In Sleeping Dogs, you play as undercover cop Wei Shen. His mission is to become an established member of the Sun On Yee and help take down the Triads of Hong Kong.
The game plays out as a Grand Theft Auto style game, so you can drive around a city, and complete a variety of missions. I did find it strange that you can steal as many cars as you like when you are a cop, but it makes navigating the city really easy.
In terms of combat, guns are quite rare, so you usually make do with your fists. Wei is a powerful fighter, but is often outnumbered. Early on in the game, the combat is extremely challenging and you must be careful not to take hits because you can be easily defeated. Wei can punch, grab blocking enemies and counter-attack. Counter-attacking is an important aspect and you can perform this action when the enemy glows red. I was disappointed that the combat didn't increase in difficulty towards the end of the game though, because by this point Wei has more health and more combo moves in his arsenal. This means the combat does feel tedious during the game's final moments, but it is generally fun for the most part.
Some of the combat can be pretty brutal. When you grapple an enemy, you can walk him over to certain objects and perform finishing moves. Wei will smash enemy's heads against a dumpster then throw them in, smash them through fish tanks, smash them against a phone-box and then kick their head against it. There's plenty to see.
The gun fights play out like many third-person action games, so involve using cover, and popping out to shoot. It also uses slow motion as you vault over cover, where you can quickly take out enemies before you hit the ground.
There's a few other ridiculous elements to the game. In car chases, you can press a button to basically slide to the side to ram cars; not entirely realistic, but it is fun. Whilst driving, Wei can pop his head out of the door and then leap onto cars in front of him; car-jacking them on the move.
The game does a great job of mixing up the gameplay. There's missions where you are driving people around, missions using fist fights, missions with gun fights, chase missions where you shoot out of the moving car's window, races, on foot parkour.
When you complete missions you are given experience in two areas. Cop experience comes from not destroying property while driving, not harming innocents, etc. Triad experience comes from taking your enemies down in varied ways. When you level up these areas, you can unlock new perks in the simple skill trees.
The story missions are centred around the gangs vying for power. So there's simple missions involving extorting money from businesses, or tactical strikes against hideouts. Wei seems troubled with his role. He makes great success within the gang but is shown to feel guilty when his new 'friends' are arrested. I felt the game's ending was really well done; there's plenty of action, some real brutal scenes, and Wei gets his revenge on people that have wronged him.
The game has a great aesthetic to it, so driving around the city always looks great. At night time, the neon lights are vibrant, and makes the road sparkle when the weather is raining.
Sleeping Dogs took me around 17 hours to complete which included a fair amount of side-quests. I was impressed how the game mixed up the gameplay to help prevent the game feeling repetitive, and it manages to make all the elements within the game fun, and stylish.