Sleeping Dogs

Available on: Xbox 360, PS3, and PC
Played it on: PC
Approximate Playtime: 20 hours

RATING: 9.5/10

Wait, when did Grand Theft Auto start taking itself seriously? Oh, wait, this is an actually serious sandbox. Wait, that's a thing? When did that become a thing?!

Sleeping Dogs is an impressive game, because it really is a serious sandbox. It doesn't take the route of Grand Theft Auto or Saint's Row: The Third where everything should explode while the player runs around beating things with a giant spoon. No, Hong Kong is not a pleasant place. There's not cheat codes to fly a helicopter around, there's not a cousin asking to go bowling, there's no ridiculously colored tanks rolling down the street firing left and right. The Hong Kong Triads are an evil, and powerful group, and Wei Shen is charged with single handedly taking out the Sun On Yee Triad from the inside. Now, I should clarify, if you want to run around in a kung-fu robe beating up random bystanders, you can, it just doesn't quite feel right in Hong Kong. The game is just serious enough to make the player serious about actually playing it the right way, which is an impressive and very difficult to find medium. Saints Row just doesn't care, while GTA IV tries to take itself so seriously that it becomes hilarious. Sleeping Dogs, though, is perfectly balanced.

The game achieves this great balance through being all around fantastic, in animation, voice acting, writing, game feel, and all the way down to the minute details like NPC interactions and lighting. It really feels like the developers didn't leave anything out. I'll go over each of these elements in detail.

First, animation and lighting. The game looks wonderful, with every element of Hong Kong rendered in detail. There's plenty of times in the game when the buildings around Wei look almost real, and that's an impressive feat for any game. Like any sandbox, there is a transition from day to night, and each day takes probably about 40 minutes. At night, though, is when the city comes alive. Street lights, headlamps, glowing neon signs, the lot. It's mesmerizing how beautiful the underbelly of the world is. The character animations are the best I've ever seen in a sandbox game. The only exception perhaps being Assassin's Creed III, but it's questionable whether or not the AC series is really a sandbox, anyway, so that doesn't quite count. Even if it did, I would say that Sleeping Dogs looks better.

But where would a good looking game be without great writing and voice acting? The answer: nowhere. Good thing Sleeping Dogs has that! As previously stated, the game isn't made to screw around in, the game condones serious playing. Red Dead Redemption does this to a point, but the world of Red Dead just isn't fun enough. It's bland, most of the characters are completely one dimensional, and it just falls a bit flat. The Undead Nightmare DLC was actually much better than the base game, mostly because it actually had a decent plot, and it didn't seem like the voice actors were trying so hard to make an old west game. Sleeping Dogs avoids this problem completely. The voice actors don't sound like they're trying really hard, they just sound natural. You know, like actual actors. And the story is in-depth, complicated, and brimming with possibilities. Wei gets to experience different paths in his love life, has to prove loyal to the Sun On Yee, help the police solve cases, supply car dealers with goods to sell, and help others around Hong Kong who may need his assistance. There's no shortage of things to do around the city, meaning the game keeps itself interesting.

All of this boils down to a fantastic game feel. Playing Sleeping Dogs quite simply feels right. Hong Kong feels dangerous, and there's a tangible fear in the game that Wei Shen could mess up and be killed by the Sun On Yee. It's a constant itch at the back of the player's mind, but that also makes the game so very fun to play. The world of the dirty underground may not be so appealing in real life, but to step into this wonderfully rendered world and experience Wei's life, one that's so different, is attractive. There's no if's, and's, or but's about it. Sleeping Dogs has done its job right.

Wei Shen has a very difficult job, but the story told in Sleeping Dogs is done almost perfectly. The world is beautiful, attractive, repulsive, fun, and engaging all at the same time. As sandbox games go, this is as good as it gets. This game is certainly worth playing.