By Jim Rossignol on August 3rd, 2012 at 10:00 am.
Sleeping Dogs, the game that was once True Crime: Hong Kong, does not appear to contain any hounds, unconscious or otherwise. But as an open-world action-thriller it is looking rather packed with the potential to entertain. Lucky that Square saved it from destruction, eh? The latest trailer shows the lead character on the trail of a serial killer, doing police stuff across the huge, open-world Hong Kong map. That means infiltrating a hospital, racing about in a car, and looking at stuff. All fine things for a videogame character to be doing, eh? Take a moment to look at stuff yourself, below.
Square have also announced that the Steam pre-order version of Sleeping Dogs comes with TF2 items, which you can see in detail here. I am vaguely amused by the “Neon Annihilator”.
The game is out on August 17th.
03/08/2012 at 10:06 Njordsk says:
I don’t know what to think about that game. On one hand I’d really like it to be good, as I’m sarving for a good sandbox/gta clone.
On the other end it feels “eastern” and cheap when I look at it.
03/08/2012 at 10:13 DeepSleeper says:
Of course it’s cheap and Eastern. It was developed in London.
03/08/2012 at 10:19 J_C says:
LOL, that was good. :D
03/08/2012 at 10:39 Metonymy says:
Welll…London is east of good old USA. But I think it’s also west? That part has always been a little unclear.
03/08/2012 at 10:43 Njordsk says:
oh? erm…well… Still looks eastern.
*cough*
03/08/2012 at 11:49 Stochastic says:
I’ve always felt the terms “east/Orient” and “west/Occident” to be funny, seeing as the world is quasi-spherical and all.
03/08/2012 at 12:14 Njordsk says:
A sphere? You Heretic.
We all agreed long ago it was a flat circle.
03/08/2012 at 19:50 benkc says:
Oblate spheroid! I think.
03/08/2012 at 21:18 Beemann says:
If by London you mean Vancouver
The developer is United Front Games, of ModNation fame. Members of the team went to Hong Kong for research purposes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z3SRJmJdKA
I’m fairly sure it’s also somewhat inspired by Hong Kong action movies
03/08/2012 at 10:49 paddymaxson says:
It’s not being made in the east, so I can only assume by cheap and eastern you mean the environments….Hong Kong is a bit of a shit hole in places (Bear in mind it’s an entire country that’s one big city in the middle of China that only achieved independance from a Britain that really didn’t give a shit 12 years ago), so that’s true to life.
Hong Kong as an environment for an undercover cop game is probably the finest of environments for an undercover cop game! If you’ve ever seen Infernal Affairs (or the frame for frame American clone “the Departed”), or any Hong Kong crime dramas you’ll know what I mean. Style can make up for substance a little bit, and I’m genuinely looking forward to this as I love the style.
03/08/2012 at 11:35 PoulWrist says:
I think it will be either good or bad. Perhaps average.
03/08/2012 at 12:35 Ultra Superior says:
I slightly agree.
03/08/2012 at 15:58 tambjo says:
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03/08/2012 at 10:26 ArcaneSaint says:
Damn, I keep getting Sleeping Dogs and Watch Dogs mixed up. And then I’m always slightly disappointed when the article turns out to be about True Crime: Hong Kong.
03/08/2012 at 17:28 Ultra Superior says:
Who let them out, right ?
03/08/2012 at 10:28 Aedrill says:
This game looks absolutely terrible. It was my impression when I saw the first diary and it hasn’t changed now. It’s all so… gamey, and looks like it’s taken straight from really bad action film, definitely not Tarantino-style.
03/08/2012 at 10:33 asshibbitty says:
Population density of 0.2 people per flat pavement polygon.
03/08/2012 at 10:42 DickSocrates says:
That’s how it is in all these games. GTAIV had nowhere near enough people on the streets either. There has to be some console hardware reason for this. Why these developers don’t allow us to put the numbers up on PC is a mystery. It was claimed in GTAIV that it couldn’t be raised for techincal reasons and then modders managed to raise it.
I want the game to be good. But I’m not banking on it.
03/08/2012 at 10:56 woodsey says:
Only game I’ve seen that in is the first Assassin’s Creed, although GTA IV did let you increase and decrease traffic. Not that it then stopped running like shit if you did toggle it, but the option was there.
03/08/2012 at 20:43 elfbarf says:
The Hitman games’ Glacier engine handles large crowds fairly well, especially in Blood Money’s New Orleans mission.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xWkeE6gHnE
03/08/2012 at 20:49 grundus says:
Yeah, but they were just mindless puppets who just endlessly respawned and occupied a very narrow space. Ok, so they reacted to violence but when they tried to run away it was if they couldn’t step foot off of the tarmac. Assassin’s Creed’s crowds’ AI’s reactions to things was great (so far this sentence is literally just an opportunity to use apostrophes incorrectly but several times in a row), like how they’d comment on what you were doing and stuff. Blood Money’s New Orleans crowd was of course a great workaround for the PS2′s limitations, and I suspect GTA IV’s limited number of pedestrians was related to GTA IV’s heritage more than anything else, but Assassin’s Creed was better than both in that regard. Coincidentally it’s the only one of the three that wasn’t a sequel to a PS2 game.
Hitman: Absolution appears to make use of crowds, too, I wonder how convincing they’ll be?
03/08/2012 at 10:36 simonh says:
Umm, quicktime dialog? Otherwise it looks possibly interesting.
03/08/2012 at 16:15 shizamon says:
Really, that was lame. Why can’t they try to infuse some 90′s adventure gaming into it and have a certain item or dialog that you need to convince people of things.
03/08/2012 at 17:20 Ultra Superior says:
Quicktime dialogue is the stupidest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Why do they ruin promising gameplay with redundant gamey things like this is beyond me.
Is there any fun in pressing the button to say something …unexpected? No.
Is there a great deal of frustration in case you miss the button press? YES.
So why do it? So we can get “Silver Tongue” achievement ???
I hope gamedesigners who push this nonsense die out.
Figuratively speaking.
03/08/2012 at 10:37 JiminyJickers says:
I’m looking forward to this. Looks interesting.
A few bland bits in the video, but should be good.
03/08/2012 at 10:42 Sinkytown says:
The modern definition of ‘sandbox’ is “drive between icons to partake in mediocre, compromised copies of existing games.”
03/08/2012 at 17:15 Ultra Superior says:
Alternatively, a box filled with sand.
03/08/2012 at 10:57 kevmscotland says:
It all just feels abit too shallow.
What they want you to think it is :
Some infiltration gameplay with clever forensic analysis of the clues to reveal the next story path.
What it actually is:
Got to point A. Player model is changed. Got to point B, via Quicktime Chat.
Press A to search, repeat 3 times.
Return to point A.
The whole gameplay video felt similar.
A open world that felt like a delivery route.
03/08/2012 at 18:29 Dilapinated says:
+1, would read again. :P
You sum up the problem here excellently.
03/08/2012 at 10:57 Namey says:
Hats? Hats!
03/08/2012 at 11:03 Eophasmus says:
I’m disappointed it isn’t noir cel-shaded as in the top image. That would make up for what looks like quite an ordinary game. I hope Squenix can make something good of it.
03/08/2012 at 12:46 Ultra Superior says:
It has assassin creedy parkour movement, batmanish melee fights, lots of manhuntey environmental kills, max payne-ish bullet time, just causey stunts, and gta’s city sandbox.
Sounds much better to me than artsy fartsy black and white something you’re proposing.
03/08/2012 at 13:55 sonofsanta says:
It is an excellent image, and would be lovely as a poster.
03/08/2012 at 11:09 phylum sinter says:
quick! hit the “convince” button!
How ironic.
03/08/2012 at 11:25 thesundaybest says:
Ah, the Hong Kong I remember. Where everyone talks in badly accented English.
03/08/2012 at 12:42 Ultra Superior says:
I’d prefer either Scottish or Texan accents too. Shame about Chinese accents.
03/08/2012 at 12:46 Mad Hamish says:
I’d rather fake hong kong accents than the inexplicable american one of the protagonist. Also they should make more Triad games. Some sort of crime/action/strategy/M&Bish style game with the Triad wranglings of the Election films would be great.
03/08/2012 at 12:48 Ultra Superior says:
very explicable – the protagonist has returned to the Hong Kong from the US. Thats why he’s undercover / no one on the Hong Kong police force knows him, so they wont blow his cover.
So there’s that.
03/08/2012 at 11:40 jimangi says:
That car accelerates very quickly.
03/08/2012 at 11:59 psaldorn says:
Lucky none of the Triads he’s undercover with see him using his PDA.
What app is tha- HKPD?!
03/08/2012 at 12:54 Ultra Superior says:
Yeah! Look, it pretends to be police app, it was on Free App A Day once, I also have Beer shaker and fake X-Ray app!
03/08/2012 at 15:54 Lamellama says:
Whats a PDA?
03/08/2012 at 17:27 Ultra Superior says:
Police Department Accessory
03/08/2012 at 12:01 wodin says:
The Raid redemption. Go watch it…NOW!!
03/08/2012 at 13:47 Shooop says:
Yes.
Now if only they had made a game out of that instead.
03/08/2012 at 12:17 DEADBEAT says:
seems pretty dodgy, slightly racist accents but anyway more importantly than that there is the excellent walking on the spot bug at 9:01 in the video
03/08/2012 at 12:40 Ultra Superior says:
Very racist! They all sound so Chinese…oh, sorry I didn’t mean to use the
offensive Ch-word! How do you say “Chinese” politely ?
03/08/2012 at 19:51 Narzhul says:
Very racist, seeing as how they were voiced by a bunch of real chinese.
03/08/2012 at 12:38 Ultra Superior says:
I have pre-purchased the game. I like the setting and I like that the characters are portrayed seriously, I like the dialogues heard in all those videos. Me likey.
03/08/2012 at 14:00 Pamplemousse says:
Yeah, no shit. You’ve commented on every negative post about how wrong they are.
03/08/2012 at 17:11 Ultra Superior says:
I did? I never said anyone is wrong. Your brain just made the connection.
03/08/2012 at 20:15 Nick says:
I’m with you, I think it looks (mostly) great fun.
03/08/2012 at 12:43 Inzimus says:
given the amount of “visual clues” (i.e. way-points) on-screen at any given time, why not install an auto-pilot in the cars, so you don’t have to do the tedious driving?
also the visual-clues, whilst walking around and “investigating”, always a marker on your screen to tell you where to go…. why not install an “auto-walk”
and since the “hacking-system” don’t seem to be able of failing and only includes “pair color with number”, why not just install auto-hacking?
and of course the QTE dialogue options… why not install “auto-best-dialogue option”, since it would seem as if certain situations can’t be solved without completing this QTE
and the driving… the one thing that has always dragged the series far, far behind the GTA-franchise… when will you learn to make car-physics?
all in all, though I think this would be a great (if not cliché) action-movie and I vote that it’s made into such, instead of giving us this casual piece of endless tutorial-level-difficulty of a game
the earlier installments had [some] interesting features, which made it differ from the GTA series, while this just looks plain and bland.
03/08/2012 at 12:50 jha4ceb says:
Thought I saw some screen tearing in that video. If so, not a good sign for the PC version.
03/08/2012 at 20:16 Nick says:
vsync? =(
03/08/2012 at 13:48 Shooop says:
Now with 50% more QTE! How you ask? In dialogue events that’s how!
03/08/2012 at 14:04 kevmscotland says:
QTE Dialogue makes sense if you have a set of options, and only so many seconds to decide on which one to answer with.
As a one stop shop button press simply for the hell of it, its stupid.
And the minigames! Jeez. So theres a minigame for opening a vent, and accessing a computer, but not for investigating a murder scene, where they just resolve it with a button press.
Their priorities seem pretty messed up here.
03/08/2012 at 13:49 Tunips says:
I’m going to Hong Kong later this year. Maybe this would help me get around.
It was certainly an interesting feeling to be familiar with some of the routes in AC: Brotherhood based on my old memories of Venice.
03/08/2012 at 16:01 Lamellama says:
http://i1192.photobucket.com/albums/aa339/Marijus_Pikelis/MapofSleepingDogs.png
It appears to be based on HK island but not very closely unfortunately.
03/08/2012 at 16:39 sinister agent says:
Well with a name like that, you can hardly expect them to tell the truth, can you?
03/08/2012 at 18:57 kuus says:
http://is.gd/PFQQs4
03/08/2012 at 20:59 grundus says:
“Move best thumbsticks at the same time to find the best signal”
OH GOD, I hope they do a better job of porting that than Obsidian did of porting Alpha Protocol’s computer hacking bullshit.
04/08/2012 at 20:19 chackosan says:
Voice acting reminds me of Just Cause 2. Wish the rest of the game did.