True Crime: Hong Kong revived as Sleeping Dogs

True Crime: Hong Kong has been revived as Sleeping Dogs. Square Enix today announced that the new open-world action game from United Front Games is due for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows PCs in the second half of this year.

The developer had been working on True Crime: Hong Kong for more than two years before Activision decided to cancel the game in a 2011 shake-up that also saw the Guitar Hero business unit disbanded.

Then in August, Square Enix picked up the rights to the game, with its London outfit managing development from then on.

As part of the deal, Square Enix picked up True Crime: Hong Kong, but not the franchise, and needed to rebrand the game before its release.

Sleeping Dogs is an open-world "cop drama" set in Hong Kong. The game puts players in the boots of Wai Shen, an undercover police officer fighting through the seedy criminal underworld of the sprawling city.

According to Square Enix, Sleeping Dogs will focus heavily on giving players a series of combat options. These include gunplay--which takes place in streets, harbors, and skyscrapers--as well as an "intuitive and imaginative" hand-to-hand combat system that lets players use martial arts to bring down their enemies.