Plunge deep into the Triad’s bloody wars in a virtual Hong Kong as a young, tough and bad ass undercover cop: Wei Shen in United Front’s latest game. Discover the whole city in a traditional GTA-style freeform action&drive gameplay, while crazy murderous thugs, backstabbing bastards, corrupt cops and Triad leader moguls all tries to leave you for dog food. Is this worth a ride or is it just another GTA clone, which is better left sleeping with the fi… I mean dogs? We reviewed the HD remastered Definitive Edition for PlayStation 4.

If Sleeping Dogs seems a familiar title to you, it’s for a reason: while it was developed some years ago, it was called “True Crime: Hong Kong” and was supposed to be published by Activision. Still the head honchos at Activision looked with a careful eye at the poor sales of the crapish True Crime: New York, and decided to dump the wholes series. Usually we don’t like Activision’s financial decisions, but thinking back at how shallow and crap True Crime: New York was, we somewhat understand, that they didn’t gave the next episode a chance. Still, Square-Enix didn’t want the game sleep with the fishes, so they acquired it – without the name “True Crime”, since for some strange reasons Activision didn’t want to let it go as will. Hence the title: Sleeping Dogs.

John Woo would be proud

True to be told: we won’t miss the title at all, since this episode is far more professional and with a lot more features than the formers anyway. First of all: Sleeping Dogs is a true homage to the Hong Kong action flicks of the ‘80s and 90’s. John Woo comes to our mind, but there’s a bit of “Infernal Affairs” in there as well. The story is surprisingly well told, with strong characters, usually well written dialogues, dramatic moments, romance, sudden deaths, double crossings, and all the drama which we would expect from authentic Hong Kong action movie. OK, it doesn’t reach the perfection of Rockstar Games storytelling, but it’s damn close to it.

Kung-Fu fighting, crazy shootouts and pedal to the metal

Likewise to the story, the gameplay of Sleeping Dogs is very similar to the Grand Theft Auto series. We can take various missions from the different Triads of Hong Kong, while secretly working for the police. While the driving and the gameplay itself in Hong Kong is not so open world as in Grand Theft Auto V, as the main missions and side quests are all fun, we won’t mind this that much. We can’t take taxi, fire truck and ambulance missions either, but let’s be honest: those were kind of stupid and out of character in the Grand Theft Auto games too…

What’s more important: driving feels pretty good, even if it’s more arcade, then in the GTA games. Besides, there is some extra sauce the basic formula of driving and shooting as well: while driving at a hair-raising speed we can jump into other cars and kick out the drivers or capture them. Action is divided between combo mashing Kung-Fu and some rather average gunfights, with basic bullet time effects and brain dead AI. Unfortunately the gunfight afoot is the weakest part of the game, which is a shame if we take a look at Max Payne 3, or even John Woo’s Stranglehold or GTA IV and V.

Sleeping Dogs are good doggies

I had almost as much fun with the game, as with the Grand Auto Episodes. Forget the first two True Crimes games, which both pales compared to this one. The PlayStation 4 Definitive Edition version looks tons better, than the PS3 one, but if you already played it PC – besides all the DLCs added – it isn’t really a big upgrade graphics wise to play full price for it.

On a whole it’s a must, if you didn’t played it already, and if you feel like a replay for this excellent game, the PlayStation 4 remake is the best.

-BadSector-

Editor: Square Enix

Developer: United Front Games

Genres: TPS, action, Open world

Publication: 2014 November