I Finally Started Sleeping Dogs Nightmare in North Point

It's been a while since I played Sleeping Dogs properly (admittedly, I have tossed it in here and there to re-enjoy some of its virtues), so with Halloween just around the corner, it seemed like a good time to hop into what was definitely a Halloween-themed DLC pack.  It also just seemed like a good time to play Sleeping Dogs again aside from the whole "I have 20 other games that I haven't even opened yet" thing, but, you know, small, petty details and such.  Which is also ignoring the fact that any time is a good time to play Sleeping Dogs, which is something that I alluded to in the past and still feel is true now.  And even with the different framing of Nightmare, Sleeping Dogs remains Sleeping Dogs.

Admittedly, that's both a good thing and a bad thing in some different ways.  Sleeping Dogs had one real flaw with it, and that was the story-telling aspect of it, which did not improve with Nightmare, at least not at the start.  Indeed, "tongue-in-cheek" is what I'd use to describe what Nightmare in North Point cobbles together and calls a narrative for the story framing that it uses to set itself up.  They don't attempt to sell you the premise, but instead agree with you that it's ridiculous by its own merits (because Jiang Shi, or 'Hopping Vampires' have overrun Hong Kong thanks to Big Scar Wu, aka Smiley Cat, who has escaped from the underworld) and just run with it, which isn't a bad thing.  I just wish, like Sleeping Dogs proper, it had been fleshed out more, since it seems like I'm just fetching things and running around just because.  However, that's a flaw in the narrative's structure more than anything.

You see, Nightmare in North Point is supposed to take place in a single night (or so it seems), thus you're not really expected to play the game like a sandbox game, which is really weird since it -is- a sandbox game and they put things all around the map as a Sandbox game does.  The urgency is set up to max, making you want to play each story mission after another and doing that robs you of a little enjoyment that the game can realistically offer you with the free-roaming and exploring of the city.  As stated, there's at least three types of things scattered around the city - Hell Shrines, Energy Sources and Yaoguai - that encourage you to get around, but if you follow the narrative, you're merely concerned with chasing down Big Scar Wu and putting a stop to his shennannigans.  As a result, I suppose you -could- save all the extra bits for the part after you're done with the story, which might even be 'thematic' depending on the conclusion, but I think treating a sandbox game like a completely linear experience is an exercise in frustration.

However, all the good things about Sleeping Dogs come back in aces and spades because it is still very much Sleeping Dogs at its core.  After putting some time into Grand Theft Auto V (which I have yet to sit down and really write about in any real fashion, something that will be fixed soon enough) coming into another sandbox game is different, and I find that I've had to break myself of habits that GTA V ingrained into me, but it's honestly been a breath of fresh air.  It's surprising just how many facets of Grand Theft Auto V are just out-dated and, quite frankly, bad when compared to other games of the same genre.  It has everything to do with evolution, as so many of V's mechanics are just straight-ripped from games that we played on the early days of the PS2.  We have, indeed, evolved beyond furiously tapping X to sprint faster, and we have, indeed, evolved beyond the almost non-existent amount of ownership the game allows you to have on all things that are not simply your character and their actions (i.e. material possessions, really), but you wouldn't know it, simply playing GTA V.

Doing things in Sleeping Dogs is practically refreshing with the experience in San Andreas under my belt, and I'm honestly taken back by that.  Driving is, ironically, a big complaint for just about any Grand Theft Auto game, V included, and it's just so much easier in Sleeping Dogs, even if it is a bit arcade-y I imagine.  Combat is no question - Sleeping Dogs was built around it and it shows, where Rockstar's latest barely attempted to upgrade the piss-poor system from IV.  I'm even a little partial to SD's gunplay, but that is admittedly more because of my opinion of the system in general than me feeling it 'should' be one way or another - I really just like the slow-mo John Woo stuff over 'proper' cover-based shooting because I get that enough everywhere else.  One is also reminded of SD's evolution of the 'Collectible' aspect of sandbox games in terms of "being able to unlock the goddamn locations on the map" (other games have done this too, admittedly), which is something V also failed to join us with.

Basically, the point is that I'm really enjoying Nightmare in North Point because it's more Sleeping Dogs and Sleeping Dogs is really great.  The new variety of enemies is nice - Jiang Shi and Yaoguai both fight differently than the combatants the game already sported which are still present (as possessed people and/or spirits) - and the general aesthetic adds a new flavor to the game.  I'm not sure if there's been other additions aside from a slightly altered moveset (for when you fight Jiang Shi, since slapping a paper talisman on a thug's face might not really do a whole lot) and the obvious stuff, but it feels good coming home to my favorite game of 2012 in the way that I'm doing it.  Especially since I have something else to weigh my experiences against to make my favorite game from 2012 seem all the better.

some of the stuff is pretty bad like, "All chinese magic is based on Antifreeze!" because what the fuck

The Sleeping Dogs Universe is Set to Expand

I loved Sleeping Dogs.  I loved it so much that it was my Game of the Year last year by a clear majority, and I found myself gnashing my teeth for another go at it, even if it was just a straight-up replay of the game in its entirety.  With Squeenix being...well, Squeenix, I had started to wonder if we'd actually see anything else from the series, however, but always hoped and assumed that news would be forth-coming.  That hope has paid off, as United Front Games are working on a game called "Triad Wars" which will be set in the Sleeping Dogs universe.  However, there is...a couple things that get me worrying because as you all know, I am sort of prone to worrying about literally everything.

The trademark filed for the game, as far as I know, is simply "Triad Wars" and not "Sleeping Dogs:  Triad Wars", which is well, kind of the thing you -don't- want to do.  I hope it's a sub-title and it makes the most sense to be, what with it being set in the same universe and keeping that brand recognition is key, but I don't know how trademarks work in terms like that.  "Triad Wars" on its own is incredibly generic and that leads into another point that deserves a little worried thought to it.

This is Squeenix we're talking about.  Granted, it's United Front Games developing, but Squeenix has the whole thing by the balls, you can bet, and we all know where Squeenix has been buttering their bread lately.  Or at least trying to.  And failing pretty uniformly.  Chances that this game, since absolutely nothing about it was announced by the name (potentially just half of it) will be a mobile/tablet game are far too high for my liking because they're present at all.  The idea is that it'll be a PS4/XBone game, of course, but I'm not putting anything past Squeenix, especially when the trademark, as stated, is simply for something called "Triad Wars" which will go well right next to all your other iOS games.  I can't name any of course (aside from Angry Birds), but you know what I'm getting at.

Assuming that we're not expecting the worst, one can only dream of what might actually occur in a Sleeping Dogs sequel, especially one (hopefully) sub-titled "Triad Wars".  Wei Shen obviously spent the majority of his time trying to shut down some of the Triad factions and members, but you can't always get rid of all of them, and the game could take place in the aftermath of the first game during a rebuild time or something along those lines.  Of course, it could also be a prequel that shoes off the establishment of the Red Poles in the Triad and their respective rises to power.  Or it could even be a game that runs concurrent to the events of Sleeping Dogs while Wei is running around, stirring up the pot and trying to get them all taken down.  The possibilities for another Sleeping Dogs game are honestly a bit astounding and it does manage to get me excited and hopeful despite a complete information blackout until 2014, apparently. 

It's going to be a long, hard wait, but at least I have plenty of things to keep me occupied while I wait for news about the game.  Fingers crossed for a PS4 game to play alongside the Tomb Raider sequel so that I can tell Squeenix that I really do actually support their non-Final Fantasy projects.  Since, you know, they apparently need to be told that.  Excessively.  Loudly.  So that they can't say the best/fastest selling iteration of an IP's sales are "not what they expected".  Because they're dumb.

just give me some more environmental finishers and we're all peachy, United Front Games

My Games of 2012 - Number One

1.  Sleeping Dogs

For all my hand-wringing and second-guessing, it was more or less never about this game.  I didn't go into voting with the express intention of putting Sleeping Dogs in my number one spot, though I wasn't at all surprised when I put it there.  It felt right, because goddamnit I really love this game.  Of course, you all know that because I have gone on and on about it over the last year when I was playing through, finishing and absolutely completing it.  So, much in the same vein as how I covered AssLib, I would like to re-post some of the bigger sentiments I had about the game and then talk a little bit more about how my perceptions have changed and such with time, given that I haven't actually put a lot of time back into the game after Platinum'ing it, due to, you know, there being a whole hell of a lot of games that I've had to play in the recent months.

So I'll just throw this down to get this started:  I love this game.  I pretty much love everything -about- Sleeping Dogs and I am actually a little surprised that I enjoy it quite as much as I do.  But I really do, I throw hours after hours into playing it and never get bored - I just get tired or I just have to really do something -else-, but the game is easily one that I could see myself marathonning sometime down the road for no purpose other than to enjoy it all over again.  I never do that outside of cases where, like, my save got lost or there was a trophy patch or something of that sort because I simply don't have the time.  But I would -make- the time if the time was right to replay Sleeping Dogs from scratch.

Obviously what differentiates Sleeping Dogs from just about every other open world game out there is that it is a game that fully intends for you to play it using melee.  Yes, there are shooting bits, sometimes even with cover involved, but let me let you in on a little secret:  If you're playing Sleeping Dogs by plinking away at dudes from cover, you're being a pussy.  Guns are not guns in Sleeping Dogs, but power-ups, things that you use to take out a few guys while running at a pack, as you might use, say, the hammer in Super Smash Bros.  Best usage of guns in the game is not taking cover and popping up, but vaulting and getting that sweet sweet slow-mo going.  Vault and run at your enemies and make sure they all get a new hole for a third eye to keep it going, but more importantly, to be the baddest fucking Wei Shen you can be.  If you can effectively take out a room of guards who keep flooding in without staying in cover for more than a second at a time between setting off slow-mo vaults then congratulations, you are using guns in Sleeping Dogs the correct way. 

One of my own personal favorite environmental bits is not any of these types of things, but rather just using gravity effectively for fun and profit.  There's not -very- many areas where it's viable, but with the useage of the grapple-dash and the running throw, you can turn an uppity gangster into a projectile aimed at a car twenty feet below and that, my friends, is a rush.  I never have hit a car yet, but as far as instant kills go, getting a running start and throwing a guy off what is basically just a covered bridge over a road is something that I could suggest will never get old.  Even when you don't have the unabashed freedom to throw them directly off, having the ability to, after wearing a foe down, basically clothesline them over a railing to the road below or what have you is still fun in itself.  Similarly fun, but rather confusing, is the fact that the game suffers from a case of the protagonist being the only man alive who knows how to swim.  That means anyone who hits the water instantly dies.  And when you have a lot of areas where there's water and no real barricade around it....well, I'm sure you can imagine just where that leads.

[...]

The true beauty of Sleeping Dogs, for me, is that I am retroactively nostalgic for this game already.  I just 'finished' the game earlier today, but I remember all sorts of things as you would only remember a game from years gone past, with the same amount of fondness involved.

I should start by saying that, all of that?  Still true.  Still definitely true and, in many ways, even moreso now than it was then.  I have been itching in the worst way to actually just start playing Sleeping Dogs over again from scratch and I can tell you right now that, when I do, it will not be the last time I do it. I look forward to embracing the acquisition of power almost as much as I anticipate having it, and will enjoy being able to employ Wei Shen's full arsenal again.  After earning it all over once more.  Sleeping Dogs is definitely a game where they journey is just as much fun as the destination, as they say, and even when you reach the destination, there's still plenty of things to do with the many collectibles that the game has (which is will give you maps to in a sense) as well as the fight clubs and random mooks on the streets to use your skills against.

What really gets to me, I think, is how absolutely in its own league that Sleeping Dogs truly is.  There's just no other Melee-focused open-world game out there on the market.  Possibly Arkham City, I suppose, but I haven't played that just yet and it'll likely be a while before I do so.  Even the Yakuza games aren't completely Open-world, nor do their battles exist in the map itself (just yet), so that's a different case as well.  Yet, rather than being something that wears out its welcome, Sleeping Dogs shows us how rewarding something of its kind can be.  It eschews that which a lot of games have made almost standard for this generation in gun combat for something a lot more technical, visceral and, in my own opinion, enjoyable.

I'm not going to go on and on here as I've done that more than enough in the past.  Sleeping Dogs is my Game of 2012 by virtue of being the game I enjoyed the most and the game I found most important because of what it did.  Though it may not completely and totally overshadow other games, especially the others on my list, it has that certain something, that special quality that makes me gravitate towards it.  If you haven't gotten yourself a copy of it, then what the hell are you waiting for?  Go out and procure, return home and savor it.  Enjoy it.  Even if you have bought and played it, give consideration to dipping into its pleasures once more.  I know I will, because the game is a rare treat and one to savor from time to time.

LittleBigThings: Of Karting and Sackthings

I don't think I've ever really understood Kart racers from any vantage point.  While I've certainly played some and I did enjoy a few whilst playing them, it was all brief, lasting only as long as the controller was in my hand if that.  So when the intent expressed with LittleBigPlanet Karting was "Let's give the guys who made ModNation Racers (that was considered 'alright' at best) a chance to make another Kart Racer, just with LittleBigPlanet this time!" I experienced something of a tepid excitement - certainly not the extent I would have had for something else, anything else, involving the LittleBigPlanet franchise.  Still, it had to be something I could embrace, I could come to love and enjoy, right?  It says LittleBigPlanet after all, right there on the tin.  I love LittleBigPlanet, so I should love this!

I'm....not quite sure.

LittleBigPlanet Karting certainly is a LittleBigPlanet game in more than just name, supposing that being a platformer is not intrinsically what LittleBigPlanet is.  With all the varied types of levels and, indeed games that have been made with LittleBigPlanet in its various releases that stretch beyond platforming, LittleBigPlanet has grown itself into something that just is itself, I suppose.  While Super Mario is certainly a loftier series, one can draw a comparison - games which Mario are in are, by extension, Mario games because of the inclusion, because the inclusion is in itself more than just Mario.  By that measure, LittleBigPlanet games are games in which you are given a Sackboy to control, a popit to interact with, a mode with which you can build to your hearts content and all the charm and Stephen Fry tutorials you could ever want.  LittleBigPlanet Karting has all that, in spades even, and in fact more than that, sticking to the world-based, level-based formula that has worked with every game that's released thus far, further cementing it as a LittleBigPlanet game and thus easing you into the change.  Or perhaps trying to have you accept that it's not so much a change as it is another possibility.

Still, under the charm, under the Sackboys and Sackgirls, under the Create Mode and under the familiarity, the game is still a Kart Racer and not much else.  It does a good job of presenting various types of -things- to do within the setting of a Kart, however, which gives me hope for the levels or tracks or games or whatever they're supposed to be called that players have made between the release and now.  Battle Mode seems like a ripe field to use for Create, given that you get to simply establish an area and have your Sackfolk faff around in it however you like, as I imagine we're not -all- interested in actually making Racetracks.  Depending on the 'restrictions' in place for making a level of a Battle Mode type, as it were, it could be incredibly rich and diverse and I look forward to seeing if anyone has managed to tap into that sort of thing when I eventually get to the created levels/tracks/games/whatever.  Story first, however, as is the case with any LittleBigPlanet game.

Though there is another mode that certainly tugs a little more at the creative urges than Battle Mode, if only in a "Hrm, this isn't set up for it properly, but wouldn't that be neat" type of way.  I encountered a Gran Prix race towards the end of the first world which is another beast entirely.  Eschewing the competitiveness of other players and even the allure of third-person view, Grand Prix mode is a first person race unlike anything else in LittleBigPlanet Karting.  Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) you do not see your kart at all, yet you are definitely in First-Person mode and in the race I was in, it was a simple enough affair, if that it had a restriction to it that forced pit stops to refuel (which is unseen in the rest of the game).  Regardless, a mode, any mode that allows First-Person perspective is absolutely blessed for opportunity and, provided the boundaries to making a Grand Prix level are a little lax, one could find that it might be possible to do some absolutely wondrous things that couldn't, in fact, be in place in any other LittleBigPlanet game.

The problem is that, if you've noticed, I've simply talked about what the game -can- be, possibly, instead of what it is beyond saying "well, it's a Kart racer".  It is a fun game, really, and I don't have much issue with it, but racing games as a whole are a hard sell to me and even with a LittleBigPlanet coat of paint, I'm finding the game a little hard to be truly excited for.  That can change, of course, as I'm only in the second world of the game and already I've found plenty of neat things to hold my interest.  Already I'm looking to the next Story-based Battle Mode track because I had a lot of fun with the first, and I still wonder if there's anything that the game has yet to really show off, because I certainly wouldn't be surprised if it did.  If nothing else, I am holding my arms out, waiting for the tender embrace of exuberance, and even if I'm left by the wayside by it, at least I considered it an option.

Platinum Get - Sleeping Dogs

I've talked about my opinion of trophies at length and I'm pretty much not going to rehash that statement again, since it's basically "I like them, they're awesome, they have me do things I wouldn't normally do" and never was that truer but for Sleeping Dogs when I finally got my shiny Platinum Trophy for it earlier.  And I could just say that if there were ever a game that I would -want- to have an actual trophy to display (or a digital one for like Home or something) for getting it in a game, it would be...well, probably Nier.  Or another game.  But Sleeping Dogs would be up there, certainly because it would be a thing that I could look at and invoke fond memories from which is something I think we take for granted a little.  The true beauty of Sleeping Dogs, for me, is that I am retroactively nostalgic for this game already.  I just 'finished' the game earlier today, but I remember all sorts of things as you would only remember a game from years gone past, with the same amount of fondness involved.

I mean, I said it best last week I suspect when I said that I just absolutely love Sleeping Dogs as a game, and I'm certainly going to try and do my best to not just reiterate that over and over again, but it's going to be hard to do, I assure you.  I should start talking about the process of getting the Platinum trophy itself rather than just gushing about the game, considering the topic of this post and all.  I will say that it was pretty much timed well since, when I got it, I was pretty much at that point where any more would have been too much.  My entire remaining bit of the game was:  gambling, driving a car clean for two minutes and delivering all of Tran's cars which was.....quite a lot, really.  More than I had imagined.  Throw in a little purchasing as well when I got the money (It became a non-issue in a hurry with some of Tran's higher-end cars paying off) and it was pretty much a lot of -not- running around and punching mans specifically.  I snuck some of that in, of course since that's the whole focus, but it showed off enough variety in the game, I think.

Those areas were also, more or less, the things I ended up putting off til last for a reason, I realized.  The best source of gambling income, unless the other Mahjong parlor had high stakes, was cockfighting, particularly the west-most spot at the docks where you can throw down a $100,000 bid for a return of twice that, or a cool $100,000 for your winnings total.  With $1,000,000 being the tier for Gold, that's just ten wins that you need, but it is....well, a process that's not very interesting or involved.  It's novel, certainly, but it's pure luck and chance whether or not the rooster you throw money down on will win.  You have no chance for input whatsoever and you need to get 10 wins to get that out of the way.  More if you lose one (since the total is based on your net earnings) so it practically invites save scumming if you are a baby like that.  I am a baby like that.  Because I didn't really want to do the ten to win it (actually more, I had net losses from earlier attempts at Cockfighting without thinking about it) and I certainly wasn't going to add more onto my plate for whenever fate decided to be fickle.

I had a really, really unpleasant experience with the clothes as well, since at one point, I guess I just -didn't- buy the things I meant to buy which lead to a lot of confusion at the tail-end of my quest.  Basically, I hopped in a car and set the markers to the nearest clothes store, went in, bought everything and repeated until I'd gone around the entire place, to each clothing store and stand.  When I reached the last one, I was minus 17 items which required, basically a re-do of that entire process just so I could -actually- buy clothes I'd apparently only looked at ten minutes prior.  It was unpleasant but because of my own inability to pay attention, I suppose, not because of anything the game did or did not do.  But it was one of the myriad of simple tasks I had to finish up before my ultimate goal was received, and with the money I'd made from the other jobs, it was a simple enough matter.  I ended with quite a hefty sum anyway and still had cars to pick up and deliver -after- that.  It was, in fact, a delivered car that offered me my last bit of completion that granted me three trophies at once - the one for getting all the jobs complete, the one for getting 100% completion and, of course, the Platinum trophy.  It was a sweet moment and made all the better as I drove to the highest-end apartment you get on the west-end, let Wei get some rest, saved and got out of it to sync.

I think that's really the best way to leave it until the start of six months of DLC comes out, since there will apparently be story content within its offerings and that will likely be all I'm interested in.  I'm all for supporting the devs and such, but I don't have the money for luxury packs at the moment, and not even the time for the story ones I'm getting.  But, so long as it's actual, weighty amounts of content, then United Front Games has my money because I'll gladly do what I can to further the success of this game that I am simply enamored with.  It's thematic, I think, to just put Wei to bed as I'm putting the game to bed for a time - I have to move on to other games to clear out my backlog some, unfortunately.  I'd love to toy around in Sleeping Dogs' sandbox a little more, because it's honestly just enjoyable, but there's things to be done.  Rather than insult you all with a "Letting Sleeping Dogs lie" play on words here, I'm just going to point out that I could, but didn't, and then bid you a good night.

Let's Talk About Sleeping Dogs

Have a seat.  Please, have some tea.  Get comfortable, because we are going to have a little chat about Sleeping Dogs, and I think by the end of our talk, you will understand why it is possibly my Game of the Year already.  I don't take that statement lightly as you might know, since I get myself all in a tizzy over putting together my GotY list, but I feel...well, really, really strongly about Sleeping Dogs, so it's a statement that I make with full knowledge of what's being said.  This is precisely why I'm just going to be throwing down some of my opinions on it (read: gushing) instead of attempting a review because the review would not be fair at all.  Though, I suppose reviews are just opinions and thus aren't meant to be 'fair', but well you know what I mean.  Anyone can write up an essay saying "This game is amazing and I love it" in so many ways and call it a review, but it is probably not mechanically one, and I fear that my attempt would come off as that, and I'm just not going to try to force myself to come up with points of contention.

So I'll just throw this down to get this started:  I love this game.  I pretty much love everything -about- Sleeping Dogs and I am actually a little surprised that I enjoy it quite as much as I do.  But I really do, I throw hours after hours into playing it and never get bored - I just get tired or I just have to really do something -else-, but the game is easily one that I could see myself marathonning sometime down the road for no purpose other than to enjoy it all over again.  I never do that outside of cases where, like, my save got lost or there was a trophy patch or something of that sort because I simply don't have the time.  But I would -make- the time if the time was right to replay Sleeping Dogs from scratch.  I think that might sort of convey what I'm trying to get across here, but I am trying to be as emphatic as possible so you walk away absolutely knowing where I'm coming from.

Obviously what differentiates Sleeping Dogs from just about every other open world game out there is that it is a game that fully intends for you to play it using melee.  Yes, there are shooting bits, sometimes even with cover involved, but let me let you in on a little secret:  If you're playing Sleeping Dogs by plinking away at dudes from cover, you're being a pussy.  Guns are not guns in Sleeping Dogs, but power-ups, things that you use to take out a few guys while running at a pack, as you might use, say, the hammer in Super Smash Bros.  Best usage of guns in the game is not taking cover and popping up, but vaulting and getting that sweet sweet slow-mo going.  Vault and run at your enemies and make sure they all get a new hole for a third eye to keep it going, but more importantly, to be the baddest fucking Wei Shen you can be.  If you can effectively take out a room of guards who keep flooding in without staying in cover for more than a second at a time between setting off slow-mo vaults then congratulations, you are using guns in Sleeping Dogs the correct way.

Of course, using your fists, using melee weapons, now that's the -actual- right way to play the game and that is refreshing in this day and age.  Not only is it a game that encourages you to use melee, but a game that actually encourages that and facilitates it with a rather in-depth, fascinatingly deep combat system in itself.  It is a Martial Arts game, make no doubt about it, and it really wants you to get that feel of making dudes get served some visceral damage via Undercover Cop fists.  Not just content with giving you the ability to hit square for some punches like -another- game that will not be mentioned that had previously been touted as 'the sandbox game', you have a full on combo system with various shades of hitting square and holding it which works better than it sounds, as well as grappling which leads into one of the defining aspects of Sleeping Dogs as a whole - Environmental attacks.

I could go on and on about Environmental Attacks on their own merits and might just very well do that here because from the very beginning, when Sleeping Dogs' media consisted solely of a live action trailer (and some screenshots) I had wondered just how fully the game would utilize the environment.  Previous games had taught me to expect that it...well, -wouldn't-, but why would it be in the trailer if they had no intention of having it in the game?  Because it looked cool?  Well.....yes.....but anyway, my point was that the trailer offered peaks into the environment being a factor and in the end, it did not disappoint which just gets me all giddy inside.  I love this aspect of the game, since not only are the environmental attacks deliciously brutal, but they're ever so useful in combat as well, offering you a quick way to take out a few guys to ensure they don't get a really good surrounding of you going down.  Which is a valid concern to have, as even though the enemies tend to attack one at a time, Assassin's Creed style, that one at a time can happen one right after the other and tear off a chunk of your health if you're not careful.

Particularly of use are these attacks when you're going into Drug Busts - areas where you have to clear out an area of some thugs before you hack the camera there for the time when they congregate there again to meet up with their supplier whom you identify for a good bust in the comfort of one of your safe houses.  Oftentimes you'll be tasked with taking down something like a dozen men and when they aren't wielding weapons, you are free to grab them and run them around to any and all environmental attack areas as you may desire.  My own personal strategy consisted of running into the area with a car and taking two guys out quickly with its own environmental interactivity, namely throwing one guy in the trunk and then brutally slamming the car door against the other guys head until he was soundly brain damaged and out of the fight.  Two down, only so many to go, and depending on what was handy, it could have gone very easy or very not so easy.

One of my own personal favorite environmental bits (I'm going to be tired of typing environmental really quickly) is not any of these types of things, but rather just using gravity effectively for fun and profit.  There's not -very- many areas where it's viable, but with the useage of the grapple-dash and the running throw, you can turn an uppity gangster into a projectile aimed at a car twenty feet below and that, my friends, is a rush.  I never have hit a car yet, but as far as instant kills go, getting a running start and throwing a guy off what is basically just a covered bridge over a road is something that I could suggest will never get old.  Even when you don't have the unabashed freedom to throw them directly off, having the ability to, after wearing a foe down, basically clothesline them over a railing to the road below or what have you is still fun in itself.  Similarly fun, but rather confusing, is the fact that the game suffers from a case of the protagonist being the only man alive who knows how to swim.  That means anyone who hits the water instantly dies.  And when you have a lot of areas where there's water and no real barricade around it....well, I'm sure you can imagine just where that leads.

While it's not as advanced as it -could- have been, if you believe that, it's still ways beyond what it actually really needed to be to satisfy me, I think.  While I don't want to say I would've still been happy with less, I likely would have because what we have in the game proper is -wonderful- and I'm rather surprised it made it in as it did, especially with some of the more brutal environmental attacks.  Still, fire was a little underutilized for being featured fairly prominently in the media, and there really wasn't any opportunity to immobilize with the environment, just kill and maim.  Well, I suppose throwing someone in a trunk when you can later recover them from it counts as immobilizing, but you know what I mean.  Melee weapons were very much pick up and swing until it breaks and there could've been a little more done with them than that, I feel.  Well, you can -also- throw them, but, well, that's not quite as much more as is kind of necessary.  Still, nothing that really detracts from the experience.

If anything detracted from the experience, it was just two factors:  The storytelling and the soundtrack.  In direct contrast to Chance, I'm just really not a fan of the music used in the in-game radio stations and while it seems like a little thing, it's...really not.  You spend a -lot- of time in a car in Sleeping Dogs, as you do most sandbox games that don't let you fly around like Electric Jesus or like you can control gravity itself, and if you really don't like the music that's offered, it gets old really really quickly.  I should clarify rather quickly that there's really no song that I dislike, just that there's also no song that I like enough to make it all worth while.  Rain Wizard by Black Stone Cherry comes close, as I'm always happy when that comes on Roadrunner Records, but the rest of it is mostly things I can take or leave.  It really makes me long for the ability to play music off the HDD, but I can understand how that's not generally an option since, well, these guys paid a -lot- for the music rights and they're not just going to let you circumvent that so you can listen to the version of No More Mr. Nice Guy that you expected to hear when you saw the title in the radio station text.

Much more substantial of an issue is, as I mentioned, the storytelling as I feel that it takes a backseat to the actual acting and gameplay of the game for the entirety of it.  There just...wasn't quite as much -binding- there as I would have liked, as it seemed like I would complete a mission, get about a minute of content and then the next mission it's like a whole mess of issues has been resolved otherwise.  Guys who hated you are now completely on your side even though all you really did was kill dudes, and there's absolutely no more conflict on that front for the rest of the game.  Similarly, trouble seems to spring up out of nowhere and you find yourself in increasingly bad situations with little to not context surrounding it other than the general gist of the narrative in that "the other triads are dicks", no matter who they're with.  You get -enough- for a mostly cohesive story, but I wanted -more-, even at the risk of some folks likening it to one of those 'movie games' where there's more cutscene than game (even though there assuredly isn't).  I just wanted a little more all aroudn to make the story just that much easier to follow and stay up with, that it had that much more detail work to it so you felt a little more than you would have normally (even though the characters are developed mostly well enough to give you plenty of feelings on them regardless) so it drew you in just that much more.

I literally cannot really fault any other part of the game, nor will I attempt to for any reason.  I just enjoy it all far too much to do that, and it's more or less because of all that that I will again say this is probably my Game of the Year at this point.  It's mostly done and I haven't dipped into -quite- as much as I anticipated, I suspect, but I have dipped into more than normal, and while I really love Sleeping Dogs, I really loved Lollipop Chainsaw, Yakuza:  Dead Souls, Gravity Rush, and so on and so forth as well.  It's....it's going to be a hard time come the end of the year/start of next year, but I look to it with a little more aplomb than I did last year.  My options are more varied and more numerous this year, but games like Sleeping Dogs might just help me put things into context with each other in separating what I really liked with what I thought deserved to be really liked by me.  Which are oftentimes far different things, I've learned, but in the case of United Front Games latest effort, I'd say it's the latter.

Some Fairly Early Sleeping Dogs Impressions

People who follow my Twitter or at least give a little looksee to the Twitter widget on the side know that I had quite an adventure today in actually getting to the point where I can play Sleeping Dogs, which I haven't played prior to today, despite buying it on release day.  And by quite an adventure, I mean I popped the game in when it was an appropriate temperature in my room, what with still being in a goddamned heat wave, and expected to play the game.  I was incorrect in thinking this, as a 348 MB patch awaited me.  In the near two hour download of that (And people wonder why I insist on saying I hate the thought of a digital future) I busied myself with Twitter and catching up on some Treasures of Montezuma Blitz which I have sorely overlooked in favor of simply binging incessantly on Youtube videos since, despite my misgivings, the App appears to offer -most- of the videos I want to watch, it's just an issue of getting to all of them without the aid of descriptions or playlists or anything of the sort that is there to assist you in this process on PC.

Anyways, the point in pointing all of this out is that by the time I actually got to the point where I can play the game two hours later with the update and game installed when it was much hotter in my room than previously, forcing me to throw caution to the wind, I was not a happy fellow.  I was grumpy, indeed, and I had a very real fear of Sleeping Dogs not being able to remove this from me, so that I may enjoy the game.  I thought it would be the ultimate annoyance; here was this game that I had yearned for, pined for, been so excited for for as long as I have, and everything would conspire against me to ensure that my experience with the game would be an ultimately negative one.  Really, I just thought that, after everything, after how grumpy, annoyed and such I was by the point I made it to the point where I could play Sleeping Dogs, I wouldn't enjoy it.

I was very, very wrong, thankfully.

Sleeping Dogs' intro is not the greatest intro, but I say that because I had to wonder if this was possibly the greatest.  It is a very good intro, certainly, which is why I went to that extreme first, but I am confident that it's not the greatest simply because the intro does not wholly involve the greatest part of the game itself which is, clearly, the combat.  It is there after a chase scene and after laying the ground works for this genuinely being a crime drama story, but I consider that like the first chapter or so if this were a book, not the prologue.  It is highly enjoyable nonetheless and as it opens up more and more, the game leaves you more and more to be happy about, even though you understand completely that you're being fed things at a deliberate pace, at least, the instructions for tools that you already have and can use regardless of your story progress.  Your basic tools for melee, the attacking and countering, are given to you exactly when you need them, and to be honest, that's all you really -need- for the most part, though I look forward to seeing the intricacies the game ends up delving into.

Something that I learned before I was told was that every car, and it has to be a car as the motorcycles lack the pure bulk to do so, has the ability to ram other cars with a push of the square button and a direction, provided you're going at a distant speed and have not, in fact, -just- rammed someone already.  Without that knowledge, pushing square was simply an exercise in confusion as, suddenly, my vehicle went this way for reasons unbeknownst to me, for values that I didn't comprehend.  I tried to use it as a navigation assistant, a quick-shift to move -away- from obstacles and other cars with limited success - it seems I will simply have to get better at drifting, as the game enjoys putting you behind the wheel of a car, and I shudder to think of car chases where I cannot figure out how to move properly in them.  As a method to move -into- cars, with destructive intent, the ramming action works just as intended and is quite enjoyable for that; allowing you to make rather short work of anything that just so happens to be in your vicinity.

Another thing that I stumbled on just prior to being informed of, is the fact that some cars allow you to pull a tire iron from their trunk for whatever mayhem you could think of doing with a tire iron.  It proved quite useful in my adventures as you might imagine, but the funny part is how I was told about this little tidbit.  You see, the game has side missions in the form of 'Favors' that you do for seemingly random people (though the tasks themselves are not randomized, I'm sure) and one such man asked me to help him get back at a rather rude racer.  He tells me that in a race his opponent knocked him off track at the last moment simply to win, and he was not standing for that, so if I was gracious enough he told me that he would enjoy hearing that the man's car was found a little roughed up.  I rushed to the nearest parked car, grabbed a tire iron from the trunk and hopped in, driving to the designated spot where the game prompted me to get out, ready to take the business to this rather bright yellow vehicle.  The game then tasked me with retrieving the tire iron from the trunk of said race car.

The awkwardness of the scenario was palpable as I considered the turn of events, possibly more than the game itself had done.  Here I stood with the very instrument the game desired I acquire, albeit from a different vehicle, yet it seemed to insist that the one in the trunk of the target car was the one I wanted, perhaps a better one.  Or perhaps it was simply a matter of it being the tire iron that had been in the car itself.  Or, even more possible, I was simply making a deal out of something that didn't matter because the scenario was funny in my head.  Dutifully, I dropped the tire iron I had and moved to retrieve the other, this better one, so that I could begin my work.  And it was good.  Part-way through the owner of the car came by and we had a little fun.  Or rather, I had fun, as I doubt he was too pleased with getting his face slammed into the hood of his own vehicle.  Repeatedly.

I ended my journey in Sleeping Dogs today simply running around and enjoying the aspects of the open world as you are wont to do in open world games.  I partook in a little reckless driving, explored environmental attacks by breaking random women over the backs of benches in a rather grisly fashion, and tried, unsuccessfully, to acquire a handgun from the local police and retain it, simply to have a piece to walk around with.  As my time holding a firearm was short, I didn't explore the shooting mechanics, but in a sense I find that liberating.  I'm missions, plural, into the game and not once has it tasked me with firing a gun, even though the mechanic is there.  There had not even been a scenario where I could in all good faith -have- a gun, which is equally tantalizing.  All I really wanted from Sleeping Dogs was an Open World game that focused on melee, on having -good- melee, and I should say that it has done well enough on that front.  Delicious.

Sleeping Dogs Gets a Combat Trailer

So as we know, I have been very eagerly awaiting more and more information on a lot of games, but one of the higher priorities, after the last couple trailers and bits of information anyway, has been Sleeping Dogs.  After recently learning that it got a lot of influence from The Protector, the game shot way up on my 'want' list and I've been gnashing my teeth hungrily for some proof of this, some actual showing of the influence that can be taken from The Protector.  And I gotta say, the trailer doesn't deliver a lot on that front, but it does deliver -some-, but what's more important is that it looks awesome.  Mostly.  I mean, let's face it, that footage isn't near final product or at least it shouldn't be, and as such, I look at it more as an indication of the spirit rather than the end result.  And the spirit is really hitting on the buttons that I want it to hit on.

Let me first direct you to "The Protector Moment" as I saw it about thirty seconds into the video, and this is very clearly from the movie and I don't care what anyone says otherwise.  If you've seen The Protector, you know that the fighting style used by the main character is basically "Capture and Destroy" which is exactly what's going on there.  I'd wager to say that it was a move directly used -in- the movie, honestly, but that's beside the point.  That right there is -awesome- and I want more of it.  There's a couple more instances of this style of thought, specifically a disarm and one of the counters, but that knee stomp is classic capture and destroy, it's what drove the movie, and it's what I want to do all the time.

The thing I like about the trailer is that it sort of is pretty basic in the combat, showing off things you'd expect - Roundhouse kicks, takedowns, the classic judo flip and the like.  Then it reminds you that weapons are a part of the game and will likely be a big part in some fights.  If I can extrapolate a little information, it looks like you can specifically finish off opponents with melee weapons as opposed to basic slices and the like.  I mean, that's just what I'm guessing based on the guy jumping up in the air and slamming a butcher's cleaver down across a guy's head.  Then also bringing one down on the neck of a guy laying on the ground all defenseless.  It's quite brutal, as the developers promised and it's rather glorious in that aspect of it I must say.  Still, I would've liked to see more than just knives used to show off the weapon system.  (Yes, there was a flash of a lead pipe, but you get my point.)

Then after all that fairly basic stuff, we get to the fifty-five second mark to see a guy get impaled on a fucking pipe.  Read that again.  Our protagonist, an undercover cop, picks up a guy and slams him down onto a pipe that impales him through the fucking midsection.  This was about the moment that I said "Holy shit!" and flailed my arms around in the air as would an excited little girl do.  The next ten seconds were nothing short of awesome (barring a few animation things) and did more than any live-action trailer with pretty good music could do in terms of hype.  This is what I want, game developers.  I want to be able to slam guys into meathooks.  I want to be able to turn a table saw into an impromptu brain surgeon.  I want to set a guys head on fire with a stove.  This sort of visceral environmental interactivity was something I only dare dream of back when the only trailer was a live action one and to see it given form and life is more than I could hope for.

At a certain point, I do remember that this is a combat system for an open world game, and I start to realize that that does mean there will have to be a few things given up.  So I can look at the animations and the effects in a softer light, but at the same time, if we've seen anything it's that games can offer us fairly decent animations in an open-world environment.  One only needs to look as far as inFamous 2 to realize that, and especially so, given that the original game was oft-criticized in that department.  (with good reason, unfortunately)  At the same time, I enjoyed the hell out of inFamous 1 despite the stiff NPCs and the like and I can imagine that if the above trailer, in the unlikely event that it is close to the final look, I will enjoy it regardless.  But I can't help but hope for a little more, I suppose, since I really want this to succeed.  So here's hoping for just a little bit of tightening before release!

Some Interesting Sleeping Dogs Information

Siliconera had a neat interview with a couple of the head dudes from United Front Games to find out a little information about the upcoming game, Sleeping Dogs, which I have been really interested in as you might know by now.  It has a storied history already because of its inception and rebirth, but we've been over that before, and this post is more about the future of the game anyway.  Information has been a little scarce on it so far, as is normally the case, but with this interview, we get a nice little peek into the inner workings and the thought put into the game so that we might be able to think and imagine how the end-product will actually turn out.  A few nice little tidbits have been parceled out here and there but there's one little factoid that I am particularly interested in, and it's pretty much the single bit I picked out and went "Yep, making a post about that" when I saw it.

The actual name of the article at Siliconera is "Sleeping Dogs' Fighting System Inspired by Tony Jaa Action Flick "The Protector"", which is....a little familiar round these parts.  I mean, I may have talked about it a while back because I thought it was a fantastic martial arts movie.  Oddly enough, I was beginning to think that I was the only person to actually know about the movie since trying to talk about it to others always ended the same way:  Showing them two clips and then going "Yeah, I told you it was awesome" when they're blown away.  But I've never actually been able to talk about the movie with someone who has shared knowledge of it prior, which is a little frustrating.  So seeing it referenced by an outside source was a little surprising at the least, as well as highly encouraging.  If I may quote a section...

I think the first piece of reference material we used was a scene from Tony Jaa’s The Protector. What we knew from the get go is we really wanted to have a combat system that incorporated multi-directional combat, the ability to grapple and counter enemies. We wanted to combine strike based gameplay with a lot of environmental interaction. Environmental interaction has always been what we consider the key hook of our gameplay. It’s something we try to bring about in all of our systems. Making one big violent sandbox was our initial concept.

[...]I remember when Mike first came aboard and started working here he sent me this clip from The Protector – it’s the scene where he goes up the spiral staircase.  It’s an amazing fight scene because he uses melee and he uses the environment. There are no camera cuts. It’s all continuous. Mike said with the team’s experience I feel confident we can deliver that and that was in the fall of 2007.

I hate linking the same video twice, but it's topical and totally worth it:

If you're going to reference anything for a combat system for a video game this is definitely on the fucking list and I'm absolutely ecstatic that Sleeping Dogs is going to have this influence in it.  I can only hope they really get to this sort of level of interactivity with the environment and the surroundings, because that would be amazing.  It does seem like, at the very least, they're taking the core to heart, since it's at least -attempted- at length in several different areas and in several ways, though they won't go into detail.  "There is a fish processing plant action scene that has particularly violent props in there. I won’t spoil them, but those are some of the my favorites." Is about as in-depth as they'll go which, on one hand, I can respect that.  On the other hand, goddamnit, stop holding out on us.  I want to look forward to some environment interaction as seen in the live-action trailer the game lead with, which makes a whole lot more sense now.

Something else that is a little more exciting for me personally is their approach to guns, which saw a fairly heavy focus so far as well.  The team understands the difficulty in trying to balance melee with shooting and, no matter what, you're going to have to have your feet firmly planted in one camp, even if you're leaning into the next.  For Sleeping Dogs, it sounds like the feet are planted in melee as they try to really have firearms that are worthwhile but not too good, nor too bad.  Described as "power ups", guns seem like they'll supplement the core combat, which will more focus on you getting to a foe to melee them, rather than hanging back and pumping round after round.  You're not going to keep guns for a while; it seems when it's out, it's gone, meaning as I said, the focus seems to still be on melee.  As you all know, I love me some friggin' melee combat, so this is making yet another tantalizing game for me to purchase in this flood of games.

It's safe to say that Sleeping Dogs has had a place on my radar, but with every mention it seems to move closer and closer to the center...which is good and bad.  As I said, I have too many games already, both unpurchased and purchased, so it's not like I need another one to look forward to.  On the other hand, it's always nice to be excited about something because, well, how often do you really, truly get to be genuinely excited for things?  Fairly often, yes, but it's not reliable, and it's not a constant, so we really should enjoy every single time and every single moment that real feeling kicks in.  Here's looking forward to part two of the interview which will likely either get a few bits editted here, or if it's big enough, will be a post all on its own.  Until then, I'm going to go watch The Protector again and see if I can count just how many bones get broken during the fight scenes.  Because it is a lot.