PAX East 2012 Hands On: ‘Sleeping Dogs’

Formerly known as True Crime: Hong Kong, Sleeping Dogs was showcased at the SquareEnix booth on the show floor this weekend at PAX East. I got a chance to sit down with some of the people who worked on the game, and learn more about this open world crime drama.

Based loosely on Infernal Affairs, Sleeping Dogs takes place in modern-day Hong Kong, and revolves around police officer Wei Shen who goes undercover to take down a Triad organization. The developers I spoke with emphasized that the game will be very serious, with emphasis on a dramatic storyline.

On the outside, Sleeping Dogs may look like Grand Theft Auto set in Hong Kong. But they’ve really taken their time to make sure that while this game is very much a sandbox, it’s not a reskinned GTA clone. I got to check out a demo of a racing mission in the game, and the driving system is very precise. I didn’t feel like I was flying all over the road, and since several developers of Need for Speed had a hand in creating Sleeping Dogs, it makes sense that the driving be top notch.

My favorite moments of the Sleeping Dogs demo were when I got to test out their new combat system, featuring a fully interactive environment. In another section of the demo, after escaping from Triad members who were trying to torture me, I then murdered one Triad member by throwing them down an elevator shaft, one of them by slamming their face into a table saw, and crushed another one’s head in a refrigerator door, and it all controlled easily and seamlessly. I then escaped to the roof, where I was able to pick up a gun, throw my enemies off the roof, then vault over numerous obstacles to disarm another enemy and silence him before he could summon his buddies.

The game also features some of the coolest cover art ever, which some of you may be familiar with if you’ve seen the work of Tyler Stout on Mondo Tees.

After being tossed around from Activision to Square Enix and renamed, I’m excited that Sleeping Dogs will finally be coming to Microsoft Windows, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360 this fall.