When it comes to the actual gameplay and story, Sleeping Dogs is the kind of game that leaves a very strong first impression, perhaps to its own detriment, as it gradually reveals itself to be less than what it first appeared to be.

Does it have some of the best driving, combat and story out of any GTA-style open-world game? Yes. For example, it absolutely blows GTA 3 (incl. VC and SA) and 4 out of the water, and overall seems like a much more polished and put-together product than my favorite Saints Row 2. But spend some time with it and you start feeling like the game isn't growing with you. The potential it shows in the beginning remains unfulfilled.

I'll start with the melee combat, as it seems like the most prominent aspect of the game. It copies the Batman: Arkham series' formula, which already makes it better than any other game in the genre. But it copies it rather poorly. I noticed that I was failing counter-attacks more often, and at first I blamed it on myself, but, as the game progressed, I realized that it often just isn't registering my inputs. This becomes very obvious in the final boss battle, where the punches are so slow that I was clearly able to tell that I pressed triangle 3 times before the opponents fist reached me, and yet still the counter-attack didn't trigger. In addition there are these annoying QTEs that completely break the flow of the game because you're focused on pressing triangle for dodging and circle for grabbing, but during the QTEs the button prompts are completely random, not tied to the same actions as during regular combat.

The ranged combat is much better and again possibly the best in the genre. It's extremely intuitive, and the aiming is super smooth and easy, despite me playing with a controller. However, you wouldn't really compare it to a proper cover-based shooter or something like Max Payne, despite some similarities. The cover system is not as well-refined, the level design is a little random, and the environment is not as geometrically detailed, which results in you hitting invisible edges and stuff like that.

The driving is fun. The handling is very responsive. There are street races you can take part in, which function similar to Midnight Club, and of course there are plenty of car chases. You're allowed to do some physics-defying ramming, which sends other cars flying, or shoot their wheels, which achieves the same effect. I have only one complaint about driving: the camera. By default it's too tilted towards the ground, which means about 60-80% (depending on the landscape) of the screen is always covered by the ground. In a game with such stunning visuals, this is a crime. And there's no way to just change the view mode. You have to hold your right thumbstick up the entire time if you want to enjoy the views, making it harder to control your car. Other than that, I found the driving very enjoyable.

But, when you look at an open-world game like this, I think there has to be a thread that ties everything together. This is usually either the world or the story. Unfortunately, these are the two aspects where the game fails the most.

On the first glance, Hong Kong is filled with lots of extra activities you can do, like cock fights, carjacking, drug dens, and the aforementioned street races. But after you do each of them once or twice, you start asking yourself: why? Unless you're a completionist who wants to unlock everything, there really is no reason, and they're not fun enough on their own. For example, in Saints Row 2 there was the gang war and a lot of stuff that had to do with gang management. As you progressed through the game, you felt the growth of your gang into a large empire, so there was a sort of meta-narrative that was connecting all this stuff. And just the world itself was more unrestricted and janky, allowing you to make your own fun. But here there's plenty of inaccessible locations, and everything is so polished that you can only do what the game wants you to do. After a while I stopped doing anything other than the main story missions. Which is a shame because I really wanted a reason to drive around this gorgeous city more.

While I'm at it, the graphics here are incredible. They utilize a lot of stylization, like color, lighting, and blur to hide the short draw distances and other imperfections. As a result, the game looks better than GTA 4 and 5 (which I haven't played, but have seen screenshots and videos of), and performs much better than the former.

But the final, and, perhaps, the most disappointing aspect of the game is the story, and the way it ties into the triads/cops mechanic. Which is to say it doesn't. You're led to believe throughout the entire game that your actions will determine the outcome (as in siding with either the Triad or the cops), but none of it actually matters. The scores you get for behaving lawfully or unlawfully only let you unlock new combos; that's pretty much it. And, despite having some likeable characters, the story is a complete mess. Characters appear and disappear without any noticeable consequences. Aside from Jackie, who is absent most of the game, the protagonist doesn't seem to be attached to any character, as he seems completely unaffected by anyone's death. In fact, it doesn't even really follow the three-act structure. It has rises and falls, but overall feels pretty flat until the last two missions. As a result, they also fail to carry any weight. The final boss is some side-character who gets introduced mid-game and then you don't see him again except for one or two minutes in a couple of cutscenes filled with other characters. I watched every cutscene because the characters felt authentic, but I didn't feel any emotion, except for some mild entertainment. As a cherry on top, at the end my character spoke to Jane Teng, a police officer I probably had a couple of interactions with throughout the entire game, because I stopped doing police work pretty soon. Yet still they spoke like they had a lot of history together. Which is another proof that your actions have no effect on the story.

In the end though, I still enjoyed my time with Sleeping Dogs (otherwise I wouldn't have completed it), but it kinda disappoints me just how much better it could've been. When looking back at it, I fondly remember my drives around the city to some mellow mandopop and trip-hop, but the rest I could take or leave, despite a lot of polished gameplay mechanics that put other GTA-clones to shame. Still, it's a solid game.