Here's a little-known factoid for you about Sleeping Dogs. It didn't actually start life as True Crime: Hong Kong, but as another game called 'Orange Lotus', before Activision decided to rebrand the game to tie-in with an already established franchise. That was before the publisher then decided to chuck the whole thing in the bin. Enter Square Enix who rescued the game from extinction, renamed it Sleeping Dogs and pushed the project forward, giving United Front Games the support it needed to get the job done. And based on what we've seen and played so far, it might just be an incredibly canny decision on Square Enix's part.
It's not been that long since we last played Sleeping Dogs at GDC, sampling the free-running chase to take down Ming and a street race, but this time around we're allowed off the leash a little more, presented with some new sequences and a chance to explore the vibrant, bustling city of Hong Kong. As undercover cop Wei Shen, you're job is to infiltrate the Sun On Yee Triad organisation, taking down the Red Poles (Triad lieutenants) and working your way up to the Dragon head, who's the Triad big cheese.
In the first part of our demo, we're shown a mission in which we have to grab the treacherous Johnny the Ratface for the menacing Mrs. Chu. Johnny's gone AWOL though, which means Shen needs to track him down by triangulating the signal on his mobile phone to draw a bead on him. This involves a little mini-game that means scanning for a signal and then listening in on phone calls around the city. Once you hear something suspicious, you can zone in on it, and hopefully find your target in the process.
Tracking Johnny, Wei Shen eventually pursues him in a car chase that concludes at Ratface's hideout. At this point, Wei Shen has Johnny's thugs to deal with, so he pulls out a tyre iron from the trunk of his car and sets to work rearranging their faces. Handily, every car has a tyre iron in its trunk, so if you ever need a weapon, you'll know exactly where to look. However, Wei Shen can handle himself in a fight with or without a weapon, and he's not averse to finishing enemies in brutal, often grotesque ways, like mashing someone's face into a ventilation fan. It's messy, but it does the job.
Apprehending Ratface, we stuff him into the trunk of our car, whisk him back to Mrs. Chu and leave him to acquaint himself with the Triad matriarch's cleaver. Nasty stuff. Successfully completing the mission grants you three kinds of XP, namely Triad XP, Police XP and Face XP. Triad and Police XP is awarded for completing tasks on behalf of the criminal organisation and law enforcement respectively, so rising through the Triad ranks while taking a villain off the streets will earn you XP for both, whereas Face XP is rewarded based on your style, image and methods. Face XP increases your fame in a sense, meaning you'll be recognised as a member of the Triads and gain access to side-missions called 'Favors'.
Our hands-off section concluded, we're subsequently left to our own devices, picking up with a sequence that has Wei Shen smartly dressed for a meeting with a high-ranking Triad named Tong. Of course, the entire meeting turns out to be a set-up that Shen walks straight into. Knocked unconscious, Wei Shen awakes to find Tong readying his torture tools that include pliers, scalpels and a power drill. A fortuitous distraction later however, and Shen finds himself on the floor, crawling towards a saw blade to cut through the ropes bonding his hands together.
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