Finished
Sleeping Dogs. Took ~22 hours and did pretty much everything 100%. All the races, all the collections, sidequests, found practically every lockbox (missing like 1 in Central, 1 in Arberdeen, 2 in North Point and not gonna bother with a map and checking every location in the game just for some cheevs). That's because it was all so enjoyable I didn't want to stop playing if there was something more I could do!
I'm going to start on the positive because while I have some complaints, the overall game was great! It's extremely polished in almost every aspect of the gameplay and story. The martial arts was fun and smooth, environmental attacks were great. The gunplay was
surprisingly awesome. In fact, my favorite moments were almost all the pure Max Payne missions because the slow motion diving and chaining headshots to lengthen the slow motion gunplay was incredibly satisfying and one of the most enjoyable shooters I've played in a while. Driving controls were great and I had about as much fun doing all the street races as I did in Criterion's NFS MW. The chases were fun, and the side activities were usually enjoyable. The city was nice looking, especially in the rain and at certain times of day and it was a pretty meaty game length and I liked that it had a conclusion and was not TO BE CONTINUED IN SEQUEL.
What I especially enjoyed came down to 3 things: The writing, the missions, and the sidequests. The writing & cutscene direction & voice acting in the game was fantastic! Yeah it's still not exactly high brow cinema, but compared to GTA or most "gangsta" videogame stories, Sleeping Dogs is a huge improvement. The game did a great job at making
character's that you could actually like, even if they're gangsters, and it really helps because suddenly you're not totally detached from the story because it's about a bunch of despicable jerks you couldn't give a crap about. Wei is a great character and the family aspect of the gang ties the player to the cast. I think only issue with the story/writing is that it's a little rushed at times and that I wish it wasn't completely linear and had multiple paths at the end based on whether the player choose the cop life or his new triad family. But it was a very enjoyable linear tale.
The missions were great! Reminded me of some of the best missions from Just Cause games. They did a good job mixing up the gameplay systems & locations to really make a lot of good story missions out of this sandbox HK they built. The sidequests (favors) were just as good for the most part. Overall good gameplay design. The last 2 stages (the 2nd to last one especially) are really fantastic and badass for a sandbox game.
Now areas where I felt it could've been a little stronger is the linearity of it all. Despite being a sandbox game, there's almost no freedom in how you do anything. The combat is always very same-y because you have the guys who always block and you have to grab them and slam them into things or break their bones, you have the big guys that you just have to do the same xxxx(X) combos over and over because that's all that works. Despite a decent amount of moves, the combat is never as creative and interesting as the Yakuza games and is more just linear like Batman. It works, but having more combat freedom to mix up your battles would have made things more interesting. Especially when every other lockbox is guarded by 3 guys that you gotta fight first (although your one freedom here is running them over in a car first, which I did a lot lol). Same with the chases where you could never really catch the guy and just ran down a linear path until he stopped for a cutscene or a fight. It's the illusion that you're doing something when you're really just holding forward and hitting A a few times. And the missions were all extremely linear, go to this point, beat up guys, grab this gun, go down this hallway. The mission designs were great and entertaining so it worked, just the game really has almost no freedom which is a little strange for a sandbox game. I guess GTA is like that too, but I don't play GTA much. Saints Row 3 had a lot more options to how to approach stuff.
Other things, the mini-games were ok except the LOCKBOX SAFE CRACKING WHICH YOU HAVE TO DO LIKE SIXTY TIMES IN THE GAME. Oh my god that got old and annoying. They really should have dropped that mini-game. The side activities, while fun, were never super fun like the Saints Row 3 activities. The leveling system was ok but it's too linear (like everything else in the game) and could have used more SR3 style upgrades. It's also totally unbalanced how you get cop xp from Triad missions, Cop missions, and Drug Busts whereas you only get Triad xp from Triad missions. So I maxed my Cop XP & Face XP like 60-70% into the game and meanwhile my Triad levels slowly built until the final mission. Could have used more unlockables for cop/face so you didn't hit walls and stop gaining anything.
Then there's the ending, which was good and satisfying but
spoiler (click to show/hide)
if they had worked Pendrew as a gameplay boss in the final mission as well, it would've been a lot more satisfying then seeing him being defeated in a cutscene
Overall I think my main takeway is that Sleeping Dogs is a game that does everything VERY GOOD, but almost nothing ever reaches that true greatness of moments like Saints Row 3 when you're parachuting into the building to Power or the final mission when that song starts playing. The combat is polished and solid but never reaches any OMG moments of the Yakuza/RGG games, the story is good and polished but never blows you away like the last hour of MGS3 or anything. The side stuff is fun but nothing amazing. etc...etc... It's a 4/5 game from start to finish, but at no time does it ever even attempt to hit those 5/5 GoTY type moments and that's fine because it never drops down either. It's just a very consistent, very good and enjoyable game experience. Not incredibly ambitious, but rather incredibly polished. Definitely one of the best games I've played this year.
I think my sandbox gaming ratings still go:
A-tier: Red Dead Redemption, Saints Row 3, Assassin's Creed 2, Burnout Paradise (sorta counts?)
Somewhere between A & B tier: Just Cause 1 & 2 (because they rock and have incredible scope and moments but also SO MUCH COPY & PASTE repetition in them)
B-tier: Sleeping Dogs, AC: Brotherhood, Crackdown
C-tier: GTAIV, AC1, AC Rev
D-tier: Crackdown 2
I know I'm forgetting some sandbox titles I've played this gen, but that's off the top of my head.
