Years are spinning and what seemed to us yesterday seems to be completely distorted to slap us and remind us that, yes, we are starting to get age. It’s a fact, but when we talk about a title like Sleeping Dogs Which even blows its thirteenth candle, we are officially in retro-gaming. It’s hard, but as Joel would say in The Last of Us : “things happen… and we move on”. So, yes, we move forward and yet, the GTA-like formula seems to be able to renew itself. The aura that surrounds Sleeping Dogs So does not seem to grow, reminding us that his studio, United Front Games, had clearly proposed the major work of his career, still enmity today.
But the gestation of a video game is difficult, especially since United Front Games was a brand new studio that had no project yet released to his credit (he worked, however, in parallel, on Mario Kart-Like ModNation Racers on behalf of Sony). So much so that because of “Quality problems“And especially budget, Activision cancels the entire game and fails to cause the ship to flow, most of the workforce being dismissed.
A succulent playground
Sleeping Dogs So was the perfect spiritual heir to True Crime And by far the most successful opus of the franchise. We played Wei Shen, a former police officer from Hong Kong forced to the infiltration of a Chinese triad, the Sun on Yee (which really exists, by the way). While climbing the ladder and revealed the meticulously oiled cogs of a ruthless organization, he also had to navigate between loyalty and betrayal, risking his life for a legitimate mission, that of justice, while clearly soaring himself with pure and hard crime.
Sleeping Dogsit was a real cinematic promise: that of a tribute to the great classics of the genre, ofInfernal Affairs (wi insperate Martin SCorsese provided Infiltrated) to John Woo’s filmography. It was effective, taking, well written and above all fairly bright in an era where Saints Row : The Third put everything on a baseball dildo and Just Cause 2 On surfing on hunting aircraft. It was also the last logically possible launch window before the tide GTA 5which still lasts today, by the way. It’s simple, since then, no open world game has been set up again in modern China (even if Hong Kong is always a “separate” territory, at least for the moment) and it is definitely something that we regret bitterly. GTA : Chinatown Wars proposed well to reconnect with the triads on Nintendo DS, but it was in Liberty City … and not really the same magnitude.
We will also remember Sleeping Dogs For having put a good big pie where we were not waiting for us: its handplay with body-to-body was simply the most pleasant than a gta-like ever offered. To the chagrin of the genre, here, the firearms were rare and the shootings almost proscribed. Still in this desire to echo the great Chinese martial arts films, the title of United Frond Games emphasized the fight with bare hands and white weapons in a completely memorable visceral violence. He left Carte Blanche in particular for environmental interactions with shooting, allowing the head of his opponent in a fan, bursting his larynx in a telephone booth or hanging it outright with a candlestick. The possibilities were vast and, coupled with an attack system, counter and finish Moves to make the teeth cringe, could have made Sleeping Dogs A pure beat them all in its own right.
Special mention also to the city of Hong Kong and its meticulous atmosphere where urban areas, temples, neon lights, nightclubs, markets and ports in a delicious Asian crash. Sleeping Dogs was not the most beautiful of his time, and the conduct of his vehicles remained quite smooth and arcade, but he was nonetheless a passionate title to the concern for obvious detail. He was violent, often jubilant, obviously cinematographic … For all these reasons, we always consider him as one of the most nice GTA-like of his time, even in history and this despite his other pitfalls.
For the record, United Front Games had quickly embarked on other projects: a sequel, canceled in 2013 only, as well as a spin-off, Triad Warswhich wanted a multi online game. After a phase of beta closed in 2015 on PC, the servers will close definitively in 2016 for a simple, but unhappy reason: the Canadian studio simply put the key under the door.
Note that a remaster, bearing the sweet name of Sleeping Dogs : Definitive Editioncame out later on PS4, Xbox One (so you can play it on PS5 and Xbox Series), PC and even Mac. A film was also long in the pipes with Donnie Yen in the main role, before he was ultimately canceled. However, a few months ago, it is Simu Liu (on the poster of Shanghai-Chi At Marvel) who was talking about him by announcing to revive the project, discussing an adaptation with the beneficiaries of the license. And then, that’s about it. But today, Sleeping Dogs celebrated his thirteen and deserved to be pampered a little after all these years.