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[Grakelin]

Managed to fix a bug (during a Popstar mission, if you crouch on the third picture, you can't call your contact). Not so bad. Kind of predictable. The women you can date seem to be oddly stilted in.

[Kaje]

I'm unsure as to why this game is receiving the above terrible reviews, most independent game review sites (including reviews from players) seem to be giving it a score of between 70 and 80% - which isn't bad at all.

Yes, it's essentially a 'GTA clone' but that's just a term that has come to be used to describe a free-roaming open world action game with a narrative to keep you on some sort of plot track. It's not a bad thing at all, some of my all time favourite games are 'GTA clones' and only one of them is actually a GTA game! (San Andreas, the rest are genuinely mediocre).

I did the sensible thing and purchased Sleeping Dogs after reading a number of reviews and doing a Google shopping search for the cheapest price. I managed to purchase it from a third party website who sell you the Steam registration key, and I paid £14. That's half the price of the standard Steam price - it's all above board, too.

So far, I've put in about 8 hours and have found it to be a fun game with plenty to keep you interested. The map might not be as big as games like GTA or Just Cause 2 (made by the same guys) but it's enough to immerse you into Hong Kong city life and the hustle and bustle certainly seems genuine.

The plot itself isn't bad, you play an undercover cop whilst he's on assignment to infiltrate the Triads. You see his conflict between doing right by the cops and right by his new found comrades as well as the internal struggle he experiences with his morals and the dark deeds he is forced to do.

Be warned - this isn't Call of Doody, and so those regulars may find they need to follow a plot for more than 30 seconds to appreciate each mission. This isn't just a run and gun game, for the best out of it you need to immerse yourself into the story and feel the conflict the protagonist feels.

I haven't encountered any of the bugs experienced by those commenting above, and I'm running the latest Steam patch. The FOV feels fine to me and the game isn't a simple port as special care was taken during development to ensure the PC version was as much a stand alone game as the console versions.

Overall, I'd give it a 75%. It's well worth a play and if you do some digging, you can find it at a bargain price.

[Detonate]

Agreed. I really, really like the characters. Even if you're with Peggy for one mission, I got really attached to her. The voice acting is great, too. In games like GTA, stuff with a lot of heart like Peggy's mission and Jackie talking about turning his life around in the first mission would just be minor dialogue. Wei is unfortunately a little like Niko, no matter how many people you run over you still regret killing some thugs. You can't do much about that though, bumping into people at 10 MPH kills them. I don't feel like it's a GTA clone, working for a gang and being able to hijack cars doesn't make it a clone. Way better than GTA in my opinion.

Also, they released a demo. If you're doubting whether to get this, play the demo.

[Grakelin]

I hated Peggy. I thought she was a misguided byproduct of a highly unethical lifestyle. She was completely unaware of the horrifying consequences of her fiance's method of breadwinning. All her teenpop philosophy made me a bit queasy because it was optimism built on the corpses of Hong Kong's poor.

 I am not liking the plot (a bit past 50% story completion now), since the game doesn't convey to us that we're supposed to be getting attached to certain characters. I spent Winston's entire arc wondering when I was going to throw my cards out on the table and turn this guy in. Since everybody around me is committing atrocities, I have difficulty liking any of them. The character I relate to the most is Raymond, simply because he hasn't yet revealed himself to be a sociopath (even if he does force the main character into moral crises).

The only criminal I find likable is Jackie. Everybody else spends a lot of time shooting up businesses filled with innocent bystanders or accusing people of being a cop. Maybe it's the fact that it is explicitly stated early on that the people around me brutally tortured the last undercover officer they found and buried him alive which makes it difficult for me to consider any of them good friends.

I liked the story a bit more before I got my first gun, too. Before then, it was unique in that death seemed to be a big deal. You see a man get shot in front of you and it actually freaks you out a bit. What? The other gang killed _two_ of our boys? I'ma go fuck 'em up! Then we slaughter a dozen guys indiscriminately during the first gunplay mission, and from there it's a lot of blowing up cars with machine guns and mowing down rows of gun-toting thugs. If I was better at my real job (being an undercover cop), I would have left the Sun On Yee to their fate and let the hordes of machine-gun wielding gonzos tear team to pieces (though that may be unfair considering the action movie influences).

There appears to be a cast of extremely minor secondary characters who give you side missions. I recognize one for his notable appearance, but the others I generally can't name. Which made it awkward when you find one of their dead bodies and cry over it a bit.

Now there's all this political stuff going on and I can't really get into it because I'm not familiar with the entirely new cast of characters they've introduced for the second half of the game (nor can I get over the disappearance of the first half of the cast, some of them inexplicably - will we ever seen Emma Stone's character again, or has she left for the rest of her backpacking adventure?). At best, I know I should dislike the guy who keeps trying to murder me and every innocent bystander within 50 feet of me, and that I should have only a tenuous trust with the shrewd woman who opposes him.

That said, it's still an okay game. It keeps me entertained. I like shooting the tires out of enemy cars and beating people up in parking lots. Missions are fun when they don't involve cover-shooting. The promising storyline lost its footing about a quarter of the way through, however, getting lost in somewhat morally ambiguous territory. So it doesn't compel me. GTA IV, despite not being quite as "smart" as this game tries to be, could hold my attention for longer periods because I cared about some of the characters other than the one I was playing as. I'm giving Sleeping Dogs a 7/10.