There’s an overarching story, and there’s a wealth of collectibles, side-quests (here called “favors”) and mini-games to play. Sleeping Dogs operates much like you’d expect from an open world game. From the get-go each area is open to you, there’s no gradual access to the world. Central is the finance and entertainment district, while Aberdeen and Kennedy round out the roster with more harbor and upper class residential feels respectively. Northpoint is more a working class, residential area, though still very much with a crowded, downtown feel. Sleeping Dogs has four main areas, loose recreations of the same areas in Hong Kong though by no means geographically accurate. Sleeping Dogs has much more in common with games like Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row than the mini-game obsessed Yakuza series, which focuses on a small area, and packs it with an improbable level of activities.
Some may be expecting that because Sleeping Dogs is an open world game set in Asia, this is basically going to be a Yakuza game with Chinese characters instead of Japanese. It’s not complicated, but it’s earnest, and ultimately wins over the audience. The loyalties, the sense of family, the camaraderie all have the “authentic” feel of something from a chop-socky or Triad shoot ‘em up. For fans of HK cinema, the one thing that’s most surprising is that United Front gets it. What separates it is the locale-only Yakuza is a serious competitor-and the obvious Hong Kong cinematic heritage the game is inspired by. This is a gangster-centric tale, similar to the sort told over and over again in Grand Theft Auto or Mafia games. Like Hong Kong cinema itself, there’s nothing particularly original about the plotting of Sleeping Dogs. That’s the essential conflict Wei Shen endures as his moral compass wavers during his time as an undercover officer in Hong Kong. The problem is, when you’re hanging out with old childhood acquaintances, and they end up being somewhat decent human beings with a sense of brotherhood and honor, the lines between right and wrong can blur.
Now, as a volatile yet promising Asian-American cop with the San Francisco police, he’s been loaned to the Hong Kong department to use childhood connections with the current crop of up and coming Triad bosses to go undercover and get deep into the organization in a way previous HK officers failed to do, usually at the cost of their lives. He’s had a score to settle with organized crime ever since the drug-related death of his sister. The story centers around Wei Shen a Chinese cop who has returned from America to Hong Kong. If you’re old enough to remember the wave of Hong Kong cinema that caught the West by surprise in the 90s with an influx of names like John Woo, Yuen Woo Ping and Chow Yun Fat, then you’ll be right at home with Sleeping Dogs.
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