I found this difficult to write and not address the obvious parallels that Sleeping Dogs and the GTA series share. Both games are Open World/Sandbox? I guess Sandbox fits better in that you only really have sand to play with... but then you can bring your cool matchbox cars and maybe some water to make a lumpy castle if you want - but in the end you're not going to get much out of it without a dash of imagination.
In GTA all I ever found myself doing separate from completing the main quest line was racking up my police stars to 6 and seeing how long I could survive for. This still is a tremendous amount of fun but it's not really accessing all the available content, or being creative or imaginative with what the game offers - since that act is the title of the game after all. Sleeping Dogs offers up similar sort of sidequests, games and silly little things to get involved in, but like in GTA my exposure to this pablum was the brief forced introductions to them as I continued my journey through the main quest. I dun givvve a fuuuuuck about these things most of the time, which just leaves this reflection being about the core game.
The most notable difference besides the setting - and THE reason why I prefer Sleeping Dogs - is the inclusion of the 'martial-art' fighting system. Similar in execution to the Batman games (Asylum, City, Origins), long melee combos are able to be strung together while taking on sometimes upwards of 15 enemies at once in an all out brawl. As you progress throughout the story you learn different 'martial art' combos that are increasingly devastating and satisfying to pull off. There is accompanying gunplay and it's pretty simple. Infact it's GTA simple; meaning idiotic AI leans behind cover with the tops of their heads poking out and you can pick them off from a far with no threat. (That style of gunplay is cleverly utilised in Spec Ops: The Line and is intentionally bland to highlight what exactly you're doing as the protagonist in that sort of setting). GTA and Sleeping Dogs don't share a similar purpose behind it being bland, yet the shooting, especially in GTA is a core element of the game, and a very boring core at that. Sure shooting can get 'overwhelming' when you are picked off by helicopters or maybe 100 police officers, but never is it 'challenging'. Sleeping Dogs has a welcome alternative by incorporating the fighting system, which fits in nicely into the games setting (which I'll get into in a sec). I couldn't imagine Niko or CJ running into a group of thugs (what's a group of thugs/gangsters called? A gang of gangsters? A posse?), starting a brawl and performing multiple flying knee kicks into dudes faces. Sleeping Dogs is allowed this because the setting is appropriate for it, but by having multiple ways of to approaching a conflict it actually is interesting and satisfying to play, and a welcome change. I think the satisfaction ties in with the quote from The Joker: "Do you wanna know why I use a knife? Guns are too quick(!)".
The story is frustratingly cliché, especially when it had so much potential. You play as a Wei, a positively charming yet dangerous individual who is probably a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Wei is an undercover police officer who has infiltrated the Triad gang scene seeking revenge for his deceased sister. It's all set up for there to be conflict both for Wei and you as the player, potentially deciding what path you choose, as Wei is good at being a police officer, but very, very good at being a criminal. Unfortunately the game just follows a single, obvious (boring) narrative that increasingly began to scare me wasn't going to capitalise on it's potential as missions trickled on.
A dark section of the game involves you 'assisting' an old lady in taking a meat clever to a few select 'bad' people, which is definitely a moment where Wei's affiliations to being a police officer are blurred (right?), and I felt things were about to get quite complex for me and Wei. But then a few missions later I'm running shopping errands for some spoilt singer chick, that I guess the game is using to try and show off it's inbuilt dating sim minigame with (I dun givvve a fuuuuuck). She flirtingly says "Wei is the most decent gangster I know" at the end of your shopping date... singularly crushing any hopes that I might have had for Sleeping Dogs to be brave and actually have some actual character development, with Wei perhaps being torn whether to legitimately join the Triads or not.
Lacking story aside... the city of Hong Kong is fantastic. A lot of care has been giving to creating a living world and I was quite content to just stroll around in it during my time playing. If there was minigame or achievements involved with exploration then I would have gotten all of them. There are many varying areas from warehouse districts, mansions and large open gardens, monasteries, small sewer systems, tight alleyways that are riddled with debris and many more areas that all came together to create an incredibly vibrant and authentic feeling to the landscape. I found audible conversations around me were fairly typical, or a little bit quirky, but nothing like the brash, 'notice me' interruptive style of the GTA games. It was always a pleasure to complete a mission in an area I hadn't been to before and then wander around and just check out the architecture and layout of the land and it's inhabitants.
From afar, I thought when I was getting into Sleeping Dogs it was just going to be a tweak upon the GTA way of doings things, but thankfully it pulls off enough unique twists and turns to to be its own lovable, enjoyable games. A fun experience through gameplay and the unique mechanics, the only blaring disappoint is the story, which is a confused, bumbled mess. Worth playing.
*Spoiler*
You can earn/buy different outfits as you progress through the game. All whole range of things from being in your underwear to full body tattoos, Bruce Lee's famous yellow suit, mostly whatever you can imagine. The best costume of all is this suit you get after a certain disastrous wedding. (The story sucks so Im not really spoiling anything here).
