You can feel the urban crush as tower blocks and sky-scrapers loom over you everywhere you go, while the dozens of shop signs protruding over the roads act almost like an ad-hoc rooftop in some areas. Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated area on Earth, and Sleeping Dogs reflects this density on screen. The result is a stunning recreation of Hong Kong's unique cultural mesh, where Chinese shop signs sit alongside British road-signs. Sleeping Dogs' city is drawn from over 25,000 photos United Front took as they spent a week exploring the city. Indeed, what makes Sleeping Dogs stand out isn't so much its choice of setting, but United Front's dedication to making its Hong Kong feel as authentic as possible. This is especially easy to do with GTA-style games, because modern cities are often so similarly structured.
You need to add a large number of ingredients to ensure everyone is sufficiently fed, but if you just throw everything into the pot all you'll end up with is a bland mulch. It's like cooking a meal to serve a large number of people. Making an open world of any kind feel distinct is a huge challenge in and of itself. I don't think this latter point is appreciated enough. This is because Sleeping Dogs is by some margin my favourite open-city game one that takes the familiar Grand Theft Auto template, adds some fantastic embellishments that more developers should imitate, and places it in one of the most visually distinctive and interesting virtual cities ever designed. Nonetheless, I've been looking for an excuse to write about Sleeping Dogs for ages, and as I wandered around Yakuza 0's Kamurocho district for the first time earlier this year, the aesthetic similarities were enough for me to latch onto like a dog that has just been aroused from slumber by having its tail stood on. If these games were restaurants and I wandered into Sleeping Dogs expecting to dine on tuna sashimi, I would rightfully be scorned. Yet while Shenmue and Yakuza are quintessentially Japanese games, while Sleeping Dogs is a Canadian production set in Hong Kong. With Yakuza back in the spotlight again and Shenmue reappearing after 20 years in the wilderness, I've been thinking a lot about Sleeping Dogs, United Front's open-world crime epic that is often considered a cousin to Yakuza.
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