Sleeping Dogs

[buzzmong]

I've noticed a couple of 5punkers have it, RPS seemed pretty positive about it, so I ask, is it worth my monies?

[Joose]

erm...maybe.

Its a bit hard to describe. I'm kind of just plodding through it. It is pretty good, but...I dunno. I guess the easy cheating answer is: If you like GTA style open world games, you will probably like it. If you don't, you wont.

On the plus side, its rather pretty (although nothing that will make your eyes spew rainbows), the controls are all right (use a pad, its *much* better than mouse/keyboard), the voice acting/character animation is good enough to not annoy, the story is slightly above average...In fact, thats probably it. The whole thing is slightly above average.

The only real criticism I have for it is that sometimes it goes weirdly jerky when you are driving. Not so much that it causes a problem, there's just a strange vibration style effect. I don't *think* its on purpose, but its a little annoying either way.

All that damning with faint praise there makes it sound worse than it is. I am definitely enjoying it, I just get the impression that if you asked me a couple months after playing it I wouldn't be able to tell you a damn thing about it.

[FatherJack]

It's on my wishlist, as it's a retitling of the cancelled True Crime: Hong Kong, a franchise which I've enjoyed, being set in the east is an added bonus. I wouldn't expect it to be quite as polished as an actual GTA game, or as detailed in exploration as a mostly on-foot title like Yakuza, but too few decent games are set in interesting places.

[Joose]

I wouldn't expect it to be quite as polished as an actual GTA game.

Oh I don't know, its fairly well polished. Maybe not up to the best of the GTA series, but it certainly wouldn't be the worst either. For their time, I mean: Its a hell of a lot nicer than, say, GTA3 is now.

[buzzmong]

Ha, just to make people aware, there's now an actual demo available on Steam.

How rare, but I'm glad as it means I get to try it out.

[spoodie]

I got this mixed up with that fancy looking Watch Dogs, with the people hacking stuff. I thought it'd come out fast.

[HereComesPete]

This looks good, but I have just cause, gta 4, saints row 3 and possibly some other violent sand box games to complete (or start in most cases). I think I'll skip it because I truly won't find the time to play.

[buzzmong]

Completed the short but hardish demo, enjoyed it. Bought a dvd copy of the Limited Edition from play for £24.99. Looking forward to playing it properly.

[Joose]

An update appears! It has (for me at least) fixed that horrible jitter I complained about, and it's introduced proper mouse support! You could uses mouse before, but there was the horrible mouse lag and auto centring issues you often get with console ports. Not that it matters to me as I always play these GTA style games with a joypad anyway, but if you were put off by this before it now works perfectly.

[buzzmong]

An update appears! It has (for me at least) fixed that horrible jitter I complained about, and it's introduced proper mouse support! You could uses mouse before, but there was the horrible mouse lag and auto centring issues you often get with console ports. Not that it matters to me as I always play these GTA style games with a joypad anyway, but if you were put off by this before it now works perfectly.

Aha! Good. As my copy arrived via Postman this morning but I was going to wait for a patch or two as I did note in the demo that the controls were a bit wierd.

[Dog Pants]

The guy sat next to Anery at the LAN played through the story missions in one 17 hour session. Hardcore.

[tandino]

Thought I'd weigh in on this. Played a few hours of it and thoroughly enjoyed it - even more so after I bought a 360 controller for my PC. In the mean time, however, I've made the executive decision to finish some of my other games before I start putting some proper time into this. So currently on my list I have:

Deus Ex: Human Revoluton (360)
Mass Effect 3 (360)
Saints Row the Third (PC - accepting coop requests/fun ideas for potential filming for our YouTube channel)
Skyrim (PC - still haven't finished this, up to 300hrs now - not bad for £34.99 8.6p per hour for all that entertainment)
Max Payne 3 (PC)
WItcher 2 (PC)

Then Sleeping Dogs gets a run.

[FatherJack]

Thought I'd weigh in on this. Played a few hours of it and thoroughly enjoyed it - even more so after I bought a 360 controller for my PC. In the mean time, however, I've made the executive decision to finish some of my other games before I start putting some proper time into this. So currently on my list I have:

Deus Ex: Human Revoluton (360)
Mass Effect 3 (360)
Saints Row the Third (PC - accepting coop requests/fun ideas for potential filming for our YouTube channel)
Skyrim (PC - still haven't finished this, up to 300hrs now - not bad for £34.99 8.6p per hour for all that entertainment)
Max Payne 3 (PC)
WItcher 2 (PC)

Then Sleeping Dogs gets a run.

I'm kind of the same, though I've finished Deus Ex and haven't bought ME3, MP3 or Dogs yet as I should finish the other three you mention first, would probably add the FEAR series, STALKER series, LA Noire and Rage to games I should be completing as well.

[Dog Pants]

There's a new thread in the making about unfinished games here... To tomorrow's QotD!

[Roman Totale]

Thought I'd weigh in on this. Played a few hours of it and thoroughly enjoyed it - even more so after I bought a 360 controller for my PC. In the mean time, however, I've made the executive decision to finish some of my other games before I start putting some proper time into this. So currently on my list I have:

Deus Ex: Human Revoluton (360)
Mass Effect 3 (360)
Saints Row the Third (PC - accepting coop requests/fun ideas for potential filming for our YouTube channel)
Skyrim (PC - still haven't finished this, up to 300hrs now - not bad for £34.99 8.6p per hour for all that entertainment)
Max Payne 3 (PC)
WItcher 2 (PC)

Then Sleeping Dogs gets a run.

Sounds like your letting this game lie...

[tandino]

Thought I'd weigh in on this. Played a few hours of it and thoroughly enjoyed it - even more so after I bought a 360 controller for my PC. In the mean time, however, I've made the executive decision to finish some of my other games before I start putting some proper time into this. So currently on my list I have:

Deus Ex: Human Revoluton (360)
Mass Effect 3 (360)
Saints Row the Third (PC - accepting coop requests/fun ideas for potential filming for our YouTube channel)
Skyrim (PC - still haven't finished this, up to 300hrs now - not bad for £34.99 8.6p per hour for all that entertainment)
Max Payne 3 (PC)
WItcher 2 (PC)

Then Sleeping Dogs gets a run.

Sounds like your letting this game lie...

AAAh!

You must've been pleased with that? This is what you would've looked like whilst writing that.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx-WBaSNrTQ[/media]

[spoodie]

Half-price on Steam right now, if you're interested.

[buzzmong]

On offer on Steam again, about a tenner.

I completed this over the Christmas hols.

While it is not perfect and there are certainly a few niggles on both the design choice and technical fronts, it is a solid title.

The bad points are mostly control based, as driving with a keyboard is diabolical, as are all the default key bindings, and the game would have benefitted greatly from an Oni-style control scheme for it's hand to hand and shooting mechanics as the ones that are actually in Sleeping Dogs aren't that great (might be better with a pad).

I'm happy to say however that I actually enjoyed this one as the story is actually pretty good and it's actually quite well written for the most part. The triad stuff is your standard mafia flair just with Chinese flair instead of Italian, but it does chuck a few twists in there and has a few standout scenes.

It's not quite up to Mafia 1 level's of awesomeness for this type of game, but it's not far off so I'd say it's definitely worth £10-£15.

I'm giving it a 7.8 out of 10 :starfull:s.

[FatherJack]

I kept getting battered in what is essentially the tutorial section (the fight after you come back from doing the protection racket on the market-stall owners) and quickly lost interest. I was okay with the punch-punch-punch and ram-them-into-the-scenery buttons, but would miss the flash-red someone-else-is-attacking-you-press-different-button every fucking time.

Because I was doing punch-punch-punch the flash-red would invariably come halfway through the cycle, so the snotty game was like "you pressed punch, not defend in response to my prompt, so I will penalise you"

[buzzmong]

Yes, that is annoying. Hence the reason why I think it would have benefited from an Oni style control scheme immensely*. You do get used to it and as you progress through the game and get some more martial arts moves, the combat does improve quite a bit I found.


*To be fair, I think 99% of games involving hand to hand would benefit from Oni's control scheme, it was chuffing good yet simple