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Sleeping Dogs Preview for Xbox 360

Sleeping Dogs Preview for Xbox 360

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Sleeping Dogs wasn’t always called Sleeping Dogs. Back in the days when it was being developed under the auspices of Activision, the game was known as True Crime: Hong Kong (and before that, Black Lotus. This is a game of many faces). Dropped by its previous publisher, the game was picked up by Square Enix earlier this year and, in mid-August, should be brought to completion. If the playable demo at Square Enix’s booth was any indication, though, Sleeping Dogs should probably sit in development for another six months or so before it hits shelves. It simply doesn’t have the level of polish or playability one would expect of a title that’s spent so long in development.

Sleeping Dogs Screenshot

Perhaps, though, this is an inaccurate picture of the game. After all, the demo only demonstrated one element of the title’s gameplay—the melee combat—which has been mostly absent in the game’s trailers. It’s worth noting, though, that a gaming company’s desire during E3 is to give off the best possible impression of its software. They will generally specially construct a demo out of what they feel best represents a game. If this is the best element of Sleeping Dogs, the game is in trouble.

It begins with a conversation in the back of a Chinese restaurant. The main character, Wei Shen, is an undercover cop currently doing dirty work for a ne’er-do-well who has it out for another unscrupulous individual. He sends you, with your investigative prowess, to track down his target and talk to him. On sight, though, he runs away, and the game’s awkward parkour elements immediately come into play.

Sleeping Dogs Screenshot

In a free-running game, such as Assassin’s Creed, most climbing and leaping is fairly automatic. Hold the run button and point your avatar in the correct direction. He’ll figure it out and scale walls, vault barriers, and otherwise make life easy for you while still being interesting to watch. In Sleeping Dogs, when coming up on a scalable surface, the player has to rapidly tap the jump button. This is in addition to holding down a run button to effectively chase one’s foe. Why the excess input? I have no idea, but it seems like a misguided attempt to “offer more control,” or the game simply crying out to be in some way different from its competitors.

Sleeping Dogs Screenshot

Eventually, Wei Shen catches up to his prey and corners him in a large, dead-end alley, siccing some thugs on the player. It is here that I first encounter combat. It is here that the game utterly loses me.

It’s not that combat is broken, because it works, technically. It’s copying the Arkham Asylum/Arkham City school of free-flow combat design, assigning players an attack button, a counter, and a throw. Environmental objects, such as dumpsters, can be used to enhance the damage one does. And, while the attacks are well-choreographed, it all just feels janky and stiff. Combat in the Arkham games is satisfying because it flows logically and smoothly, sharing more with a rhythm game than with traditional brawlers. Sleeping Dogs is a brawler with a counter button that shows you when dudes are about to attack you. It’s really not the same at all, and it sours one to the game as a whole.

Sleeping Dogs Screenshot

After defeating the first group of enemies, Wei Shen encounters a second group of foes on a rooftop. He combats them and, eventually, his target, who pulls a knife. After a brief beatdown (it was impossible to get a game over in the demo; dying simply resulted in a brief pause before Shen stood back up. At the end of the demo, Shen subdues his target and is beset upon by the police.

Besides being almost pitifully short, and providing no sense of what’s in the game beyond a small sampling of its on-foot combat, the Sleeping Dogs demo felt less like a piece of the game it came from and more like a proof of concept that failed to prove its concept. It’s a curious question, why Square Enix thought it would be a good showpiece for their booth. As it stands, it shares much with Gearbox’s Duke Nukem Forever, minus the name power that Duke Nukem presented.

Game Features:

  • A mature and gritty undercover cop drama, set in a high-tension underworld where every action is a risk that could blow your cover.
  • Seamless explosive action fueled by a mix of deadly martial arts, intense gunfights, and brutal takedowns.
  • Epic high-speed thrills: Burn up the streets as you ram other cars and drive recklessly while shooting your way through the narrow streets of Hong Kong.

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