Sleeping Dogs

[henke]

During and after E3 some gameplay footage has emerged on my second most anticipated open-world-third-person-game-with-"dogs"-in-the-title. Here's a video that gives a pretty good idea of what the different aspects of the gameplay will be like:



Here's a playthrough of the E3 demo with developer commentary.

The character-movement looks a bit stilted but the combat system does include a counter button (like Batman!) and you can grab enemies and perform contextual-attacks (like Warriors!). I really hope the freeform movement won't be constricted to a few linear chase-sequences though, but that it'll apply to the entire city. The driving seems to be a bit stiff and the dialogue cliche-ridden, but still, it looks like a good time. I'll almost certainly get it when it hits the bargain-bins.

The releasedate is August 17th for Europe, and a few days earlier for USA. Platforms are PC/PS3/360.

[henke]

Here's 30 minutes of gameplay footage, warts and all: Pt1, Pt2

And by warts I specifically mean the noticable scenery pop-up in a few places, and the glitches in character animation. Also I don't know what's up with the driving. When he goes through a long turn there are small digital adjustments being made like someone tapping on a left-button on a keyboard, rather than just steering slightly to the left on a thumbstick on a gamepad. But other parts of the game, like the shooting parts, are clearly being played on a gamepad, so... uh, yeah, I have no idea what's going on there. Also the motorbike driving looks as stiff as the car-driving, but then again I've given up hope on seeing good bike-driving physics in open world games that don't have "Grand Theft Auto" in their title.

For all it's flaws though, whenever a hand-to-hand combat section comes up all is forgiven. It looks, frankly, like a barrel of laughs. And I like how it's integrated into the shootouts as well, by giving you very little ammo, from time to time you'll need to take down a thug and get his weapon to keep on shooting. Makes shootouts more tactical. And the way the slomo is handled looks good too, extending your slomo-time with each kill you make. Even the driving is saved somewhat by the shooting as they've made it quite easy to take out the tires of your enemies. Seeing a car flip over in slow motion on a busy highway is one of life's simple pleasures, and looks like it'll make the driving parts a lot more bearable.

I like the parts where he's just walking through the streets and the marketplace as well. Good idea to pull the camera in close to the character for those parts. Streetlife becomes a lot more immersive when viewed at eye-level, as the first person mod for GTA4 demonstrated.

Well, that's enough prattling from me about a game that might well suck ass when it comes out and which it seems noone but me gives a rat's ass about anyway! I'M OUT!

[Yakoob]

And by warts I specifically mean the noticable scenery pop-up in a few places, and the glitches in character animation. Also I don't know what's up with the driving. When he goes through a long turn there are small digital adjustments being made like someone tapping on a left-button on a keyboard, rather than just steering slightly to the left on a thumbstick on a gamepad.

Eh I wouldn't worry about it. I didnt see the release date, but I'd assume since it only got announced its still early/mid development, so plenty of time to iron this stuff out. It's exactly this stuff that gets left out when you're rushing to make an E3 demo.

[henke]

The release date is in a little over a month and they've been working on it for 4 years.

So yeah, I'm worried.

[Yakoob]

Ah, nevermind then. All hope is lost!

Unless it's an older built they used, you know, a custom one specially for E3 before they got to ironing the bugs out, but didnt want to merge those changes in fear of "breaking" it. We'll see.

[EvaUnit02]

Scenery pop-in and animations glitches... trivial shit not worth losing sleep over. I highly doubt that it will be anywhere near as buggy as pushed out of the door, highly buggy and incomplete trash that Bohemia and the awful publisher Paradox peddle.

[EvaUnit02]

PC version features:-

-Not capped to 30fps
-DX11 features "like AO, AA, shadow quality and filtering"
-High resolution texture pack on day 1
-Multi-monitor support
-No DX9 support, so thus no XP support.

Minimum specifications

OS: Windows Vista or Windows 7
Processor: Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz or Athlon X2 2.4 GHz
RAM: 2GB
Graphic card: DirectX 10 or 11 compatible NVIDIA or AMD ATI card, ATI Radeon 3870 or higher, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT or higher.
Graphics card memory: 512 MB
Sound card: DirectX compatible sound card
Hard drive: 15 GB

Recommended specifications

OS: Windows 7 64-bit
Processor: Quad-core Intel or AMD CPU
RAM: 4GB
Graphics card: DirectX 11 NVIDIA or AMD ATI card, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 or ATI Radeon 6950.
Graphics card memory: 1 GB
Sound card: DirectX compatible sound card
Hard drive: 15 GB

[demagogue]

For some reason I'm always interested in the NYTimes game reviews, I guess by the idea they're not actually catering to gamers but try to be more generalist? Anyway... Sleeping Dogs review.

[Subjective Effect]

Asian GTAIV with bullet-time and kung-fu? Looks fun if you like that sort of thing and a few years ago I'd've been all over it. I'll pass though, I'm into more abstract stuff these days.

[faetal]

Please tell me you were sipping chartreuse and tapping ash from a cheroot when you typed that.

[Subjective Effect]

Not at all. My favourite games of the past year have been Shadow of the Colossus and Journey.

[faetal]

SotC is one of the rare games which makes me lament not owning a console.

[Muzman]

Without paying any attention to this I kind of took it for something like that Chow Yun Fat game from a couple of years back with more GTA-ish elements. But after watching TB's thing (http://youtu.be/ZI3AeT9pI9w well some of it anyway. It's crazy long) it looks really rather good.
The Ah Beng simulator the world has been waiting for.

[demagogue]

According to that review, the hook that made it interesting for him was that you're an undercover cop, so conflicted in what you're doing. It's a good fit for gameplay just because it gives you (and the PC) a natural reason for doing things that's a little beyond just "Your guy is a criminal so naturally likes to shoot people." Plus the whole paranoia angle that made the Departed a good movie. You're in the lion's den and don't know what they may or may not know about you.

[henke]

Yeah, I'm surprised by the praise the story's been getting. I expected a cool actiongame, but if it has a good story as well, that's great.

Ah, if only I didn't have so many games to play already I might've gotten this on release.

[Subjective Effect]

Hmmm. I may have to reconsider this due to that storyline.

SotC is one of the rare games which makes me lament not owning a console.

So get one then.

[Briareos H]

More like get PCSX2 then.

[Muzman]

According to that review, the hook that made it interesting for him was that you're an undercover cop, so conflicted in what you're doing. It's a good fit for gameplay just because it gives you (and the PC) a natural reason for doing things that's a little beyond just "Your guy is a criminal so naturally likes to shoot people." Plus the whole paranoia angle that made the Departed a good movie. You're in the lion's den and don't know what they may or may not know about you.

Yeah. You apparently get ratings for obeying the law too, or at least being light on the wanton destruction and murder, during missions. I don't know if this affects the story any. The rating allows certain upgrades you can't get other ways though, like your 'cool' stat (called Face I think) which allows you to intimidate and unnerve opponents.
Interesting idea. I'm curious to see how it plays out. One of the things that was a hard disbelief to suspend in GTA (especially 4 with its touch of realism) was how doing stuff in the world just didn't really matter much (and that's been the mantra of open world games ever since). This doesn't change that a great deal really, but interesting to see incentive to behaving well at all.

[demagogue]

I remember making the mistake of playing GTA:SA when my little 5 y.o. nephew walked in and was instantly entranced. So I showed him a little of driving around with the sound off, thinking maybe it's ok if we're just driving around, right? And then of course eventually some gang member or somebody shoots my car and it bursts into flames and I have to jump out before it explodes.

And then I'm walking around and my nephew says something like, "So, where's your car? Can you go home and get it?" And I don't want to hijack a car in front of him, but he'll probably throw a fit if I just turn it off, so have to say something like ... "uh, do you think you could go pick up your toy from the floor first?" And while he's picking it up I hijack a car really quickly, so when he gets back I can say "Ok, well I got my car back. Let's drive around." Then the next time I visited I just told him I don't have that game on my computer anymore. But we can play some Need for Speed.

[faetal]

So get one then.

I don't own a TV and don't really want one. It's a big financial outlay for just one game.

This game seems to have totally stayed off of my radar, but is sounding pretty intriguing. Since I am backed up behind a mile of games though, I reckon it's one to wait for a sale on.

[dethtoll]

itt subjeff forgets that not everyone is rich -- again

[faetal]

It's not even that I can't afford it. I just don't desire a TV and buying one just for a game seems disproportionate. Even if I was loaded, I wouldn't be able to justify it. Emulator might be worth a go though.

[demagogue]

For Shadow of the Colossus, an emulator is worth a go. That's how I played it. One thing (depending on the emulator maybe), you might need to toy with the acceleration or frame-skip options so it doesn't play in slow-motion.

[faetal]

Back on piste - it would be incredibly intriguing to have a GTA-style game with persistent effects resulting from player actions. Obviously, if done wrong, it could totally fuck up the game, but if done right...

[demagogue]

Well this is one thing I liked about my beloved Hardwar. It was an open world with a working economy (resources getting mined, getting sold to the refiners, then sold on to make into goods like ship-parts, then sold on to the consumers), and because it was a real economy, you could totally unilaterally mess with the supply and demand and control a lot of what happens in the world, have the NPCs build what you supply them to build, or cornering a market with a monopoly and cashing in, or purposefully waaay underselling and pushing everyone else out of business... You can do it a little with controlling what villagers build in Minecraft, but that didn't have the whole chain of people from "farm to plate" you could mess with as in Hardwar. (And it's not like a top-down sim; it's still a first-person world you're flying around in.)

But yeah, neither it nor Minecraft have the same kind of open social world that GTA has, with 1000s of NPCs and a full-on city... So bringing that kind of gameplay to a GTA world could be epic IMO.