Sleeping Dogs

When I first tried to play Sleeping Dogs, I did not like it. The combat was frustrating and I never felt like I was doing it right. I took some time away from it and started it up last week and I loved it!

This isn't your typical open world city game. It focuses on fighting combat more than guns. There are a decent amount of missions with guns, but since it is Hong Kong, they're hard to come by in the open world. The main focus of the action is fighting like you're in a Hong Kong action movie.

The combat is essentially a version of Arkham Asylum. There are counters that can be done when an enemy lights up and is about to hit. But it goes deeper as you can almost do fighting game combos to fight enemies. The flow of the combat isn't as graceful as Batman as you're not really able to connect counter after counter together. This one is more strategic as some enemies you can only counter before damaging, or ones you can only grapple or land heavy attacks.

The shooting combat is probably the weakest. It doesn't feel 100% as smooth as it should, but it suffices for the missions you need it. Normally it's just cover shooting and lock on to enemies until they're dead.

The main draw for me is the story it tells. You are an undercover cop with the Sun On Yee triad gang. You have to balance being a cop and a gangster. The side missions for the cop side are alright, they get super repetitive, but they're still fun. The side missions for the gang are more fun and varied.

It's cast of characters are fantastic and Wei is much more enjoyable to be than the generic GTA characters.

My only gripes with it are that the gunplay seems undercooked, but the focus is the hand-to-hand combat which is what makes up for it. The combat takes a moment to get used to, but it's essentially a brawler done right in an open world which really hasn't been done as all the GTA fist fights were terrible.

This is easily one of the top non-GTA open world games. Its fun to play and has a fantastic story to progress through.