There is a solid if not perfect, pure action game, revolving around the martial arts-based, dynamic, [i]Arkham[/i]-esque combat system with delightfully brutal environmental finishers, taking inspiration from Hong Kong action cinema classics inside this rather lackluster open world game, which makes me wish someone would've interfered at one point to scale it back to that game in its development, because open world elements add near nothing of note to [i]Sleeping Dogs[/i].
Traversal isn't fun for example; driving lacks necessary and consistent physics to work properly and parkour --if you can even call it that-- feels stiff and unresponsive. Setting of Hong Kong --albeit being pretty to look at, seemingly authentic and comperatively fresh-- with its narrow roads, locales devoid of life and only a handful and repetitive side activities, doesn't offer much. There is not enough edge --or humor or grit or realism or spice, poison of your own choice really-- to be found in its worldbuilding. Dull presentation just makes a waste of superb voice acting from everybody involved. Shockingly, considering its inspirations and the themes at hand, story just reeks of banality; main character empty, side characters unexplored, antagonists one dimensional, clever writing to give said main character any proper, interesting or relatable motivation or the overall story some surprising twists and turns, non-existent. Cover-based TPS elements feel crammed in for no other reason than to draw in the usual open world crowd who just wanted something to pass to time with till next GTA came out, which is especially saddening because they could've just copied [i]Stranglehold[/i] one-to-one and call it a day, without any objections in my opinion. Yet, they went with something that felt more like a PS2-era janky shooter, either because of the lack of experience with shooters or external meddling, not sure.
Not every neat idea, or a particularly fun gameplay loop needed to be forcefully turned into an open world game back in the day just because previous GTA made bank and the long development cycles of GTA games made other greedy and opportunistic publishers turn everything into an open world game to make the best out of that era without a new GTA but sadly it was the case for a while --the myth of a "[i]GTA killer[/i]" thankfully died out in recent years-- just like how the same thing is happening only with a different genre, many projects with even an ounce potential, just turning into either another "[i]friend-slop[/i]" or "[i]live service[/i]" game to their detriment.
Despite everything, it gets reasonably cheap and offers at least a great moment or two if you can see past the jank and forced open world bloat it comes with. I can recommend it just because of the finishers to be honest.
