I just beat Sleeping Dogs. That was fun. :D
...and oddly relevant to the fic I’m writing.
I UNFORTUNATELY SPOILED PART OF THE ENDING TO MYSELF, ah god it’s Madoka syndrome all over again!
Not to that degree though.
The story reminded me a lot of GTA IV in a way, as in it was gritty and dark and brutal, and the ending bittersweet. I’ve played other games similar with funner and lighter stories, or at least less punch your guts out dark (like San Andreas! That one was amusing, to say the least!) and mostly I don’t care too much about the story in a game. I’m so focused on the gameplay the story comes in a far second and unless it’s so bad it’s noticeable I don’t mind either way.
Someone once said in a comment or review in the unending cesspools of the internet that this game would have benefited highly from having a less linear story, as in since the theme of duality between officer and triad is so blurred, giving the player a choice as to which they prefer would make a lot of sense, but I’ve heard doing something like that is tough to wrap a story around, usually causing it to far apart. Who knows. The separate EXP bars were nice enough, but the funniest thing is that for me I liked the face bar the most because not only did it allow me to customize the higher level I was but it gave me a huge amount of buffs to my melee fighting that wasn’t just another combo move that I suck at using. (Late-game I used the leg-break move far more than before though. I beat three of the four (I have no clue where the fourth one is) fight clubs with very little combos. I just alternated from grappling and punching.
There was one feature I was unable to take advantage of very often, where you leap over obstacles and it goes slow-mo as you shoot? (Same with driving and shooting at the same time) because as a PC Gamer I am used to shooting things with the mouse. I attempted with the controller a few times and it was frustrating to say the least, so whenever shootouts happened I moved with my xbox controller and shot with my mouse. (On the contrary I prefer driving and combat with the controller) But if you were to drive AND shoot at the same time or leap over into bullet time, you’d need far more hands than necessary to use the tools I did. So either I tried to avoid it entirely or sucked it up and used solely the controller/keyboard for the entire time. It gave me a degree of difficulty that I can’t fault the game with, just my weird gaming tendencies. P:
I also attempted playing Just Cause 2 at one time, but the game made me too dizzy to continue. What Sleeping Dogs has other crime-themed modern sandbox games do not, is the ability to hijack other cars by leaping out of your own on the busy roads just as Just Cause would have. I used that so often. You don’t even need to leave your car if you find a badass one in the next lane. Just a leap and it’s yours! Hooray for no one locking their doors!