Sleeping Dogs dont byte and dont watch - Who woke the dogs up ?

So I got myself the demo for Sleeping Dogs. On Steam.

I am not GTA !!!

First time I launched it it asked my things like Screen Brightness and UI Zoom Parameter. Very nice.

Then a stylish loading screen with a neat Chinese trip hop style beat pops up. First impression. Ok. Could be something. If only the Logo wouldn't be some kind of a GTA reminder, but well, lets have a look.

Yeah. OK. That's Chinese GTA style. Even the radar calls for GTA at once. But noooo...I haven't stolen any cars yet, I am only supposed to show some jerk where the boss is. OK. Let's GO.

Orphan Chinese Black ?!

Starting the demo as a small time criminal I chase some guy through some roads. The movement control is okay, space for sprinting, I don't know, perhaps this game is meant to be played with a controller.

The graphics were a bit off so I went to the display menu and raised everything up to near maximum.
After that it started to look a bit better.

Who let the Dogs out ?

First thing that annoyed me was the fighting. Fighting the guys defending the guy I was chasing was too easy, the guy himself I could not parry at all, so it was mere luck that I survived.

And after being arrested I was told I am an undercover cop. OK ! Hooray ! I am one of the good guys.

To be cop or not to be cop...

So now the Cop/Triad Rating scale made sense. If I Do something illegal like hurting the innocent my cop rating goes down, and yes same with the triad rating. Good ol' Black and white.

The seconds of the two demo missions is a gun fight and an abduction of some skinny triad guy.
You fight your way through hordes of generic guys and then a firefight with a gun follows. There is some nice detail like when you blow up an gas cylinder and a dude gets killed through it he actually burns.

Well all in all, its a fast GTA clone in a hongkong setting. Good voice action, okay graphics, a bit strange controlling but all in all ok I guess. If you're a friend of the genre it's well worth wasting ones time. I personally would like to analyse their story, I'm not so convinced I'm in for that high and mighty action spectacle that surly will build up.

And for the technical fans: It's using the Havok Middle ware.

Official Page

Sleeping Dogs

Developer

United Front Games