Sleeping Dogs (Formerly Known As "True Crime: Hong Kong") Catch All

garion333 wrote:

Oh. Not good. The HD 4200 is an integrated graphics chip, not a graphics card. The long and short of that means it's not really made for gaming. You can play older stuff (WoW for example) but most anything from the past few years isn't going to run. Sorry.

Is this a laptop or desktop?

Yeah, that's what I figured, but thought I should check. For someone who works in I.T. (database administrator) I know almost nothing about PC hardware, particularly graphics. Most problems I have involve memory and disk I/O.

It is a desktop, connected directly to our HDTV. Mostly using it for Hulu, although theoretically I want to play some games on it. (Good candidate for the Final Fantasy VII PC re-release.)

I think it's almost criminal that they're charging money to seed the city with an extra million HKD when Dr. Tran's missions are so easy and profitable. They start off at "very" profitable, paying more than any other single mission for relatively little effort, but by the end I was getting around 300,000 per mission. One nearly hit 600,000. It was enough for me to buy a nice suit, and then put on that nice suit and buy all of the best cars for each class, plus a couple of Class A's because I like to make the parking attendant miserable.

Not crazy about how the game handles guns. The shooting is competent and all, but it kind of sucks that they aren't permanent items, especially when you sometimes get them out of lockboxes and the like. They just feel kind of tacked on.

I just unlocked the fourth safehouse and it's interesting to see where this game gets all its ideas. I get the feeling they played a lot of Mafia II during this game's development.

I really like the martial arts school mechanic, if only because the teacher seems to appreciate it when I break his students' legs.

garion333 wrote:

There's a demo now for those on the fence.

Unfortunately me for me the demo tipped this from "maybe I'll buy it today as a b-day gift to myself" to "ehhh, I think I'll get Syndicate instead".

It started off intriguing enough, until I bumped into a couple of bystanders and noticed that they seemed to be wearing roller skates instead of shoes. The main character seemed to float about an inch above the sidewalk as well. And the chase mission (Dog Eyes) felt so clunky.

The combat seems nice, but it just wasn't telegraphed well enough in the demo to prevent it from being an exercise in frustration. "Don't let Grapplers grapple you!" OK...[proceed to get grappled over and over and over and over and over].

garion333 wrote:

There's a demo now for those on the fence.

360? This is what I need to push me over the edge.

Fedaykin98 wrote:
garion333 wrote:

There's a demo now for those on the fence.

360? This is what I need to push me over the edge.

Sorry, I meant for PC. Don't know about the consoles. Perhaps in this week's update.

LobsterMobster wrote:

Not crazy about how the game handles guns. The shooting is competent and all, but it kind of sucks that they aren't permanent items, especially when you sometimes get them out of lockboxes and the like. They just feel kind of tacked on.

Agreed, the ones in lockboxes are almost entirely pointless unless you just want to gun down some random pedestrians for kicks since there's even odds that you'll lose it if the next story mission you're on decides you shouldn't have a gun.

LobsterMobster wrote:

I really like the martial arts school mechanic, if only because the teacher seems to appreciate it when I break his students' legs.

It's pretty funny. He'll berate his students for getting beaten up by an American as you do it.

Fedaykin98 wrote:
garion333 wrote:

There's a demo now for those on the fence.

360? This is what I need to push me over the edge.

Yes, I played the demo last night on 360.

nel e nel wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:
garion333 wrote:

There's a demo now for those on the fence.

360? This is what I need to push me over the edge.

Yes, I played the demo last night on 360.

Nice. I'll have to do that asap.

I found the combat in the pc demo to be unresponsive and finicky, is that representative of the game itself?

ibdoomed wrote:

I found the combat in the pc demo to be unresponsive and finicky, is that representative of the game itself?

Mouse and keyboard or controller?

nel e nel wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:
garion333 wrote:

There's a demo now for those on the fence.

360? This is what I need to push me over the edge.

Yes, I played the demo last night on 360.

How is it on the 360? I'm *this* close to cashing in some store credit and grabbing it.

Nicholaas wrote:
nel e nel wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:
garion333 wrote:

There's a demo now for those on the fence.

360? This is what I need to push me over the edge.

Yes, I played the demo last night on 360.

How is it on the 360? I'm *this* close to cashing in some store credit and grabbing it.

You can see my thoughts above. For all the hype it's getting, I found it to be a bit frustrating, but that could be that the demo drops you into the middle of the storyline without the difficulty ramp up so you get used to the controls. I think it's been too long since I played Arkham City and my patience has worn thin for melee combat of this style so I was trying to button mash to no avail.

So nice I said it twice.

garion333 wrote:
ibdoomed wrote:

I found the combat in the pc demo to be unresponsive and finicky, is that representative of the game itself?

Mouse and keyboard or controller?

360 controller, is M&K better? I might give it another shot if so.

It felt like if I wasn't within a narrow cone of facing a target, the counter wouldn't trigger and the window of opportunity to counter feels earlier than it should be.

The counter doesn't care which direction you're facing. It's all about timing, and if you screw up the timing it'll leave you vulnerable for a moment (there's an upgrade that reduces how long). You just need to wait for a dude to turn red, hit counter, and there you go.

I prefer the gamepad. A mouse might make gunplay a little bit easier but guns are very rare and the auto-aim is decent.

The full game does a good job of slowly introducing new moves (both for you and for your enemies) and has a pretty forgiving curve. I can see how it could be overwhelming and confusing without that ramp up.

Yeah, I was a little frustrated with it at first, especially coming off playing Arkham City and Batman's superhuman speed and fluidity. But it works really well. I'm getting into some heavier gun missions now, and the game definitely hiccups a bit. It wasn't designed for shootouts, and the controls are pretty finicky on the gamepad.

I'm going to do some videos of the outfits you can unlock. Here's the first one.

There's a Reservoir Dogs outfit that's pretty cool. I also like the doctor's coat and my custom outfit.

LobsterMobster wrote:

There's a Reservoir Dogs outfit that's pretty cool. I also like the doctor's coat and my custom outfit.

You always did look good in hotpants. *dreamy sigh*

Rallick wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

There's a Reservoir Dogs outfit that's pretty cool. I also like the doctor's coat and my custom outfit.

You always did look good in hotpants. *dreamy sigh*

They're boxer shorts!

LobsterMobster wrote:
Rallick wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

There's a Reservoir Dogs outfit that's pretty cool. I also like the doctor's coat and my custom outfit.

You always did look good in hotpants. *dreamy sigh*

They're boxer shorts! :D

They look like hotpants from where I'm sitting!

Spoiler:

A guy can dream, can't he?

Hmm... Hard to tell with all that blood in the way. Could be either one!

I am just continually blown away by this game! yes it's similar to GTA IV, but with much more personality in my opinion!

Coolbeans wrote:

I am just continually blown away by this game! yes it's similar to GTA IV, but with much more personality in my opinion!

Totally agree. I ran into a couple sticky spots in the main story because I couldn't get the combat worked out, but then decided to spend some time exploring and getting the health boosts from the shrines. Did that for about 4 hours and loved it.

I will post a funny pic that I took of a cop car that exploded right near me and the best I could discern was that after they chased me for some minor motor vehicle infraction and I got away, they kept driving at a high rate of "freak out" and were slamming into walls and pedestrians. They then must have damaged their vehicle soo much that their car exploded. Totally caught me off guard. lol

Grabbed this the other day on GMG for a whopping £7.50. I can't believe I've skipped this until now. I enjoyed the previous 'True Crime' games, but they were a bit short and shallow. I have to say I've been very pleasantly surprised by this, though.

The navigation on foot is a bit janky sometimes, and the camera angles for indoor fights can sometimes leave more enemies behind you, out of shot. Overall though, it is very satisfying to come out of a fight with 5 or 6 bad guys without taking a hit. Not exactly a realistic game by any means, but I think, in comparison with newer GTAs, it;s easier to concentrate on what you're doing. In GTA I think they've added too many side-things and I just end up with a stupendous amount to do.

Sunk 12 hours in over the last two and a bit days. Lovely.

What is the word on the DLC? The ones that actually add game content, the fight tournament and the Halloween sounding one?

Do you think the game is better for being switched to a male protagonist?

demonbox wrote:

Do you think the game is better for being switched to a male protagonist?

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say nobody knows because nobody's played it with a female protagonist

If I had to guess I'd say it's better, independent of gender issues. Switching publishers gave them the time and resources needed to hammer out the issues that were keeping it from releasing prior.

Wei is a very strong and likable character, something I find rare for the genre. The women he interacts with in any serious way so far have been maturely written and well acted.

NathanialG wrote:

What is the word on the DLC? The ones that actually add game content, the fight tournament and the Halloween sounding one?

I haven't played any of it, but my impression from the descriptions is it all seems kind of light and not the kind of stuff that I would want to go back to game to check out after having finished the main story. As some kind of goty edition bundle or something before you started playing at all, then maybe it'd be worthwhile?

edit: admittedly, the decision is out of my hands in this case as I've lent the game to a friend.

The DLC really didn't appeal to me. Anyway, I was happy with the game as it was, story concluded. Really enjoyed my time with it, but I don't think I'll be back to replay it, at least not for a very long time.