Progression through the game is extremely well paced and structured. I was dubious about playing another open world game straight away but Sleeping Dogs turned out to be the perfect fit.) (I came into my play of Sleeping Dogs straight off the back of completing AC Origins – a game which I eventually came to truly love but did suffer quite a lot of “open world fatigue” in the middle, around 25 – 35 hours. The open world of Hong Kong is brilliantly implemented – big enough so that if the player desires they can spend time doing side missions / collectables instead of the mainline story but, crucially, never so big that it is overwhelming or intimidating. In this review I will talk about the strong parts of the game, discuss some areas that I think are not so well done and finally I will break down in tears at the realisation that the game will (unless someone acquires the IP) never get the sequel that could have raised it to masterpiece level! United Front Games, the Vancouver based studio that developed the game, closed for business in 2016… That’s not to say it doesn’t have its flaws – it does, just like any other game. Now, in 2022 I have finally gone back and fully committed to it and the TLDR is that I absolutely love the game! I always thought it would be a good one to come back to so when I saw it on sale on PSN a year or so ago I put it in my library. The first time I played Sleeping Dogs I put two or three hours in but it didn’t click with me for whatever reason. It’s not a particularly original story but it mostly works really well – I have some reservations though which I will get into in due course. This sets the scene for the main story of the game – Shen gets sucked in deeper and deeper to the HK underworld but still has to maintain his responsibilities as a public servant and police officer. In the early stage of the game it seems that he is just another small-time gangster but it is soon revealed that he is in fact an undercover officer in the Hong Kong Police Department. In the game you play the protagonist Wei Shen – originally a native of Hong Kong who was brought up in the USA and has recently returned to his hometown. But the premise sounded cool af – an open world game based in Hong Kong featuring both the triads and the police. I remember picking up Sleeping Dogs for either £1.50 or £2 in CEX – I had never heard of it and was sceptical that it would be any good at such a low price. A visit to CEX brought the delightful news that – as it was now old gen tech – PS3 games were readily available for buttons! Only around ten years late to the party I set about exploring the back catalogue of classic games – and now I am going to commit my thoughts of a number of these classics as reviews for Pure Dead Gaming. I of course gladly took him up on this offer and a week or two later had a slim PS3 sitting under my telly ready for use. His partner’s son had one languishing in the loft which had not been switched on in years. Probably around 2016 another friend of mine got himself a PS4 and was telling me how great it was – when I commented that I hadn’t even got a PS3 yet he was like “do you want one?”. By the time I became aware that the PS4 had made it to the market, it was with some alarm I realised that I had just missed an entire console generation – with the sole exception of a couple of shots of my mate’s PS3 when I was round at his house for a bevvie. Once we had an extra mouth to feed, the cost also became a factor. We got married in 2005 and over the next ten years or so life just completely got in the way of gaming – moving countries and continents, changing jobs and careers and ultimately becoming parents were all blockers for my former hobby. Acquisition of a PSP helped feed my gaming needs but the PS2 eventually got sold as it was just gathering dust. I duly progressed to the PS2 when I was living in Japan in the early to mid 00s but video game play took a bit of a hit when my now wife moved into my one room apartment. How many kids in the 80s got their start in video games due to this fallacy? I moved on to the Mega Drive, Amiga, Saturn and finally the original PlayStation by the late 90s. I’ve been playing games since the day I came home from primary school to find my dad had bought the family a Commodore 64 for “educational purposes”. Play for this review was started on the PS3 version which I picked up a few years ago then put down – I came back and played it properly more recently on the PS4 remaster. A remastered version for consoles followed two years later, which also included all the previous DLC and was branded the “Definitive Edition”. Sleeping Dogs was originally released on PS3, Xbox 360 and Windows in 2012. This is the first piece in a planned series of reviews going back and revisiting classic games from previous generations.
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