is simple, but rather fun to play like recent Batman games, shooting feels great like other good third person shooter games, exploration is fun with lots of activities to do, and the driving controls felt really great for an open-world game. I have to commend the developer for making the driving controls feels great and fun. I had a lot of fun driving sports car in both carchasing and street races.

Graphics

Many visually appealing characters as well as immersive Hong Kong environment.​

The graphics are good. Hong Kongs environment design are well made, and many of the characters look visually appealing and distinctive. Unfortunately, some of the character animations during the cutscenes and free-roaming are unnatural, dated visuals on certain character models, and the game also suffers bugs and glitches that prevent you from completing the game. This problem mostly occurs when you are playing the R2 copy of the game on an R3 PlayStation 3 console. Also, the button configuration of X and Circle buttons are not swapped properly due to regional differences of game controls. I hope there will be a patch soon to fix this problem.

Sound

Great selection of licensed songs as well as commendable voice acting.​

The soundtrack is great. The radio stations are loaded with great selections of music, such as metal, C-Pop, Chinese instrumental songs, etc. Notable artists that contributed in the soundtrack are Trivium, DevilDriver, 24Herbs, and many more. I find that the soundtrack is very suitable to the games atmosphere and style.

The voice acting in the game is also great. Many of the voice actors in the game are mostly American actors with Chinese heritage, such as James Hong (Uncle Po), Edison Chen (Jackie Ma), Lucy Liu (Vivienne Lu), Kelly Hu (Jane Teng) and others. It is notable that Wei Shens voice actor is not Chinese, but a Korean. There are also few American actors in the game as well, such as Emma Stone (Amanda) and Tom Wilkinson (Pendrew). I felt that the lines delivered by many of the voice actors are accurate and well-done. The mix of English and a bit of Cantonese in the dialogue is risky, but I felt that the mix itself is well-done. Many of the voice actors delivered their lines in Cantonese exceptionally accurate, and their English lines are also well-voiced.

Replay Value

High replay value.​

Needles to say, this game has high replay value. After completing the games Story Missions and Cases, you can attempt on various activities, such as gambling in mahjong or cockfights, street racing, dates with various female characters in the game, carjacking, and etc. You wont be feel bored easily if you are having fun with this game.

Conclusion

A fun and great open-world game that is marred by some minor issues.​

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I love this game a lot. It blends many gameplay elements well, such as shooting, driving, melee combat, and many more effectively. I have to commend both developers (especially) United Games Front and Square Enix London Studios for making a very fun game for us gamers to play. For those who have played True Crime: Streets of L.A., you most likely wont be disappointed since this is a great spiritual successor of True Crime series itself. I had extreme fun in playing this game, and I felt that this is a great game for any open-world genre fans to play despite of its minor issues​
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Score​
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Story: 9/10​
Gameplay: 10/10​
Graphics: 8/10​
Sound: 9/10​
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Final score: 36/40 or 9.0/10​
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Pros and Cons​
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Pros​

- Gritty and intriguing storyline.​
- Interesting characters.​
- Wei Shen is an awesome action star.​
- Great blend of many gameplay features.​
- Brutal, excellent and fluid melee combat.​
- Great shooting mechanics.​
- Excellent and fine driving controls.​
- Lots of side-activities to do, such as gambling, carjacking, etc.​
- Immersive and realistic depiction of Hong Kong.​
- Varied objectives in both Story Missions and Cop missions.​
- Varied upgrading sections.​
- Great voice acting.​
- Excellent selection of licensed music.​
- Great mix English and Cantonese in dialogue.​
- Great replay value.​
- Fairly accessible to new players of open-world games.​
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Cons​

- Some unrealistic character animations during cutscenes and free-roaming.​
- Some NPCs do not look great visually, especially during free-roaming.​
- Minor bugs and glitches.​
- R2 copy of the game has controller compatibility issue with R3 PlayStation 3 console.​