I've been playing Sleeping Dogs because PS Plus. It's an automatic win for me just because it takes place in Hong Kong and the dialogue is peppered with Cantonese (all the voice actors playing Chinese characters except the protagonist seem to actually be from Hong Kong. Wiki says he's Korean, which explains why he replies to people in English when they talk to him in Cantonese). The writing and plot are all very hackneyed, but fun, it's possible to call ALLLLL plot events way before they happen (so far, but c'mon, I don't expect any surprises), but the characters are fleshed out just enough and the acting is fine. It's a good, tried and true story.
The setting and the my love of sandbox games means I'm enjoying my play though, but maaaaaan for an open-world game, everything feels so... linear. Like with freerunning! Freerunning is fun! I loved running around in Infamous (I realize that I'm not going to be running straight up buildings and shit like that in this game, of course), but in Sleeping Dogs, the only time you get to do anything with free running is during the designated free running missions or if you happen to find a spot it the city that's been specially designed to let you hop around in a very specific route to reach a certain collectible nonsense.
None of the missions require any thought or anything. "Hey, go steal this car! Don't worry, we'll highlight it for you! Now go talk to this highlighted person! Now call the only person we'll let you see in your contacts list! Even the missions that sound like they could be fun just fill like... busy work. There's a side story where you have to investigate some serial killer happening and need to disguise yourself to get into crime scenes, but you don't have to worry about failure! The game is so sweet and highlights the ambulance or whatever you need to steal your clothes from and won't let you do anything else until you've done exactly what it wants you to do! And, of course, you're told exactly where to go after that. And the proper order to look at everything at the scene. It's almost as if.... as if... MAYBE I'M NOT PLAYING THE GAME! MAYBE IF I PUT THE CONTROLLER DOWN THE GAME WILL TAKE ME IN IT'S ARMS, PAT ME ON THE HEAD, AND JUST PLAY ITSELF FOR ME!
And don't forget all the mini games! One for hacking phones, one for cameras, one for door locks, one for safe locks, and ONE TO USE A SCREW DRIVER. And Karaoke. It all just feels like busy work (although, i actually enjoy the camera hacking minigame [wish it had a higher difficulty or something, though!]). Oh and let's not even get started on the drug busts. I understand that repetitive gameplay is pretty standard stuff with side missions in sandbox games, but the drug busts are awful. Beat up bad guys and hack cameras? So far not bad. Drive back to my apartment and use my TV point out the same guy standing in about the same spot for every mission? Fuck that.
But, hey, the hand-to-hand combat is really fun and the driving physics and mechanics feel really nice. And I like playing dress up with my Asian Ken doll, so pretty decent game overall. Worth my... whatever I pay a month.
