Originally abandoned by Activision, the newly revived Sleeping Dogs seems like it may be able to do everything, except put someone to sleep of course. Now while the demonstrations on the show-room floor gave people a chance to try out the unique melee system that Sleeping Dogs contains, we were able to witness a closed-door experience with the PC build of the game demonstrating the shooting mechanics as well as some of the driving action that the final game will contain. We join up with Wei Shen in what appeared to be a night club that he was running somewhere in Hong Kong under his current boss. Shen and two of his compatriots are trying to figure out who just attacked them in what was likely the mission that would have taken place before, when suddenly a man named Ponytail shows up with a proposal.
Rather than giving a portion of their profits to their current boss, Shen and his crew would need to pay a different Triad boss who goes by the name Big Smile Lee. Obviously this proposal wasn’t met with handshakes and smiles, and Shen told him to leave and never come back. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t realize that Lee’s men had already surrounded the club and infiltrated the place and his refusal instantly began a bloodbath. Now the third person gunplay style doesn’t seem too unfamiliar from what most people will be used to, such as taking cover behind walls and various objects. What does make the gunplay interesting is the fact that the title contains some quite interesting bullet time factors. Players will be able to enter a bullet-time like mode and leap over cover, dive over railings and perform various other stunts like one would see in action movies while shooting at enemies.
After eliminating all of the thugs inside of the night club, we watched as the developer took Shen out onto the street and hopped into a car to chase after Ponytail as he tried to flee the scene. Now rather than actually drive the car, the player had control over Shen as he hung outside of the passenger side window and took out any enemy vehicles that were pursuing them. The entire car chase played out almost exactly like an action movie considering the realistic reflections of the lights on the cars. Plus, the vehicles the enemies were driving seemed to have some mini explosives hidden in their tires considering nearly every vehicle that was taken out would end up launching itself into the air in some way or another. This was especially true for whenever the player took out the tires on the vehicle, with it actually jumping into the air at least five feet.
After a very exhilarating car chase with plenty of flipping and rolling cars, the player had to chase after the Ponytail man. During this segment we saw that the player would also be taking part in some minor free running as the player had to climb over fences, burst through doors of occupied homes, jump and climb onto roof tops and more. Unfortunately that ended our experience with Sleeping Dogs but this unique experience already looks like it will be hard to pass up when it is released on August 4th.
