Sleeping Dogs

I gamed periodically from the early eighties till the late nineties and then fell off the radar until about 2006. Gaming changed a lot in that period, and it can be best exemplified by GTA London being a new release when I went on my break, and San Andreas having come out around the time when I started again. As such, sandbox games seemed like something I'd missed seeing develop and I found it hard to get a foothold in the genre. I still haven't completed a GTA game. But I did finish Sleeping Dogs. For all it's technological advances,GTA seems quite an archaic game to me; badly chosen checkpoints and lengthy drives are really offputting to me. But somehow they're less painful in Sleeping Dogs, I'm not sure how they did it, as a lot of the things I didn't like in GTA are still present, just easier to cope with. The worst thing with Sleeping Dogs has to be it's writing. When you're best gangster friend tells you he's planning to go legit...well you should know what will happen soon if you've ever seen a crime film. The unexpectedly great thing about Sleeping Dogs, is the lovely neon splashes reflected on the wet Hong Kong streets. Whenever Epic shows off the latest generation of Unreal Engine they like to show details off like that, and Sleeping Dogs has those details in spades. On the whole, it's solid and enjoyable. Yes, it's totally unoriginal and GTA has done everything in this game before. But oddly, not always better. 8.0/10