He seems as real as a character in a movie. He's not a nameless hero or a loosely constructed anyman. Shen’s embedded himself with the Hong Kong underworld in order to unravel it from within, and watching him get sucked further and further into peril is fascinating. Shen – who's voiced wonderfully by Will Yun Lee in both English and Cantonese, is an interesting protagonist, one with true depth.
Sleeping Dogs revolves around an undercover Hong Kong detective named Wei Shen. It doesn't look like a native new-gen game by any stretch of the imagination, however - and it’s disappointing that the framerate stutters a bit when you're on foot running around and exploring, and the camera is still a bit messy in certain circumstances.Īgain, though, I have to sing the praises of the story. On the Xbox One version I played, draw distances are vastly extended, textures are much sharper, and the overall gloss of the entire convincing recreation of Hong Kong is improved.
An engaging plot littered with memorable characters and a ton of slowly building tension is artfully coupled with solid melee action, gunplay, and driving to create a multi-faceted game that satisfies on all fronts.Īs far as the aesthetic is concerned, Sleeping Dogs was never an exceptionally pretty game, but The Definitive Edition resolves some of its biggest visual faults and brings it more in line with the PC version. The Definitive Edition for new-gen consoles carries over both of those great traits and adds a decent facelift, and it's just as fun and just as memorable as it was the first time around. But the main thing I made clear in my original review of Sleeping Dogs on Xbox 360 and PS3 back in 2012 is that while it's a blast to play, its story is actually the star of the show. Many open-world, non-linear drive-and-gun games - with some notable exclusions - tend to tack on a story merely to loosely justify whatever it is you're doing.