Sleeping Dogs is an open-world adventure game that generated a cult following enamored with the title’s expansive environment, intricate hand-to-hand combat system, and casting of Emma Stone in a lead role. The story follows the same pattern–nothing ground breaking, but well-told and featuring unique characters which draw you into Wei Shen's life, making the player care about his problems and the world itself. It's fighting system is easy to learn but offers lots of variety in terms of what moves the player can use, with enemy types that force the player to vary their play style, and just enough difficulty to feel challenging. The open world offers plenty of content, but not so much that it feels like busywork or that it drowns out the game with too much to do. An exercise in refinement, what makes Sleeping Dogs a great title is that everything it does, it excels in. Aside from its distinctive setting and a handful of mechanics focused around making the player feel like they're playing a movie– such as Action Hijack, where Wei can jump from one car to another during chase scenes–it's not terribly original. To be sure, Sleeping Dogs is nothing groundbreaking and expecting otherwise will only lead to disappointment. Of course, if you haven't played the game then all of this becomes a moot point and this is still an excellent title. The story DLC alone will add an additional four or five hours of gameplay, and grant you everything from new fighting moves to an epilogue to Wei Shen's story after his time with the Triad.

It's nothing you couldn't have already experienced on PC or the older consoles, but for those who aren't big into paying for DLC, it's a nice gesture. Over 20 different DLC are included that offer everything from costumes of other popular Eidos games to additional story content. Instead, the game relies on packaging in the frankly overwhelming amount of DLC.

Nothing major, but at least a small selling point to lure people who've already played the game to perhaps give it a second try.

If nothing else, Square could have allowed United Front to add in a few new cars, outfits, and songs for the radio. It's certainly nothing to be compared to the massive list of changes Rockstar has planned for their next-gen release of GTA V, and in that I confess to being a little disappointed. The textures are a little better and they added some impressive fog effects, but outside of that the changes are incredibly minimal, like changing the phone's display to resemble an iPhone. So let's get a few things out of the way: If you've already played Sleeping Dogs, this is absolutely the same game as before.

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