If anyone needs proof of the on-going power of traditional
advertising in today’s society then the fact that I bought Sleeping Dogs on
release should do the trick. I didn’t buy this because it’s a sequel to a
series that I buy every sequel of out of habit, in the same way you order a
coffee whenever you’re in Starbucks even if you consciously know you don’t want
one, and I certainly didn’t buy it because the developers released a few
pictures of vehicles and gave extensive bullshit packed interviews about how
“expansive” and “engaging” their game would be without showing us any of the
fucking content. No, a brand new IP released some cool trailers and adverts
that gave me a massive raging hard-on for the game and I couldn’t throw my
money at the poor acne-afflicted Game employee fast enough. Little lesson there
for the games industry, there: Instead of complaining about piracy, maybe,
y’know, make your games look appealing and people might buy them, maybe.
Part of the reason for my sexual arousal over this game is
the fact that it’s a sandbox game set in Asia, namely Hong Kong; something I’ve
been hoping, nay praying for, for quite some time. You play as Wei Shen, a
hardened undercover cop sent to join a Triad gang with the hopes of taking it
down from the inside, following the “How to be like GTA: 101” structure of
doing odd jobs for increasingly powerful members of your gang, inexplicably
gaining their trust almost immediately and somehow causing all of them to value
you over their lifelong friends and gradually increasing your rank within the
organisation, with your wealth and quality of housing increasing in proportion to
your position within the gang. The game’s story elements are similarly generic,
consisting of power struggles within the gang, battles with other gangs over
protection rackets, drugs, everything you’d expect. The fact that you play as
an undercover police officer is somewhat refreshing, the clash between Wei’s
duties as an officer and his growing attachment to his gang members offering a
new twist on the “kill and steal until I’m the most powerful” formula so
prevalent in the Grand Theft Autos and Saints Rows of the world.
The city of Hong Kong presented in Sleeping Dogs is worthy
of some praise. Although it’s not as expansive as Liberty City in GTA4, for
example, the city still feels enormous, the high rise buildings and complex
road system and heavy traffic giving the player the impression that the city is
perhaps much larger than it really is. Plus, with the reduced size comes an
increased focus on detail, even the smallest of back alleys and pathways look
like they’ve been given close attention and the detail in pedestrian and
traffic behaviour for example gives the feeling, vital to a sandbox game more
than any other, that the city is alive and real. Sure, you’ll never see
anything as convincing as a giant and a dragon fighting each other in Skyrim
but it doesn’t really need anything so obvious, Sleeping Dogs has slightly more
subtle ways to make the city come alive. The night market right at the start of
the game is a perfect example, people are walking around and talking to each
other and trading and the feeling that this city would carry on fine without
you shines through strongly. I’ve noted before that impressive graphics are
kind of expected these days so I won’t make too much of a point about them but
they did stand out to me more in Sleeping Dogs than any other title I’ve played
recently. The water effects are particularly stunning; if you can find me a
more wondrous sight than weaving through traffic on a Hong Kong motorway during
a torrential downpour then I’d love to see it, although it’d have to be Yoshiki
playing a drum solo with an orchestra on Godzilla’s face while it smashes
through a Coldplay concert to impress me any more than the water
effects in Sleeping Dogs.
I didn’t go into this game expecting much originality in
terms of mission structure and the game obliged my pessimism handsomely. Most
of the missions consist of fetch quests, giving people lifts, engaging in melee
combat and gunfights, little puzzles and chase sequences ripped wholesale from
the Yakuza games. They’re generally very unchallenging and there’s a little
more busywork than I’m comfortable with in a game like this, picking up
girlfriends from shopping trips and taking guests to karaoke doesn’t do much to
satisfy the whole “gangster fantasy” the game builds up with its more exciting
missions. Many of the missions also don’t make use of the expansive city the
game takes place in. I’d have thought the first thing to do when you’ve created
an awesome city would be incorporate it into missions as often as possible but
far too often the missions take place in buildings and enclosed areas and the
city itself is relegated to a commuting zone. There was certainly potential to
make use of the city; one particularly memorable motorway car chase was
absolutely exhilarating and I would have loved to have seen the city itself
used more often to create a similar experience.
Melee combat has always been somewhat clunky and difficult
in sandbox games and this is a problem that Sleeping Dogs tackles admirably.
The combat system lies somewhere between Yakuza and the Batman Arkham games, one
button to attack, one to counter and one to grapple. It’s very possible to win
every fight using just these most basic of attacks but there’s a vast array of
combos and special moves on offer as upgrades, as well as occasional weapons
and environmental attacks more suited to The Punisher than a fun little action
game. These fights are great examples of what’s known as “dynamic difficulty;”
in that you can make these sections as hard or as easy as you like: You can take
every enemy one-on-one with bare knuckles if you’re one of those house brick
eating “hardcore gamers” or just throw them all onto meat hooks if you’ve got
somewhere else to be. Shooting sections are far less common than in equivalent
games set in America, seeing as how Hong Kong is a slightly more sensible place
that doesn’t serve assault rifles with their Big Mac and fries, but when they
do show up they’re entirely generic cover based “we’ve all been here before far
too often” deals. It would have been refreshing to see a big budget action game
without shooting sections; the melee combat is probably strong enough the carry
the combat requirements alone, but I guess action games just don’t sell these
days if they don’t meet the gun porn quota.
The driving sections are similarly
mediocre. The controls are functional but somewhat clunky, which isn’t a
problem during the commuting sections, due to the simple fact that the city is
fun to travel around, but during the many mandatory chase sections and races they
can become a tad irritating. This problem is less prevalent during chases on
large open roads than it is during races along smaller and narrower streets,
during which it’s entirely possible to lead for 90% of the race and then have
one crash, made impossible to recover from by the fact that it takes about 4
hours to do a 3 point turn due to the awkward control scheme, cost you the
race. That said, as long as you don’t mind replaying a couple of the races a
few times it shouldn’t be a big problem, for most people. The missions also
feature several stealth and puzzles sections that I feel were severely
underutilised in this game. For the most part, the stealth sections suffer from
the COD problem of being impossible to fail but one towards the end, during which
you must sneak out of a popstar’s apartment after bugging all of her equipment,
just leaves you to it and it’s actually fairly tense for a couple of minutes,
more of that would have been nice. The puzzles are, for the most part, just a
matter of waggling an analog stick around but the number puzzle was actually
kind of challenging and fun at first, until they repeated the same one over and
over. Maybe include a couple more in the sequel, guys?
One normally vital aspect of sandbox games that Sleeping Dogs
falters on harder than any of my recent attempts to get laid is in its
sidequests. Good sidequests should be both fun and worthwhile. The fun aspect
is woefully missing from singing karaoke, white-knighting women and doing
infinite drug busts and the only reward is money and ‘face,’ the only privilege
of which is apparent respect and being able to wear nicer clothes. This leads
to the bizarre situation in which you can be Supreme King of the City but if
you haven’t pulled enough insurance scams for minor acquaintances then you’re
not allowed to wear a fucking blazer without being laughed at by pedestrians,
which tends to somewhat undermine the feeling of omnipotence that progressing
through a sandbox crime game is fundamentally built on. In fact there’s very
little to spend your money on at all. You can buy clothes that you can’t wear
and cars, which is a bit like selling pens with pictures of semi-naked women on
them in a Newcastle nightclub. The lack of motivation of actually do the
sidequests, coupled with the somewhat pedestrian story, leaves the game with
very little replay value, the exact opposite of what sidequests are supposed to
achieve.
Ever since having my life changed for the better by GTA Vice
City’s immense collection of 80’s gems, one of the most important aspects of
any sandbox game to me personally is the soundtrack. This is another area in
which Sleeping Dogs falls somewhat flat, with a metal station consisting of a
bland inconsistent selection of tracks, 2 good Opeth tunes and that Trivium
song that was on Saints Row that everyone was sick of 3 years ago, a Kerrang!
station that might as well be renamed “Hipster’s Paradise” and a classic rock
station with awesome Queen and Thin Lizzy tracks and very little else worthy of
note. This may have been a budget issue, and as much as the lack of great music
disappoints me if you can’t understand a game designer’s choice to put all of
their funds into developing a good game instead of wasting them on music then
stop playing games and buy an iPod.
My usual tendency when dealing with wholly unoriginal games
is to crucify them, see that overlong hate letter I wrote to Modern Warfare 3,
but what Sleeping Dogs lacks in innovation it makes up for in sheer fun. Just
don’t expect much in terms of replay value; it’s the kind of thing to blast
through in one sitting during a long weekend or a summer spent entirely
indoors. If that’s the kind of thing you’re after then you’ll very much enjoy
Sleeping Dogs, as I did.
No comments:
Post a Comment