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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Sleeping Dogs Review (PS3) – 7GPPs

Straight to the Point : Great game, just not good enough for the £45 price tag

Go to the Video Games reviews section of this page and before this review got published there was only one reviewer – our resident site admin Matt, and as the forums will proclaim, he’s an X-Boxer, so yours truly has decided that there needs to be some PS3 reviews up in this place, and where better to start than my holding game till Borderlands 2 hits; Sleeping Dogs?

You can read this anywhere on this here interwebs but for those who haven’t read any news or reviews on this game before, It started life as True Crime: Hong Kong and was practically built before Activision decided that it was costing too much to create and threw it in the bin. luckily for us Square Enix opted to throw enough money to get the game released but didn’t want to take up the True Crime series name and instead gave it the new name of Sleeping Dogs.

I got asked a while back what it was like and replied that it was Grand Theft Auto in Hong Kong, with more Pork Buns and less Cousins wanting to go bowling. Having given it sometime now I don’t think I did the game justice, as it is much, much more than that.

The first thing you’ll notice is that it is graphically amazing, and looks like the Hong Kong many of us have probably seen on screen and a few in person. Look out over the ocean at the sunrise or sunset and it’s probably an even better view than if you actually travelled there and did it yourself, in that thing called real life.

The Story

You take the role of Wei Shen, a cop who has been tasked with infiltrating the Sun On Yee, a triad organisation that HKPD have been trying to bring down. Anyone who’s familiar with Hong Kong Cinema will instantly feel right at home with the tale that ensues of murder, deceit, high speed car chases, gun fights and kung fu.

 

The Game itself

When you get to the crux of the game it is always going to draw comparisons to Grand Theft Auto, what with it being a sand-box game where you steal cars; do varied missions, which include things such as: ‘Go Kill Him’, ‘Take this to there’, ‘Go destroy this’ and ‘Steal this and get away from the cops’, and the side missions where you have several support characters who take you away from the main story. All of which are very familiar, but the comparisons whilst understood, is an unfair one, as the gameplay in Sleeping Dogs feels very different indeed.

Essentially, the game Is a lot easier to play. I’ve literally done every mission now in less than 3 weeks of buying it and this is from someone who hardly ever finishes games, in fact other than the Arkham and Lego series’ I can’t recall another PS3 game where I’ve got to the end of the story, let alone 100%’d it.

The easiness of playing is mostly down to the controls/npc characters, get into a chase with the police and it never escalates. Eventually you will be able to outrun them, even if you’ve got one of the slower cars, as they just can’t navigate the more narrow Hong Kong streets; anyone who’s ever played a Saints Row or a GTA will be more than at home on them. Then there’s the fight mechanism’s, a quick press of a button and most of the time you’ll have your opponent in a hold where you can easily beat the snot out of him, if you can’t get a hold of him, then all you need to do is wait for him to turn red and then very similar to the Arkham Asylum/City fight system, 1 button will start a counter attack.

Sloth
Sloth
Born and Raised in Bolton. I'm a Quality Controller at a local adhesives manufacturer. I'm an avid motorcycle and computer enthusiast. Enjoy gaming and Sci Fi Movies

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