I was playing Sleeping Dogs some more last night, and I found it doesn't live up to some of the hype given earlier in this thread.
I was all hyped up to go anywhere I want and do interesting things in which each part of the game world is handcrafted and not copy & pasted, and better than most or all other open world games.
So, with all that in mind, I went to my first "case mission" and I saw a cutscene where the woman cop who hates my character started bawling me out, and then she agreed to work with me. That was cool and interesting.
Then she sent me to beat up some thugs, and hack the surveillance camera near their drug-selling corner, and then go back to my apartment and view the hacked feed, and then pick which guy for the cops on the scene to arrest.
So I did that.
And then, another "drug bust" mission popped up on my minimap. So I drove there too, and did the exact same thing, beat up the thugs, hack the camera, return to my apartment, view the hacked feed, choose who to arrest.
So I did that too.
Then yet another "drug bust" mission popped up on my minimap again, and guess what? It was the same exact thing yet again!
And then I became very deflated as I realized that Sleeping Dogs, absolutely definitely for sure, suffers from the exact same copy & paste-itis that most or all other open world games also suffer from.
By the time I was on my 6th or so copy & pasted "drug bust" mission, I was bored out of my mind.
That "drug bust" crap in Sleeping Dogs was no different in principle than the endless copy & pasted towers that you have to climb in Far Cry games or Dying Light games, or the endless copy & pasted forts in the AC Odyssey game, or the endless copy & pasted buildings in the 3D Fallout games, etc. etc.
I also was fumbling through the interface screens in Sleeping Dogs and noticed that it has a total collectible count of 176, which is another symptom of why open world games are generally very bad and not fun, because they put anti-fun "collectible" busy work into them for no good reason.
When I was doing some "Face" missions in Sleeping Dogs, my first one was a guy who said he needs a ride but "in a minute," and then he punched out a vendor. An hour or so later, I did another "Face" mission, and it was the exact same mission that I just did with that same guy who punched out a vendor again, and told me the same story about how he did because that guy was a rival for a woman who he is interested in.
So, that was very immersion-breaking.
Likewise, I was speeding on the freeway in the wrong lane; I was in the lane for oncoming traffic which was traveling in the exact opposite direction of my car. And I went just a few inches to the left of a cop car who was driving down the freeway in the correct lane at the same time as I sped right past him in the wrong direction while I was intruding in his lane..right on the verge of crashing into him and/or any of the other thousands of cars of oncoming traffic who I whose lane I was very recklessly & flagrantly violating.
What do you think that cop car did? Answer: absolutely nothing whatsoever. No U-turn, no chasing me, no siren, not even a single horn honk. He just completely ignored me as if I did nothing wrong whatsoever.
So, that was also extremely unimmersive. Mafia 1, the original version from 2002 (not the terrible "Definitive" remake which isn't actually definitive at all) absolutely owns Sleeping Dogs in terms of immersion.
In Mafia 1, the cops stop you, or chase you if you don't stop when they signal for you to, for any violation of the rules of the road, as they should do.
Whereas in Sleeping Dogs, the cops act like they are totally braindead zombies who let you do almost anything!
Another major flaw I noticed in Sleeping Dogs is that while I was falling asleep with mind-numbing boredom during my 6th or so copy & pasted "drug bust" mission, I started running over the thugs with my vehicle instead of fighting them hand-to-hand.
Except the game made this into a very aggravating experience, because it kept automatically switching the camera angle against my will!, which makes it impossible to control my vehicle effectively, because every time the game "cuts" to a new camera angle, the direction that I had been pressing my thumbstick towards before the cut suddenly stops moving my vehicle in the direction that I intend for my vehicle to move, because the totally unwanted new camera angle has given my thumbstick position a different relative position the direction that my vehicle is facing on the screen.
In other words, for the sake of giving the Sleeping Dogs game a "cinematic look," they annihilate the quality of the driving gameplay, and pile onto it heaps of needless aggravation!
Finally, the radio stations in Sleeping Dogs all play either horrible music, or mediocre music.
Having said all that, I wouldn't say Sleeping Dogs is a bad game. It's maybe a 7/10, perhaps 7.5/10 at most. I did have some fun playing it despite my many criticisms of it.
Definitely it's not a masterpiece and nor in any way groundbreaking or innovative.
It's a decent Arkham/GTA clone though, but not more than that.
Post edited September 02, 2022 by Ancient-Red-Dragon