Sleeping Dogs: Same old, same old.

Alright well this is now a day late, that will give you an idea how much deep I have gone into Sleeping Dogs and all I can say is that the combat is satisfying, now deep would be a stretch.  If it wasn't for the games long play time (which believe me I am not complaining) the combat would be praised much more but right now it boils down to being a little repetitive yet still a lot of fun.  The combat suffers from the familiar problem of lets have the player be surrounded by enemies but lets only have one enemy other than the one the player is engaging attack.  I understand they do this to avoid frustration and a crazy high difficulty level but if you give the player the ability to counter with such devastatingly brutal attacks such as breaking an enemies leg then why not send multiple attacking enemies at the player?  Oh I know why, because the attack combo "leg break" doesn't actually break the enemies let, it does proved an awesome looking attack and animation with a satisfying crunch sound but ultimately it only leaves the enemy dazed for a few moments.  This ultimately is where Sleeping Dogs brutal and awesome looking combat fails in delivering the martial arts combat scene in films.

The main mechanic of Sleeping Dogs is its fighting system, rightfully so it is the most fun and one can definitely see the effort put into it but I have to ask what is wrong with leaving enemies incapacitated instead of having to knock them out or kill them?  What if the leg break combo actually broke an enemies leg and it was left to the pleasures discretion on whether or not they wanted to walk over and finish off that enemy?  Better yet why not get rid of the whole losing points for property destruction as an undercover cop when instead the player could lose points for going that extra mile and beating thugs to death every two seconds.  That is a funny thing I noticed, when you are not on a case file mission you have free rain to do whatever it is you want, I ran around trying to see how many citizens I could jump kick in the face, player choice I get it but last time I checked undercover cops don't do this.  Or maybe just maybe all the crimes of people getting jump kicked in the face is really being committed by undercover cops trying to take down the triads and we just don't know it, somehow I doubt it.  I have enjoyed my time with Sleeping Dogs but players looking for a realistic martial arts or just combat system in general should pass this one up, now if you are looking for just some fun running through and destroying gangsters in Hon Kong then by all means give it a shot.  All in all I much rather have a combat system in which I demobilized several enemies via broken limbs because it is all I can do to defend myself rather than beating up a two out of a time while the other six watch on in amazement.