Sleeping Dogs: Releasing On 8/14/12: Possible Sleeper Hit For 2012 - Page 2

The Silver Pack seems kinda lame. Pay to increase your ranks and unlock abilities earlier?

Yup. EA's been doing it for awhile now. It's for people that buy games and then realize that they don't like actually playing the game, they just like seeing what all is in the game. Completely f'n stupid.

Not being impressed with GTA, thats damning for me...

I played GTA III for a couple of days before getting bored of it. Too much stuff to do, too boring. Didn't really see that much of a difference in later iterations.

I've put in probably about 5 hours of game time, and I'm liking what I'm seeing so far.

I've only spent a couple hours on doing story missions, but like what I'm seeing so far. The rest of it has been doing favors, beating up rival triads, and doing cop jobs.

I'm enjoying the game so far.

The combat reminds me of Assassin's Creed (with using a multitude of weapons for beating the snot out of thugs) and countering. The indicator on when you are about to be attacked also reminds me of Batman: AA (I only played the demo for this).

I haven't had access to guns yet, but I really like the melee combat. Nothing more refreshing then performing environment finishing moves.

You've never played the Arkham Batman games?

I played the demo...does that count?

I borrowed Asylum from a friend, but ended up not playing it for 6 months, as I was preoccupied with a bunch of other games. Ended up giving it back to him.

You really should remedy that. Both Batman games are outstanding. They take the core combat mechanics and combo style from Assassin's Creed and hone it to a tee. They're also really great stealth action games. The best since Thief 1 & 2 IMO.

How is this thread dying so fast? This is one of the best games of 2012 by far. Did the marketing for this game suck that bad?

Was there any marketing?

I only knew about this game recently, because I downloaded the announcement trailer and got intrigued.

Judging from what I've see on the http://sleepingdogs.net, after one day the game racked up a pretty large amount of game time.

Yes, but their budget was probably pretty tight. Seems like they saved most of their marketing budget for the week or two prior to launch, and spent almost none after launch.

I think they're really hoping for word-of-mouth to spark more interest and turn it into a sleeper hit. Only time will tell. But as many folks have been saying over the past year, the market hasn't been kind to sub-AAA retail games lately. Small or huge budget games do well. Everything in-between has a really tough time.

Sleeping Dogs demo this week.

I think the game will do fine actually. It looks like it has very good word-of-mouth.

Perhaps even better than "fine." Early figures look very strong. This game launched at just the right time (in the midst of the biggest game draught in memory), and people have clearly been hungry for a game like this for a while (what was the last major open world crime game?). The timing couldn't have been better.

That is because we are too busy playing the damn game. Been on it and Dust since it released.

Picked this up a few days ago and I'm enjoying it. Nice to see an open-world game with a focus on melee combat for a change. The bone-breaking moves are very satisfying, even if the combat feels a bit loose.

For all the hoopla about former NFS developers handling the driving, I found the vehicle control underwhelming. It's better than Just Cause 2, maybe a hair better than GTA IV, but nowhere near the arcadey perfection of GTA III or GTA:SA.

The game also has some polish issues. The cut scenes have a pretty bad framerate, NPCs will warp around the screen sometimes, I've gotten stuck in an endless falling animation once, and on a couple of occasions I've gotten mission cars stuck in a way that required a checkpoint reset to continue. The hacking subgame is also ill-conceived, since you're guaranteed to solve it using the same approach every time (assuming you've ever played Mastermind), so it's just busy work. None of these issues are dealbreakers, though, and the core gameplay is a lot of fun.

Best open-world game I've played since Red Dead Redemption.

- Jer

I haven't picked this up yet because of my backlog, but I definitely plan to. I remember being interested by the trailer when it was True Crime: Hong Kong; I think it's great that it came back from the dead after being canceled.

Just got the platinum last night. I thought I'd finished everything, but the stats kept showing 92.46%. Then I read online that the game can get confused about this, and repeating one of the martial arts clubs would usually fix it. So I slapped on my Ong Bak outfit, beat the crap out of a couple dozen fools again, and that made the final trophies pop.

This game really grew on me as I played it. If they tightened up the driving and fighting a bit, and cleaned up some of the cosmetic polish issues, they could have something really great on their hands. As it stands, the game is still very good, and lots of fun to play.

- Jer

My son picked this up and i've been watching him play and it looks WAY cool. I can't wait to start my own game of it (once I get some more AC3, BO2, and a half dozen other games I'm working through).

Picked it up on sale on Amazon over Black Friday. Looking forward to it, as the demo was fun.

I started playing this a few nights ago, and have been having a blast. Breaking your opponent's leg and watching the other thugs cringe; leaping over cover and picking off headshots in slow motion; leaping from your motorcycle to hijack a vehicle at highway speeds; what's not to like? Plus, it's refreshing to play a game where there are bits of Cantonese dialogue with subtitles, and most of the voice cast is Asian.

With Square Enix having a sale on all their titles, it's available for $30 right now. Recommended.