Whenever I stopped to look at my old PS2 collection, I can never hold myself back from picking up my old True Crime games and play through them again. To me the True Crime series captured the best aspects of action and remained fresh no matter how many times I’ve played them.
In 2010, the True Crime’s newest addition (Hong Kong) was sadly canceled nearing the end of production. This was marked as the death of the the True Crime series, until Square Enix got involved. In 2011, Square Enix saw the potential True Crime: Hong Kong had and bought the rights from Activision and evolved it into: Sleeping Dogs!
The Story:
Sleeping Dogs focuses on a police officer attempting to bring down criminal factions. The game takes place in a fictional Hong Kong with players assuming control of Detective Wei Shen, an officer of the San Francisco Police Department, who had been seconded to the Hong Kong Police Force. Wei has been assigned by the Organized Crime and Triad Bureau to go undercover and infiltrate the Triad society called Sun On Yee and take them down. There are two subplots contained within the main storyline. The first is Wei’s personal struggle between completing his mission as a police officer, and having to commit crimes to prove his worth to the triad. The other subplot consists of completing the missions set out by triad lieutenant (Winston), such as killing triad members who are loyal to competing lieutenants. The island is divided into four fictional districts which are named after some real-life neighborhoods.Although Kowloon and other towns, villages, and islands of the Hong Kong region will not be featured in the game, portions of the in-game North Point district will be based on certain neighborhoods of Kowloon. A fictional Lamma Island will also be featured in the game, according to the in-game map screen shown in recent demos.
Gameplay and What to Expect:
-The core gameplay of Sleeping Dogs consists of giving the player an open world environment in which to move around freely. Sleeping Dogs is played as an over-the-shoulder, third-person perspective action-adventure game with role-playing elements.
-The combat system heavily revolves around hand-to-hand fighting with strong influences from Batman: Arkham City’s “Freeflow” combat system.
-When not attempting a storyline mission, players can free-roam, giving them the ability to participate in activities such as carjacking, joining a fight club, doing karaoke, visiting gambling dens, and betting on cockfights. (I’m going to love that Karaoke!)
Final Thoughts:
To me, Sleeping Dogs looks like an overall impressive game. If you are a fan of the old True Crime games, or a fan of the GTA series then this game should be picked up this August 14.
Now if you would excuse me, I have to study up on my Kung Fu!