Sleeping Dogs

Sleeping Dogs is a decent open-world game, with a compelling premise and some interesting mechanics. It could have used a little more ambition in both story and gameplay departments, but it works well for the most part.

The story follows Wei Shen, an undercover cop who infiltrated Hong Kong’s triads to gather information on their leaders. However, as Wei spends time with the mafia and starts to rise through its ranks, the job starts to become his real life.

Wei was born and spent his childhood in Hong Kong, but eventually moved to The United States, growing up there. It was in The United States that he became a police officer, and when he returns to Hong Kong to work undercover inside the Sun On Yee, he’s infiltrating a group formed precisely by his childhood friends. The player has access to reports that show how his superiors see this as both an asset and a potential problem: although it makes Wei a less suspicious figure, it also gives the protagonist a lot of reasons to get personally attached to the Sun On Yee. It doesn’t take long for us to see this fear come to fruition: one of the early antagonists, Dog Eyes, frequently talks about the time he had had sex with Wei’s deceased sister, which makes the protagonist’s actions toward him be driven by anger instead of duty.

Wei is defined by this duality: he’s both a gangster and a police officer. When asked for advice about living in Hong Kong, the protagonist promptly answers, “Well, the trick to Hong Kong is to live by ancient Chinese wisdom: look both ways before crossing the street.” However, he is just that: there’s nothing in Wei that is not related to his both “jobs”. In other words, the character works well inside the narrative, but lacks texture: he lacks a distinct personality that would differ him from any other character inside the same premise. The game hints at a troubled past with his sister, but that ends up functioning only as fuel to ignite Wei’s anger against Dog Eyes.

To capitalize on the theme of duality, the Triads are also constructed by the narrative as a paradoxical way of life: the characters always dreamed of being part of them, revering the gangsters since they were kids, but once they get inside; once they’re finally part of them, they discover they’re actually in a prison with no way out. In a certain scene, for example, Wei’s best friend, Jackie, ominously points out how they started to go more and more to funerals since they became Sun On Yee.

Wei’s dual existence is marked by questions of nationality and identity: his American side is the side of law enforcement and justice, while his Hong Kong side is defined by his connections with organized crime. This difference, however, becomes muddier as the narrative unravels, framing certain American officers in the same light as the gangsters.

Appropriately, the story ends with a highly personal climax, showing a Wei Shen that is more deeply connected with the Sun On Yee than he has ever been. Sleeping Dogs, however, lacks a good epilogue to resolve Wei’s dual life. The DLC called The Year of the Snake shows him after the game’s main events, but the whole situation he’s in is so nonsensical that it’s hard to take seriously.

In a nice touch that reflects the protagonist’s dual life, character progression in the game is divided into two main skill trees: one linked with “cop actions” and the other related to “Triad missions”. In other words, doing missions for the police or for the mafia level up their respective skill trees. But what makes this system truly interesting is the fact that our actions during normal gameplay, even outside missions, impact how much experience will be earned: destroying the environment and running over civilians while driving, for instance, diminishes the XP bonus related to the “Cop Skill Tree”.

This system is great in the way it encourages us to act like Wei, putting us in his shoes. Early on in the game, a character that suspects Wei’s loyalty talks about how they had just discovered an undercover cop because of his constant refusal to kill people: he had a moral code that stood out in the Triads. They say this while we are driving a car and – if we care about cop-related upgrades – avoiding running over innocent people without good reason: this connection between the player and Wei, then, elevates the scene, increasing the tension by making us self-aware of our in-game actions.

This system has only two main problems. The first is that not all upgrades make sense inside their respective skill trees: one of the cop-related upgrades, for instance, helps Wei steal cars. And the other problem is that, while the cop-related skill tree can be increased with side-missions, the Triad one cannot, making them uneven.

The third skill tree available is also interesting since it’s not as abstract as the previous two: after acquiring specific statues and delivering them to a dojo, Wei is taught martial art moves, and the game shows Wey actually learning them in the dojo in the form of brief tutorials.

Sleeping Dogs is focused on melee combat, instead of shooting. Its combat system, however, is pretty simple, with just one attack button and the combos being built around how many times you press it before holding it. Besides that, there’s only one button to grab enemies, and one for the counter. The thing that makes the combat work is the environmental kills: after grabbing an enemy we can press the grab button again near a highlighted object in the environment to initiate a special animation where Wei kills the enemy using that object. This system is at its best when all its elements are complementing each other: we can kill a thug by using their head to break a fish tank and then use the fish as a weapon to hit the others, for example. However, this synergy is not that frequent in the levels.

Another prominent feature of the combat system is the use of slow-motion: the action of sliding over ledges, jumping off buildings, and shooting from Wei’s car triggers a brief period of slow-motion when we can freely move the reticule to help align our shots – and each kill extends the slow-motion period. This makes the action sometimes feel “cinematic”, but if the player abuses the system, it becomes just a very easy way to dispatch enemies in a comic manner: we can make Wei slide over a ledge to trigger the effect and then turn around, come back to the ledge and slide over it again for the same result. And since we are talking about funny moments, Wei can shoot at the tires of enemy cars and, with just a couple of shots, watch their vehicles flip and explode.

Sleeping Dogs also follows the usual formula for urban sandbox games, filling its map with hundreds of collectibles and irrelevant side missions. There are countless hidden caches to be found – which reward the player with new clothes or simply money – dozens of shrines to find – which can increase Wei’s health – and the aforementioned statues. We can enter races, play mahjong, and bet in cockfights: simple activities that require no skill whatsoever, offer nothing new in terms of gameplay, and give meager rewards. The only sidequest that stands out is the one that involves the construction of a “batmobile” – a state-of-the-art black car that comes with various gadgets, such as attached machine guns, unlimited ammo, EMP pulses to disable nearby cars, and an autodrive function – but just because it’s too absurd. The car’s use, however, is limited to certain missions and to wreak general havoc in the city after being unlocked.

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that, although mafia-focused stories tend to be male-centric, since the mafias tend to be conservative in their structure, Sleeping Dogs goes a step further. Most of the female characters in the game, for example, are just there to be potential “dates” for Wei: he encounters them once or twice, goes to bed with them, and, then, they are never heard of again. They never become a central part of the story or even of Wei’s life, never impacting his character’s arc. One example is a character played by Emma Stone: she meets Wei, they have a date together, and then she completely disappears from the game – and the date is full of bizarre exchanges between the two: when Wei bribes a guard right in front of her, she says happily in a very cringe-worthy scene, “You’re so resourceful, Wei.” In the same vein, late in the game, the protagonist races to impress two girls – betting not money but the girls themselves – and they keep saying, “badass,” and, “you know how to drive,” as the player probably bumps into everything in their way.

There are other major female characters in the story – most notably a Hong Kong cop that works alongside Wei – but, when they’re not there to just being helpless victims, they are always overshadowed by their male counterparts. The cop, for example, is presented as a major figure in the story, but is then immediately sidelined, relegated to the position of quest-giver without any distinct personality, while officers Pendrew and Raymond play bigger roles directly confronting Wei about his actions.

Sleeping Dogs is a competent urban sandbox game, with a decent story and simple gameplay, but it could have benefited from more ambition, complexity, and creativity.

April 20, 2020.