3.5/5 ★ – SaintzGB's review of Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition.

Meant to add this days ago, forgot. Oops. This is a game I hadn't played in years actually, so coming back to it was a nice change of pace. I had played True Crime years ago on PS2 and loved those games, so this was a bit of a nostalgia trip for me anyway. However, this remastered version comes with a few issues I'd run into which I'm pretty sure weren't in the original release. Especially bugs. A lot. The worst of these issues is the addition of new missions such as 'Death by a Thousand Cuts', where you have to fight 30 enemies, and any contact with their knives will poison you. More cuts, more poison and faster death. However the counter system is buggy. If you click too soon or too late then Wei will just be stuck in this idle animation for like 5 seconds, enough for you to get hit. Also even if you do counter, they still can sometimes hit you anyway. As well as that, there's a mini storyline involving a mob doctor character who develops a new car with several upgrades, and while it's not bad during the story itself, it unlocks several side missions that are just boring, where you just blow up 18K enemies for... some reason. Not a fan really. The DLC is largely uneventful, leading you to just do more of the same. It was cool to be a cop in Year of the Snake, but after the amazing side cases you solve in the main story, this feels like a step back in terms of creativity. Nightmare in North Point was fine, didn't really add much though. It was just taking out more enemies without much challenge and grinding those stupid gold medals. Ironically, the best DLC section was Zodiac Island. I liked that section a lot, it was creative, unique and felt like a good change of pace. I like the throwback sort of feel to kung fu movies of earlier eras. I will say, the combat is still great though, and the story is pretty good. There's a lot of good moves that you can use, and the environmental attacks add more to an already impressive roster. Wei does go a little overboard sometimes, I'm not sure why he's so angry at Raymond, but overall he's a great character with good depth. The collectibles aren't too bad either, there may be quite a lot but if you just do other activities you can unlock a tool to show where they are. The city itself is really pretty and fun to explore, although it feels a bit vapid at times. Just wish you had a little more to do than just collectibles, buying items, karaoke and quests. Gunplay is surprisingly fun. I'm sure this game gets labeled as a GTA clone even now, but it feels different enough within the genre that I feel that's sort of unfair, especially when you have these little features like slow motion gunfights, disarming through melee, and other neat ideas to keep your movement fresh.