S&S; Review: Sleeping Dogs

Title: Sleeping Dogs
Format: PS3, Xbox 360
Release Date: August 14, 2012
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: United Front Games
Price: $59.99
ESRB Rating: M

The release of Sleeping Dogs officially ends the long summer draught, and it marks the start of a very promising fall and winter.  This is a great way to kick off the season, with a great open world adventure...
Presentation and Story:
In Sleeping Dogs, you play as Wei Shen, an undercover cop.  Wei, from the get go, gets thrown deeper and deeper into the underbelly of criminal activity.  When the line of right and wrong gets crossed, this creates a deeper story than most other open world action games out there.  The game's loose version of Hong Kong is authentic in some ways, but unauthentic in other ways.  The game has all the correct names, in terms of the region of Hong Kong, but the actual geography of the game, doesn't match up with the actual version.  Driving on the opposite side of the road and Cantonese speaking citizens offer up some cool authentic changes from other open world games.  Graphically, the game really impresses you from beginning to end.  It isn't the best looking game out there, but you have to give credit to the amount of work that went into building this illustrious region.  The character models do look a little weird, outside of the main characters.  The various NPCs and dateable women just don't look natural at all, but Wei Shen is very detailed.  His animations are smooth, and his fighting style and animations are fluid and flow nicely while you'll punching someone's face  in.  The voice acting is superb throughout, almost everyone that participates in the narrative is voiced believably.  An eclectic soundtrack rounds out the game's stellar soundtrack.
Core Gameplay:
Sleeping Dogs has your standard fare of open world structure found in basically every other game in the genre.  Fetch quests and chase missions are front and center in the game, but an abundance side missions and mini-games offer a pretty large amount of activities for you to do.  The gameplay has a lot of variety as well, hand-to-hand combat completely outshines the competition.  The combat is brutal and fast-paced, with a lot of satisfactory environmental kills that will always bring an evil smile to your face.  Gunplay feels great as well, with the incorporation of bullet-time elements, it really makes you feel like you're playing through an old school John Woo film.  Seeing how United Front Games is at the helm of the game, I went in expecting stellar car mechanics and a overall smooth driving experience.   There is a lot of RPG elements in the game, with the cool leveling system right in front.  When you gain experience points throughout your 20+ hour playthrough, you'll be leveling up your Cop, Triad, and Face skills.  When you upgrade these specific areas, you'll learn new abilities.  The Face skills are really cool, while being the most different.  This affects how people around you perceive you or feel about you.  Doing favors for people will steadily increase your Face experience.  The many different components that go into this game really makes it shine in its own light.  
Final Thoughts:
Sleeping Dogs is fantastic game, one of my favorites that I've played this year.  A strong and engaging story mixed with stellar gameplay components make this a complete package.  If you're still not sure about SD, don't be, this game is fascinating from start to finish.
S&S Rating:9/10