Sleeping Dogs

[Fiach]

Still playing this but kinda pushing myself through it at this stage.

The story is VERY good and the story missions are pretty cool, but the fighting...

Christ its getting tedious now. Everything you do seems to involve hand to hand combat for no other reason than the game wants to shove it down your throat.

I got a gun, go on a mission (Drug Bust), first off kill the bad guys....wtf? wheres my fucking gun gone? So you have to defeat the enemies in hand to hand combat and the combat mechanics are just not up to it, the game isnt a fighting game so yeah, its not going to be slick like Soul Calibur or Tekken, but ffs! You learn loads of moves, but if you try to pull them off with any reguality, the game will shove your head into a toilet bowl and give you a fucking swirley!

Even the timing between button presses isnt as in sync with what happens on the screen, there is always a slight delay and while you are only pressing a couple of buttons, the button press and the game audio are maybe half a second apart screwing up any sense of rhythm you may have.

But that would be OK if you had a choice, but no, go to a warehouse, you are the only person on the team with no gun, go into a room, combat three guy, go into the next combat 5 guys, then another room, finally the game will let you pick up a gun.

Go to a wedding its full of your yakuza gang, the wedding gets attacked, who's the only dork with no fucking gun? Again, go through 3 rooms and kill varying sizes of groups in hand to hand...then you can have a gun.

The combat would be OK but for the targetting I mentioned in a previous post and although you learn lots of moves, the only safe thing to do is just stand there and wait for someone to glow and counter them and dont follow up after the counter, just stand there and wait for the next person to glow red.....its just not fun.

As regards the guns not being available, well... it makes me feel like I'm not progressing, if I get a gun or rifle, I should be allowed to keep it and maybe go on a rampage or something, not suddenly have it disappear for no logical reason, I'm nearly the head of a fecking triad and I have no gun...I should have a gold plated desert eagle at this stage ffs!

The rest of the game is great though so far. I thought you could just play and do triad missions, but it seems (to me anyway) that you have to complete both sides of story missions before the next batch open up.

The racing can be a bit annoying as its more of a donkey derby than a race, with people crashing into you and it can be confusing when you win a race you will get a message saying Lead Lost which sounds like you failed, but you still get XP, maybe its a translation issue.

The characterisations of the people you interact with are very good, even the two gossping women standing outside your apartment is like a little mini soap opera, the main chaacters are all well done visually and spot on voice acting with background on each available via your cellphone to add even more depth.

[JRD]

I'm sorry to hear it went down this way for you, mate!

I thought it could be a ground breaking game but apparently something went lost when trying to turn ideas into a nice playing game. I was hoping the combat would be similar to Batman Arkham games, which is fantastic, but after reading your thoughts they clearly took a wrong turn somehere in the development process.

You should have a choice to use a gun or go fists only against enemies and get extra XP for not pulling the trigger or something like that. If they give you a gun on a fighting game but then take it out and have other NPCs firing shots... it sounds a bit confusing indeed!

As far as driving goes, Square Enix didn't pull it right in Just Cause 2 either. Controlling most land vehicles is very clumsy, specially bikes, so I'm not surprised you think of it as a donkey derby 

[Fiach]

I was hoping the combat would be similar to Batman Arkham games, which is fantastic, but after reading your thoughts they clearly took a wrong turn somehere in the development process.

You should have a choice to use a gun or go fists.

As far as driving goes, Square Enix didn't pull it right in Just Cause 2 either. Controlling most land vehicles is very clumsy, specially bikes, so I'm not surprised you think of it as a donkey derby 

No the combat is not as free flowing as Batman, thats a totally different league tbh, Its similar in that who you can counter is highlighted, but you cannot dodge out of the way, you MUST take them out first, unfortunately if you take them out you have to wait for the next person to glow, otherwise they will glow when you are in mid combo and you can neither cancel in time or dodge away and they will hit you from behind and a few of those will kill you sending you back to (sometimes) a checkpoint that is annoyingly far away.

Even from a narrative point of view its stupid. On the wy to blow up a drugs shipment, heres a conversation.

Triad :I'm not giving you a gun, I dont trust you, I think you're a cop, I wont believe otherwise until I see you kill someone on this mission.

Then why dont you give me a fucking gun!

The game is based on True Crime, you could shoot and fight according to your particular whim at the time. If you hve an old XBOX, you could do worse than check them out, they were good games.

The driving isnt clumsy, its way ahead of JC tbh, but the races dont seem to need skill, just luck, they aren't hard, but you dont feel skilled when you win, you just feel that you probably got hit less than anyone else :)

[ninzza]

He who does not eat pork bun is not really a whole man  ;D

I have yet to play the game but from the videos I've watched, I like this game's combat system, maybe it's not as smooth as Arkham City but it's varied, deep and very satisfying.

[PZ]

He who does not eat pork bun is not really a whole man  ;D

[Binnatics]

Well, having read the entire topic again, I can relate to most of the downers Fiach pointed out so far with my few hours of experience. I find the combat system simple, which may be okay, but far from as smooth as the Batman way of fighting. I also found out the annoying stuff Fiach comments, and also found out the best way to survive a complicated battle is to wait for enemies to attack / glow and react.
I find the driving heavily irritating. It reminds me of some other game, but it's pretty far from normal driving in other racing games or open world games with cars involved. I think the graphics are looking awesome, but a bit on the colourful side.
The story does not appeal to me at all. I found it simple and a bit childish, to be honest. I must confess I have been playing LA Noire and Max Payne 3 recently, having extremely evolving and realistic story lines, so I'm a bit spoiled when it comes to story telling  :-D

What Fiach tells about more goons to be punched, the annoying lack of gunplay and so on makes me want to leave the game aside. Lucky me I only paid €3,99 in the steam sales.  :(

[durian]

It's not as fluid as Batman's but that's because it's not a sci-fi game, so it's not a flaw, just different. Personally I like this game's combat system. When you land a blow on you foe's body, it's very satisfying as it feels and sounds powerful,  e.g. when you break bad guys' legs, it feels really hurt, it makes fighting hordes of enemies addictive. Another element I like is the environmental takedowns, they're simply fun and brutal and helps make the fighting less repetitive. :)

[Art Blade]

I like the game so far. The combat system is difficult when you want to overcome enemies by attacking them first. Usually their defense and dodging is efficient and you can't really win by running right in and finish them off one by one. I have managed to get a personal record of 56 flying kicks in a row with no more than 9 seconds between those kicks until I had finished four guys. They're tough.

Environmental kills are edited out of the German version, can you believe that? They REMOVED them! Thanks to Abletile, I am lucky and happy owner of a legal non-localised version of the game but.. I can't get ANY of the existing DLC, "not available in your area"  :D

Here is one example of an environmental kill. Giving this guy a "very close shave" with a fan. Note the blood and gore coming flying up from down below from his face.  :-D
[smg id=6763 type=preview align=center caption="SleepingDogs 001"]

[PZ]

Nice graphics!

[Art Blade]

yes, it is astonishing. There even is a free DLC for high resolution graphics (a texture pack) which I cannot download due to area restrictions, as in "not in Germany, but anywhere else."

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[Art Blade]

I finished my first playthrough which leaves me with an open world game still accessible after the main story line so I can do side missions and stuff which I hadn't done before finishing the main story. Excellent :)

It was very hard, and I mean it, very hard to get to the maximum triad XP level 10 without any DLC. I managed. I got the "face" XP level 10, the police XP level 10, all 11 jade statues that each gave me an extra individual melee attack ability and I collected ALL 50 health shrines to get 100% extra health. So I'm fully maxed out regarding my skills. And I can use it in the open world. Having finished the main story, I even got a golden Desert Eagle type of pistol, a .50 cal hand gun that is available in every apartment I own every time I visit it. Excellent :)

There were quite a few moments when I cursed the game because in an intense martial arts fight the game doesn't always react according to the keys you pressed, it tends to skip one or two key strokes or mouse clicks when you least need it. But it's random and never really ruined my game.

All in all, it has been a really great game and extremely enjoyable. The story was cool, the graphics are great (must be even better with hires texture DLC) and the side missions are fun. Some missions required some linearity but it wasn't too strict, I didn't even realise it was linear and scripted events were just great, at the right time, in the right amount. Not too many. Just great :)

Highly recommendable :) :-X

[Binnatics]

Good to see you've had so much fun with the game.  :-X :)

I've left it on the shelve (metaphorically speaking) because with all the glow and neon and the (in my opinion cheap) story and characters were a bit too much for me after playing games like LA Noire and Max Payne 3. But at another time I guess I could have liked it a lot.  ;)

[PZ]

Great graphics!

[Art Blade]

I have now got 100% completion of the game, I did all there was to do. ^-^

You can replay missions which is nice (notice the "unlocked" message to the bottom right)
[smg id=7082 type=preview align=center caption="SleepingDogs 003"]
It's bloody (don't mess with innocents or the cops try to get you -- I try to stop them here)
[smg id=7083 type=preview align=center caption="SleepingDogs 004"]
even with cars, it's brutal (I landed on that fellow after a car jump and ran him over properly)
[smg id=7084 type=preview align=center caption="SleepingDogs 005"]
and it can be funny.  :-() Here I jammed into a bench on a pier which sent the bench and me flying
[smg id=7085 type=preview align=center caption="SleepingDogs 006"]

[Art Blade]

Actually, the story wasn't so cheap. Basically the Hong Kong police department make use of a Chinese who spent 12 years in the USA and became a cop there so now they ask him to infiltrate a triad gang because he grew up with some of the guys which should make an easy entry. You climb your way up the triad hierarchy and keep reporting to the HKPD. During missions you're not supposed to play too roughly, damaging property and cars and so forth will cost you police XP while a clean mission gives you more police XP. At the time you gain triad XP for beating up rivalling triad members. The story is quite interesting as you'll see that there are members in your gang that have more honour than some people of the police department but that's true the other way around, too. There is a dense web of intrigues and power play going on, and you get caught in the middle. Very interesting concept :)

[Binnatics]

I do believe that it isn't that cheap, but it gave me that impression at the start. And the characters appeared to me like designed to please the desires of 16 year old testosterone junkies :-D
Add to that the crappy vehicle controls and I lost appetite ^-^

Maybe I'll give it another go this summer, we'll have a few more spare months GTA V PC hits the shells, so plenty of time 8)

[Stiku]

I actually had this game for over a year now, but still haven't played it.
So I decided to give it a whirl, and seems to be alot of fun punching your way through the jungle known as a Hong Kong, but as Binnatic's said the car controls are horrific even with a gamepad, cars are very twitchy, brakes don't stop you at all, but cause's you to loose control easily.

But luckily you don't have to drive everywhere, you can use the taxi services around the city go to places and missions.

[Art Blade]

 :-D

I actually like to drive cars and bikes and boats in this game. I have got no problems with the driving at all, I just drive accordingly to what the game has got to offer even if it's poor. It's no racing sim, so I don't mind, despite those 22 car/bike races you've got to win during the game -- which I did  :-()