Sleeping Dogs Is Almost A Masterpiece

[Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] every now and then I get a niche to go back and replay something that I haven't played in a while sometimes it's a game that's only a couple of years old and then other times it's something that's upwards of a decade old and sometimes when I go back to replay it it ends up being worse off than I remember it's like my memory of the game is better than the actual game itself and it's kind of disheartening when it happens making you wish that it just stayed in your mind is this idyllic memory however that wasn't the case when I went back to play through Sleeping Dogs and open world crime epic set in Hong Kong that was originally intended to be a new entry in the true crime series now I played this thing back when it first launched in 2012 and I hadn't touched it at all until a few weeks ago when I replayed through it again from start to finish and I gotta say it's as fun if not more so than it was over a decade ago at the time a lot of those open World Games simply got called GTA clones which is about as insulting as when people just used to call every FPS a doom clone back in the 90s and while it definitely has a lot of similarities to the GTA series it's still in a league of its own in a lot of other ways sounds good it's a game that's all about murder and Corruption fist fights fast cars fast women singing karaoke [ __ ] fighting and beating people to death with a fish it's like infernal Affairs meets Donnie Brasco meets The Fast and the Furious meets Kung Fu Hustle I think you'll find that I don't give a [ __ ] yeah welcome to Sleeping Dogs [ __ ] [Music] so the stories you're playing is a guy named Wei Shin returning to Hong Kong after a leave of absence in the US and in the game's opening you're part of a drug deal that goes awry ending up with you having to run from the cops only to be caught and arrested later on when in jail you meet up with an old buddy from your childhood named Jackie ma who remembers way from back in their younger years and helps get him some work with the local Hong Kong Triads wait and you look like [ __ ] turns out though that this entire rest was just a bit of a ruse to get weigh in on the ground level so he can go undercover and infiltrate the whole organization it paid off though I made contact with Jackie Ma I'm in which ends with a massive Turf War amongst all the Triads and all these various bosses with wages caught in the middle having to juggle both his responsibilities from being a cop but also his growing allegiances to his gangster buddies a lot of fumi actually has legitimate tires that go decades back Fearless that's just crazy try capable we'll see what Sleeping Dogs does really great he is the way that it slowly develops waste character and he's standing with this criminal underworld you start off as just a low-level gangster beating up guys in back alleys and shaking down small business owners for protection money everyone has business with Winston you're gonna pay up you understand but then by the end of it you're hanging out in nightclubs with celebrities scraping by in some pretty harrowing gunfights and brawls and working with guys in the gang who are on the absolute top of the crime food chain I mean you're more or less like a made Man by this point just without getting shot in the back of the head when you least suspect it and there's that constant tension for most of the game where Waze always Under Suspicion of being a cop and it even comes to a head a few times here with his balls really being on The Chopping Block cause [ __ ] right here's the snitch there's some criminally underrated Voice work in this thing too with a stellar cast of voice actors way is voiced by a guy named William Lee and he's instantly likable from the get-go I came on to take down the sun on you now to suck the deck intimidating to his enemies and charming and charismatic to his friends it's that perfect balance between being a believable psychopath willing to chop up people into little pieces but then also a genuinely good dude who's always willing to do the right thing when it really comes down to it I was just stopping by to see if there was anything you needed outside of where your buddy Jackie is voiced by Edison Chen who even started in the original infernal Affairs which Sleeping Dogs takes a lot of influence from Kelly Hugh plays inspector Tang one of the officers working with way for all these undercover operations and I'd say that this was when Kelly Hugh was in her prime but having seen photos of her in some of her more recent roles I think that woman's actually Aging in reverse what I'm just a little shocked one of the higher up Triad members named Conroy is voiced by Robin shoe who of course played Liu Kang in the Mortal Kombat movie and Chief Inspector Raymond is voiced by Byron man who played Ryu in the absolute Masterpiece that is the Street Fighter movie you don't have a choice all right it's a direct order yeah that's right you heard me Masterpiece quick change the channel James Lou voices Way's old kung fu teacher sifu kwokin that might not sound like a recognizable name but I guarantee you've seen this guy in a movie without even knowing it I mean he's been in everything from Big Trouble in Little China to rush hour hey man who is this guy yeah and speaking of Big Trouble in Little China One of the higher-ups in the Triads Uncle Poe is voiced by David Lopez himself James Hong you must stop this fight at once now that really pisses me off to no end and then speak in a rush hour your main contact with the Hong Kong police Thomas pendru is voiced by Tom Wilkinson who plays like the token British bad guy in almost every movie that has ever been in Russia are included I must admit I thought you'd be happy all up it's just a great cast with great riding and great dialogue and about all that it's missing is that kind of Bandit that you get in the GTA games to really fill the whole thing out you know how unlike the Grand Theft Auto games when you're driving around and all the characters are having this really organic conversation to pass the time I guess so well Sleeping Dogs does have that just not to the same extent that was fun way thanks still though there's some really memorable missions in the campaign like one entire Mission just has you helping out your boss's fiance as she's sorting out a bunch of stuff for their wedding now this starts off with the two of you just making awkward conversation as you drive across town so she can try on a bunch of wedding dresses but then next thing you know you're having to hijack a flower event to get back in order that she's been swindled out of yeah hurt my cake after that you've got to sneak into a temple disguised in the proper Tire of course fast talking your way past a bunch of monks to still a rare Orchid from the garden the monks then catch wind of this and yeah of course they're all super good Fighters so you're left with no choice they're about to fight a bunch of them as you try to escape back to your car but then even after that you've got to evade the cops during a high speed chase or while the so-called bright to be is sitting in the goddamn passenger seat go go and this is all just for one Mission oh it's so nice to find someone who can really rely on you'll often have to chase someone down on foot which is a relatively Challenge free Affair where you just hold down the Run button and then press it again when a prompt appears on screen before grappling a ledge or leaping over barrier oh [ __ ] but even just all the other generic missions where you're beating people up or getting into shootouts they always seem to find a way to make them seem exciting the story also takes some really dark turns like there's a really gruesome Mission which is like sleeping dog's own version of the Red Wedding from Game of Thrones and it hits pretty damn hard man seeing what happens to some of these characters you were just starting to get attached to and then one of the final missions in the game is really brutal with weight getting tortured and Hammer to escape this construction site and it just has a sense of being effortlessly edgy if that makes sense I feel like a lot of games especially things like Kane and Lynch feel like they were trying their hardest to be edgy which they are but the violence and the gritty content in Sleeping Dogs in comparison it just feels far more believable to me because the violence and all the really nasty stuff is just presented as much more matter of fact like it totally makes sense that this is the kind of Fate that befalls people who end up in this lifestyle choice I don't know what you're talking about you crazy old [ __ ] it's also one of the few games that I really role played when I got into it and by that I mean that I tried to dress and act accordingly dependent on how far I was into the story so early on I only drove really crappy cars and wore crappy clothes on purpose but then as I made my way through the ranks and got those Swanky apartments in the more expensive areas of the city well then I started to buy more expensive cars and I made sure I had the best looking clothes to wear you got something called a face level which is increased by completing certain missions and this more or less just affects the way people react to you in general so higher levels means you get discounts on clothes you get better busts from food or drinks and even the enemies can be intimidated during combat it all just helps to make you feel like you're really making the transition from this Thug that no one pays attention to to a stylish gangster suit wearing Giga chat and a big part of that too also comes from the attention that you get from female characters that's cute I like that much luck in San Andreas and GTA 4 throughout the campaign you'll meet various women who you can eventually take out of date the first one is a college girl from America named Amanda voiced by Emma Stone by the way and she's after tour of the city followed by I guess a tour of ways undercarriage uh okay yeah that that would be really great after that first initial meeting the follow-up is more or less like a date which can't ever be changed and is always in the same preset spot now for Amanda this is at a park where you walk around taking photos for a bit before she then hands over the goods yeah I have to say that dress looks really good on you but then the fact that the two of them even have sex is barely alluded to in dialogue that's completely shoehorned Dennis the game Fades out to Black and then after that that's it that just kind of go away and you never see them again for the rest of the game now there is a benefit to doing this because finishing these so-called dates makes Collectibles appear on your map screen which I have to admit is a pretty awesome quality of life inclusion and some of these dates are entertaining from sing and karaoke poorly to going free running along rooftops each of these women clearly has their own unique idea of what foreplay means is that okay yes it's fine it's just a bit of a shame that they don't get to be these recurring booty calls because these are some really likable ladies one of them is a girl who yet totally doesn't have Daddy Issues named Sandra and wooing Sandra involves getting into a street race and showing her how good you are with a stick shift and yes son let me tell you nothing gets a woman in the mood faster than the premise of potentially getting killed in a horrific automobile accident foreign is the kind of girl that encapsulates the reason that tomboy fetishes exist she's a total computer geek and another really cool character that you barely get to interact with at one point there's a mission where one of the girls starts sleeping around so you end up spying on her and they're trying to catch her in the ACT but it's kind of like you know why would we care what a girl he slept with Once is up to on the side when he's literally only been in the same room as her a grand total of two times let me see what I can do later on as well you get a call from not ping who's gone absolutely ballistic because she's seen you cheating on her with other women despite the fact again you've only seen her twice and ever since that your dick's being dry than a professional Super Smash Brothers player I will never forgive you never don't even try just don't even bother what bro what are you talking about man yeah I'm not saying that these characters are bad in fact it actually helps a lot with the whole power fantasy element of playing as this bad boy Triad who drops bodies in the streets as often as he drops panties in the sheets but there's definitely something missing here that keeps this social aspect of the game from being something truly remarkable as it is it's really just like a fun little distraction that also has the benefit of helping you find all these Collectibles faster instead of really making these Side characters feel that much more fleshed out foreign thing I was also kind of astonished at was just how good this game still looks especially when it comes to the environments now sleeping dogs came out during the absolute peak of the whole open world genre and it's funny to look back on it now and realize that we were all unknowingly playing the best of the best when it comes to what that genre was ever gonna offer things like the early Assassin's Creed games Arkham City GTA 4 Red Dead Redemption and Saints Row to name but a few I guess so what makes the whole thing so good is just how convincing the whole game world is you can walk around on foot at any time and see NPC shuffling along and just minding their own business in the night markets you quite literally bump into people and trip over if you try to walk in a straight line because it's that crowded combined with just the right amount of foot traffic and passing vehicles to make it really feel like a populated and real City apparently the people on the dev team went to Hong Kong to take reference photos and capture the city as best as possible and yeah that's what it feels like it feels like it transport ordered into this seamless Seventh Generation representation of mid-2000s Hong Kong giant Billboards and advertisements stretch as far as the eye can see and neon signs are join the site of almost every single building you walk past at night time and ideally when it's raining it becomes this visual Kaleidoscope of all these cool looking elements just creating this really gorgeous backdrop in fact driving around I think is where it truly looks remarkable with these real-time Reflections cascading across your car and it just feels like every possible visual element has really been used to its full potential and it's kind of Staggering to think that this is over a decade old at this point and this isn't even the so-called Definitive Edition either I mean I'm just playing that old PC Port from back in the day I even posted a gameplay clip on Twitter a while back and I had people commenting that they thought I'd use some kind of a Shader or messed around with the visuals but I didn't man it just really looks this good it's a perfect example of a bygone era where artistic talent had to meet with technical limitations but neither of these seem to be compromised and it shows you how a good art style is something that never ages when you're running around in the rain Wade can even get believably wet and after combat he'll even be covered in blood and various other wounds then you should get used to seeing that as well because there is a whole lot of combat in the game and I say that the gameplay is primarily broken down into melee combat driving around and then finally shooting and where sleeping dogs just really shines is the melee combat which is still insanely fun to mess around with over a decade later the skill in which way can throw hands is something that's still an absolute highlight this really might be one of the most satisfying hand-to-hand combat systems I think in any game and it really reminds me of playing old school beat em ups like Streets of Rage where you only get like a limited amount of Combos and moves but the high enemy count and the enemy variety just seems to give you endless ways to fight back you start off with some pretty basic moves like pressing the attack button multiple times is going to perform different Combos and you can grapple enemies for follow-up attacks or to Simply throw them into the ground when an enemy is about to land a hit they'll glow red for a split second and you can counter that attack if you're quick enough [Music] straight vendors also play like a pretty big part in buffing all this stuff up too because if you ever take the time to knock back an energy drink cup of tea or a pork bun it'll add important Buffs to weighs well you like that one like increasing the damage he does he's damage resistance and his health regeneration speed and if this game has taught me one thing it's that a man who never eats a pork bun is not a real man a man funds is never a whole match there's different enemy types some of which are resistant to being grappled or even those who can block your combos then you've got these big fat heavy dudes who just ignore your inputs entirely and can even pick you up like you're a sack of potatoes so just from the get-go it's a pretty developed combat system and I mean if that's all it was with no additions well it probably would have done the job but it's when you start unlocking all these new moves and combos where the whole thing really starts to kick off no pun intended early on in the game you get reunited with your old kung fu teacher who's had all these Priceless statues stolen and as you return these things one by one you can start unlocking new moves and abilities which turns away from a lowly Thug in top more or less Bruce Lee these are always taught to the player in the Kung Fu School in a more or less completely threat-free environment so you can really get the hang of how all of these work and feel and then from that point on it's added to Your Arsenal oh so you can start doing things like tackling enemies into the ground you can now stun enemies with your basic combos leaving them dazed and open for another follow-up attack as well probably the best moves though are the ones where you can snap someone's leg or arm and this is not only brutal as [ __ ] watching you know way mercilessly turn someone's arms 90 degrees in a direction that it's definitely not supposed to go but it also has the benefit of scaring the absolute piss out of nearby enemies who understandably recoil in shock at seeing one of their buddies turned into human origami even just having those basic combos upgraded to do more damage and to stun enemies lends itself massively to the combat and it really makes it feel like more than just using the same few attacks over and over then it's all changed up even more if you're using one of the game's many melee weapons like Cleavers or knives in fact the 1.2 you're even swinging around a goddamn circular sword wait that's illegal then filling up the face meter increases your damage output even more and lets you do a bunch of special moves like holding someone down on the ground and beating them over and over but you can even do instant melee weapon takedowns as well what I've always loved too is how at the end of particularly brutal fights way is going to look sufficiently beaten and bloody legitimately looking like he just lost a fight with a brick wall it just kind of adds to the whole gritty nature of the setting and despite being covered in more wounds than someone who fell face first into a lawnmower it ironically makes you feel like more of a badass as if way is like superhuman and able to shrug off all of these crippling wounds yeah it must be all those pork buns but what is easily the best part of the combat here are these environmental takedowns where way uses the environment to instantly incapacitate some of these attacking [ __ ] and some of these are absolutely [ __ ] hilarious and so needlessly over the top like throwing a dude into an electrical box or shoving someone's face into a furnace like it's that final fight at the end of Commando you can throw people into aquariums fish tanks air conditioning vents Raven stuff more ludicrous like onto a stack of swordfish heads that's gotta hurt well how about taking someone out with poison damage by throwing them face first into a piss soaked urinal a lot of people always seem to compare the combat in Sleeping Dogs to the Arkham games which I don't entirely agree with only because outside of that basic counter system there's not all that much else they share in common but it is an interesting observation because these environmental takedowns that feature heavily in Sleeping Dogs kinda similar to the takedowns in Arkham Knight only thing is Arkham Knight came out four years after sleeping dogs but look either way the melee combat it really never gets old and those subtle advancements you make along the way adding new moves in here and there and incorporating them into the fights is done in a way that makes you really feel like you're getting better and better and it's really part of what makes the whole thing just so addictive is it perfect no is it jankier times absolutely but the main thing they nailed is that it's just fun and rewarding and you know what like sometimes it's just fun to beat the living [ __ ] out of half a dozen dudes at once you don't need to learn a complete series of intricate combos or inputs or have frame precise attacks to Parry I mean sometimes you just need to Button Mash and beat up some [ __ ] that's right you know and being able to beat us in any outfit you're choosing of which there are some absolutely ludicrous ones just kind of really adds to that whole role playing element even more seriously that's the best you can do with whey being an undercover cop trying to ingratiate himself with the Triads the missions have broken up between those specifically for the gang and then the other ones where you're working alongside 10 and it makes for an interesting Dynamic seeing both sides away's personality and that eventual shift as it becomes more sympathetic to the Triads cop missions almost always involve following up leads like tracking down a local drug dealer and a one-point investigating a serial killer who's stealing the organs of his victims you'll also be arresting lots and lots of drug dealers and throughout the city is a couple of dozen drug Hangouts in back alleys or other seedy areas where your mum hangs out and completing these becomes a repetitive process of first clearing the place out of gang members by you know beating the [ __ ] out of them hacking into the security camera then using it to identify a supplier to then make the arrest the hacking system here though I do think is kind of clever well you've got to find these randomized four-digit combinations the way that it works is you guess from four numbers at a time from zero to nine and if you get the right number either in the right or the wrong spot well the US going to let you know accordingly then you can work backwards on finding those remaining numbers and in what order that they're supposed to be in and yeah I know I might not be explaining it in a way that actually sounds all that exciting but there is something kind of simple about the process that really makes these little mini games enjoyable the Triad missions on the other hand are more or less just about carrying out various odd jobs given to you by these high-ranking members and learning more about the Civil War behind all these various factions I don't know mostly again though just beating people up then on top of all of that [ __ ] you've got police and tridexp leveling up either one of these dependent on your performance in those main story missions so yeah it's a lot of stuff to contend with then it does kind of make you feel like you're getting more and more engrossed in the game world and it is a pretty big world too I mean it's not on the same scale of something like GTA 4 or Just Cause 2 the latter I think having more or less like an entire country for the player to explore but Hong Kong can still take a while to navigate split across these multiple Islands which is where all the driving starts to come in you've got different classes of cars motorbikes and boats and the driving is a combination of just getting from point A to B but then there's also lots of Street Racing which shows off some surprisingly fun mechanics with vehicles that look like no-name knockoffs of Nissan skylines Mitsubishi evos and eventually Lamborghinis and to someone who almost killed himself numerous times driving around a defect heavy Nissan 180sx gotta say that I appreciate being able to Fang it around the hills of digital Hong Kong all right now the racing side of things ain't exactly Gran Turismo levels of intricacy kind of arcade racing at its finest but some of these races are still pretty high octane and fun with coarse layouts that are easy to get the hang of this was also around the height of those sort of underground style racing games where you could race around populated city streets with a complete disregard for the safety of innocent civilians it was when franchises like midnight club burnout and Need for Speed were well established in fact Need for Speed Undercover had come out a few years prior and it even had a similar premise with the whole undercover cop angle not to mention it was also around the time when the Fast and the Furious franchise was starting to pick up some speed now betting these races does seem to rely more on you just having the absolute fastest car possible because otherwise the AI has this weird habit of being able to magically pull away from you and take the lead but at least buying all these cars so you can win these races gives you a bit of a reason to spend all your hard-earned Hong Kong dollar dues because unlike the Grand Theft Auto games you can't just steal a nice car off the street and then pocket out front your house you'll need to buy these cars off the black market using your own money at which point is then added to your garage you can even have it eventually wear this nice middle-aged man in a business suits gonna deliver them if you ask him nicely enough here you go I hope this is good enough a few moments later no not again it is a bit of a wasted opportunity though that you can't customize these cars either outside of the basic paint job and that's also double the disappointing considering how long it can often take to get them still though that driving and racing aspect is really fun and the visual spectacle of hurtling down the freeway at night time with those lights reflecting across the hood of your sports car is a sight to behold sadly though it does feature some of the absolute worst cop AI that I think I've ever seen at least when it comes to an open world game now the way this works is simple right you piss the cops off and then they chase after you and a little bit like GTA 4 the only way to lose them is to try to get out the area and break their line aside this rears its head the most though when you have to hijack these armored trucks now this is one of the many side hustles in the game and one of the easiest ways to make a quick Buck not to mention that hijacking mechanic just never gets old and how we don't have this mechanic fitted more in open world games like this is beyond me I mean it honestly makes you feel like you're the Goddamn Batman ah anyway every time after you hijack a truck you've got a few cops on grass and for some reason these guys seem to drive like absolute senior citizens hanging back and barely even managing to keep up with you you can't outrun them though because you're driving what may as well be a van full of concrete bricks so you pretty much have to purposefully slow down so they can get alongside you at which point you can finally Ram them to buggery and lose the Heat and it just results in some of the slowest most unexciting unaggressive car chases ever I mean imagine watching this on live TV you change the channel makes the car chase secrets in Boba Fett look like The French Connection it actually makes sense now why crime is running so rampant in the city when these police cars were about as menacing as a mobility scooter now the final component of the gameplay is the shooting which is not only the shortest aspect when it comes to the overall combat but also arguably one of the most underdeveloped which is a real shame unless of course you're playing with an uncapped frame rate in which case it becomes hilarious get down Looney it's kind of clear that the focus on the combat in Sleeping Dogs is the melee first and foremost which is evidenced simply by the sheer amount of missions that focus on melee overshooting but also consider that they keep guns away from you for like the first three or four hours of the campaign wow a gun and then even when you finally do get one it's not like you're walking around with an armor in your back pocket or anything I mean you'll be lucky if you've even got a pistol and you can't even holster any of those two-handed weapons there's not all that many weapons to begin with either you've only got a couple of pistols couple of SMGs shotguns and then assault rifles I mean that's about it no sniper rifles RPGs or anything else ludicrous like that most of the shooting takes place during story missions and it's really just basic cover shooting mechanics where you do a little more than just duck behind a waist-high object then pop out and take pot shots at your enemies repeat this over and over until everyone in the room is dead and then you run to the next room and do the whole thing over again leaping over whatever you're taking cover behind causes the game to go into bullet time where you can aim and fire in slow motion then yeah this does look pretty cool plus you'll also be using it frequently because it's the fastest and easiest way to kill enemies but it does make me kinda wonder why they didn't focus more on that bullet time aspect of the shooting I mean considering the game is set in Hong Kong and John Woo films are a thing that exists not to mention that bullet time is still a pretty popular mechanic in video games back in 2012. I just think that if they had included the kind of over-the-top shooting you got in a game like Stranglehold for instance well it would have made those shooting sections much more exciting to play through and it would have contrasted well with the melee combat where you're going around snapping people's arms and kicking their knees out of its socket it's at its best during one of the final missions in the game where they show off some neat effects like being able to shoot a part in entire sections of the environment along with some neat looking explosions playing with a controller there's also this really awful lock-on system which you can't seem to turn off which had me going back and forth between a controller and then The Mouse and the keyboard depending on what it was doing but what pisses me off the most is how the weapons have this weird tendency to not really go where you're even aiming as there's this kind of artificial bullet spread when firing guns which makes them all feel a lot less accurate this seemed to be a thing that plagued a lot of third person shooters during that PS3 and Xbox 360 error and this is a prime example of it you'll often be in Car Chasers with pursuing vehicles and this becomes an almost laughable Loop of just aiming for the tires of motorbikes and cars because taking out the tires causes a vehicle to instantly flip up and yeah like it suddenly inherited physics from Gary's mod but more importantly because trying to pinpoint the driver or the people sitting in the vehicles is next to Impossible when your weapon has more spread than a [ __ ] garden hose I don't think the shooting is bad overall but it just feels like it's the least refined and outside of a few key missions it's really not all that memorable still though Sleeping Dogs is a pretty easy game and it's really rare that you're actually killed but what is challenging is getting the perfect scores on each Mission you see for each Mission you need to max out both the Triad and also the police officer points now triad points are earned through combat by beating up people in elaborate ways and generally being as violent as possible whereas police points are maxed out at the beginning but then held on to by playing by strict set of rules but it's a really dumb system and it doesn't really make all that much sense I mean for instance you're throwing dudes into fan blades you're hacking them apart with a Cleaver or in one instance throwing someone face first into a table saw all to get up the triad points which is somehow fine but if you drive over a single parking meter or side swipe someone's car in the slightest well you automatically lose that perfect cop score instantly to get through these missions with a perfect score you can't do a single thing wrong you can't can't hit another car you sure as [ __ ] can't hit a civilians and you basically just have to be good in Two Shoes you're a goody little two shoes but all whilst you're engaging in the kind of brutal fisticuffs did it have someone in physical therapy for the next six to 12 months we're here for instance like I'm engaging in all-out Warfare in the city streets with an assault rifle and a grenade launcher and that's apparently fine and these are those kind of weird little oversights which are the main reason that I think Sleeping Dogs is just kind of shy from being an actual Masterpiece I think you'll find that I don't give a [ __ ] still though I mean despite these issues I don't think that detracts from its overall quality and like I said in the beginning of the video man it's one of those really enjoyable experiences with a story that still resonates I mean mateship loyalty not to mention police corruption are three things that are always going to hit close to home for anyone who leaves their house during the daytime what do they do to you in America man what I think I appreciate at the end of the day about sleeping dogs is that it's a game that doesn't overstay its welcome there's something just so enjoyable about these open world games that weren't trying to outdo each other and to be as expensive as possible for no other reason than just to see how much they could get away with it's part of why I don't enjoy the genre as much anymore after titles like Red Dead Redemption 2. but I just kind of felt like the devs at rockstar while more intent on cramming as much crap as possible into their games but without ever really having the consideration for the amount of time that the player has to to invest into their world to actually experience it I mean look man I can play Sleeping Dogs for an hour and I can go out and bet on [ __ ] fights I can get into street races I can pick a few fights with the random Triads and also maybe finish a few of the main story missions I walk away from the game feeling like it was time well spent but then you know more recent games again like Red Dead 2 I spend 45 minutes of that hour riding my horse to and from an objective Sleeping Dogs never feels like it has delusions of grandeur or is trying to be anything other than a tightly crafted narrative experience but it also has all those side activities for the player to mess around with on the off chance that they get bored across the entire city you've got Health shrines to find you've got lock boxes full of cash new clothes to buy and all those repeatable side missions where you can hijack armored trucks and steal a bunch of cars just the kind of game where you're more likely to finish it in like 30 hours as opposed to 300 and there's nothing wrong with that that's also not even taken into consideration all the DLC they've released for it as well some of which is cosme just adds in items and features that completely break the game but some of this stuff I was up emissions and storylines altogether in the age of remakes I think Sleeping Dogs will benefit from it no doubt and yeah look I'd also give my left nut for a sequel but as it is 2012 still gave us one of the best open world beat ups of all time and one of the best protagonists to experience it with with [ __ ] way Shin plus it also taught me you can't be a real man unless you eat pork buns and look a more important life lesson I've yet to learn oh [Music]

Channel: GmanLives

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Keywords: sleeping dogs, sleeping dogs review, square enix, is sleeping dogs worth buying, sleeping dogs sequel, sleeping dogs 2021, sleeping dogs 2022, true crime hong kong, sleeping dogs underrated, sleeping dogs 2, sleeping dogs retrospective, sleeping dogs definitive edition, sleeping dogs definitive edition review, the history of sleeping dogs, game review, true crime, game reviews 2023, game review channel, sleeping dogs gameplay pc, gggmanlives, gmanlives

Id: 2zvYejoGc5k

Length: 34min 14sec (2054 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 16 2023