Sleeping Dogs is a video game that is handy, and is one of the most fun of the last few years, able to compete quietly even with the most prominent competition. When she came to store shelves, however, she did not give any particular clamor, and in this episode of Why (not) Famous we will find out why.
The story of the development of Sleeping Dogs is rather troublesome and dribbling, since it was originally the third chapter of Activision’s True Crime series whose development began in 2008. With the True Crime code name: Hong Kong, the title was shown with a first trailer on December 12, 2009 during the Spike Video Game Awards, where the publisher also announced that the development would be the United Front Games instead of the historic LuxoFlux.
After months of absence from the scenes, August 6, 2010 was announced for the following year but arrived in February 2011, the project was actually canceled because it did not reflect expectations, considering current competition with other titles in the gender.
This Activision decision greatly annoyed the development team, which had practically finished the title and announced its disappointment on its website through the words of executive producer Stephen Van Der Mescht. Despite the low expectations of the publisher, he argued that the game could easily challenge the competition and embark on the gaming market thanks to several peculiarities. So in August of that same year, Square Enix acquired the rights to play the game and went to work with United Front Games to finish it and in a year later, in August 2012, finally came to sleeping dogs .
In the title, the player dressed in detective Wei Shen, who recently returned to Hong Kong after a long period of stay in the United States, intent on infiltrating the criminal organization known as “The Triad” to break it from the inside.
The structure is that of a third-person open-world action where you can move freely for the beautiful reconstruction of Hong Kong both on foot and on board of various vehicles, but the true added value that differentiates the title from the Grand Theft series Auto or other such exponents is the perfect body-to-body combat system. The feeling of confrontation is really realistic and fulfilling, to perfect it Square Enix has collaborated with Georges St-Pierre, a well-known martial arts wrestler.
With multiplatform on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, Sleeping Dogs unfortunately did not win the game right away, even though it came with very high expectations and aggressive sales targets over the first six months. Accepted critically by the average, with a Metacritic ranging between 75 and 85 for various versions, has been able to carve out a good slice of the market, mainly thanks to the remastered edition published for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in October 2014.
If a Sleeping Dogs is true it is – as stated by Square Enix President Yoichi Wada – a title that best sells in the West over the medium / long run, on the other hand it is undeniable that it has seen light in a year full of much anticipated outcomes (both first and third parties) from Halo 4 to Assassin’s Creed III, Borderlands 2, Mass Effect 3, Resident Evil 6 and Call of Duty Black Ops 2.
