4/5 ★ – MPT's review of Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition.

Sleeping Dogs is a very solid open world crime/ action game that takes a lot of good inspiration from other similar titles (like GTA and maybe Yakuza from what i gathered) to form something that’s cool and unique. the story is gripping and transportive enough to keep you entertained through the whole game (or at least it was for me). there’s loads of big interesting events and cool twists, and the game has you doing a lot of varied things gameplay wise. the characters are (mostly) great - Wei Shen is great, Jackie’s great, the other police Teng and Pendrew are great and so on. i’d say the only slights downside is the weak villains - Dogeyes and Big Smile Lee, and the other henchmen like Ratface are a bit shit and undeveloped (especially Big Smile Lee). i’m a big fan of the undercover detective premise, which puts a cool twist on the standard formula of the similar GTA games where you’re just a criminal. it means there’s a lot of police work to get involved in rather than just the Triad activities of the main missions; for example, there’s cases involving the street racing scene, a serial killer and a series of kidnappings. it means there’s plenty here within the story and missions to set it apart from games of its type. the gameplay is definitely its best part though. it’s a very action packed thrill ride of a game, with cool gunplay and extremely satisfying and brutal melee combat. no joke, the fist fighting is some of the most fun in any game i’ve played, with tonnes of nasty special moves, rag doll physics and environmental interaction. it’s so good. this is aswell as the over-the-top features like car hijacking, vehicle combat and loads of slow mo in gunfights. it makes the game very fun in general to play. there’s also plenty of customisation with clothes, plenty of collectibles to find and varied side activities to do (such gambling, racing, fight clubs, favours and even drug busts, tying into the undercover detective point) all in a world which is large and has 4 distinct and flavourful districts to mess around in. i suppose there’s some aspects which seem half baked or maybe unfinished which affected my enjoyment. the vehicle system was a big part of this - there’s a lack of customisation, and even though you can change paint jobs of vehicles, they only stay like this for the one time you use them and you need to select the paint job again the next time you get it out. there’s also a lack of variation in some activities like gambling, where there’s only 2 types (cockfighting and poker mahjong). the wanted system doesn’t work too well either, with you being able to escape heat extremely easily in all situations, and NPCs are quite stupid, even though that feels like nitpicking. still, it would instantly make the game so much better if some of these half-baked or unfinished feeling aspects were sorted and improved. aside from these though, the game is a an extremely fun crime game with a solid story, unique features and an some insanely fun and arcadey gameplay. there’s loads of content, and with the DLCs included and other improvements in the Definitive Edition, it’s definitely worth playing.