#2) The Level System
The level system is particularly unique and engaging, as well. You have five skill trees: Cop, Triad, Melee, Face, and Health. For each story mission you start, you start with a full cop meter that slowly drains as you damage property or civilians. Your Triad meter slowly fills as you beat up mooks. Your Face meter fills as you complete side missions: Go on dates, sing karaoke, do favors, win races, and so on. Melee is leveled up as you find jade statues around the city. And your health meter rises as you find shrines to pray at. You will need every single one of these perks.
It’s a clever way to motivate you to play carefully and spend time exploring while still rewarding you for beating people up and getting you to play the side missions.
#1) How It All Gels With The Story
The best part about this is how it pushes forward the story. In the end Sleeping Dogs is very much a Hong Kong action drama and everything you do pushes forward the story. As you rise from low level scumbag/barely trusted undercover cop to respected Triad member/vital source of intel, it explores the conflicts inherent and the ethical problems any undercover cop has to face. More than once, you’re going to accidentally get some poor bastard killed. And it’s going to eat at you. The story itself is fairly outlandish, although not to the excesses some games go to, but the characters are grounded and believable.
In short, it’s an excellent game with a better story. Play it, you won’t be sorry.
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Besides RE 6, this title definitely one I would like to pick up this year.
As someone still patiently waiting for Shenmue III, this looks like a bloody good game to fill the gap.
It’s not Shenmue, but it was definitely inspired by it.
SHENMUE!!!!!!
Wish I still had a working Dreamcast. And non-broken first Shenmue disc.
I was going to take a look at this just because Georges St. Pierre was involved in some of the fight stuff (And there’s a GSP DLC pack or something), and I’m a giant MMA doofus.
But now it sounds like the game is good enough to care about even if Georges wasn’t involved. Neat!
The only problem with the game’s combat system is that the big ole’ guys will spam wrestling on you and sometimes you just have to counter until you get that satisfying neck breaking crunch and then kick them on the ground 50 times because they made you drop a knife. The vehicles are great (gotta drive on left side) and with a bike if you pop a wheelie half the cars are now ramps which is always fun.
I expect criticism of this game for having cock fighting, but seriously this game has 0 children in it. Apparently Hong Kong has either mass immigration or children are in school or at home always. Anyway from everything so far it seems like a great game
Also in one mission a guy will say you have to kill someone to show you aren’t a cop, THIS was during a time that the bus we were on was mowing pedestrians down left and right (can’t say it was me – undercover and all).
Pretty sure that any sandboxy type game won’t have children because nobody wants to make the game where everyone kills all the children.
Yeah, but in the end I mean who doesn’t want a fully realized world where you can just do whatever the hell you want, say use a chicken to spread diseases then change those diseases to make everyone poop helmets (your guy has a superpower and it is pooping helmets, not joking it just materializes every time he’s on a bike.) At the least a game where you can kill all the children means that the teachers won’t have to deal with them. Think of the teachers.
but are they killing for fun? who is really the bad guy? Is America the new Rome?
No, the mobsters, and no because despite seeming cosmetic similarities, America has participated in and generally abides by a complex international system of rules that largely respects the sovereignty of other nations, i.e. we don’t deal with our immigration issue by invading Mexico.
I have to say, I am interested in playing this living, breathing game.
I’ve gotten to sample a bit of this game and I was really impressed. It’s really really fun.
I played this game years ago when it was called Shenmue
Different game in many, many ways. Shenmue was more restrained. This is WAY over the top. The envirokills alone are amazing.
As an unabashed fan of True Crime: LA, I will get this game, seeing as it was originally a third TC.
It’s different, be warned.
About 30% through the game, I like it. can be a little glitchy, had trouble finishing a mission because the garage wouldn’t open. had to drive away and come back. also getting the “icon” to pop up can be annoying for geting into vehicles. i’m used the the gta hitting the button anywhere near a car.