YMMV / Sleeping Dogs (2012)

• Accidental Aesop: To traditional, old fashioned, Chinese people, do not rely solely on superstition as a way to dictate how a life or outcome should be decided. Or else (as shown in "Bad Luck"), some unscrupulous folks may exploit Feng Shui to their own advantage.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Either Raymond was right about Wei Shen having become the very gangster he was supposed to bring down, or Wei is just really good at keeping his cover.
  • Did Superintendent Pendrew have good intentions when he goes to the extreme to take down Sun On Yee, or is he a plain deluded liar who's as bad as his enemies? Or worse, that he's just a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist who's only out for himself. He paved the way for Uncle Po's ascension only because it also moves his career up. He pulled Wei to Hong Kong only to further his own promotion to the Interpol. Most damningly, he has no problem leaving the Triad in the hands of Big Smile Lee, the most brutal and violent Red Pole who are certain to make Hong Kong much more dangerous for everyone.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Dogeyes. When you finally fight him he's no tougher than any other "elite" enemy like Ming or Ponytail and will do down fairly quick especially if you are boosted with a Dragon Kick drink. Somewhat fitting for such a Smug Snake.
• Awesome Music: From modern Cantonese music to western hits and electronica, the game's radio has something for everyone.
  • The main theme. IS THIS. Someday you're gonna realize you've been sleepwalking thru it all...
  • OAIEEEEEEE EE EE...
• Best Level Ever: In the penultimate mission, you're captured by Big Smile Lee's chief enforcer, Mr. Tong, and are subjected to torture. After being knocked out, you proceed to escape the apartment building he trapped you in, barefooted and bare-chested. What ensues is an epic Roaring Rampage of Revenge that makes Die Hard look like it was for babies.
• Cliché Storm: An undercover cop infiltrating a crime organization, gains trust by taking whatever orders are given to him, does whatever it takes to ensure his cover's not blown and quickly rises in the organization's ranks.
• Complete Monster:
  • Henry "Big Smile" Lee is the vicious Sun On Yee Red Pole—senior member—in charge of getting girls addicted to drugs then roping them into prostitution and pornography to support their habit. In order to expand his power within the Triad, Lee engineered a civil war within the Sun On Yee between Dogeyes's Jade Gang and Winston Chu's Water Street Gang, which culminated in an attack on Winston Chu's wedding, leading to the deaths of Winston Chu, his bride, Peggy Li, and eventually Uncle Po, the head of the Triad. In addition to his prostitution racket, Lee is also known for sending his horrifying enforcer, Liu Shen Tong—better known as Mr. Tong—after his enemies. Finding out Wei Shen is an undercover cop, he has Wei's best friend, Jackie Ma, Buried Alive, and while Wei manages to save him, Jackie is still tortured and disemboweled by Mr. Tong on Lee's orders. Lee also has Wei tortured himself, planning on the torture lasting for days before having Wei buried alive as well. Known for responding with overwhelming brutality even in the face of mere annoyances, Big Smile Lee is one of the most feared and despised Sun On Yee members in the city, even among his fellow gang members.
  • Liu Shen Tong, aka "Mr. Tong", is a dreaded interrogator and enforcer for the Sun On Yee. Feared for his cruel methods of murdering spies and traitors, Tong kills undercover cop Charles Ho by brutally torturing him and burying him alive to finish him off. Helping "Big Smile" Lee kill those in his gang who don't support his rise to power, Tong kidnaps Wei's friend Jackie Ma in an attempt to bury him alive, but after he's rescued by Wei, Tong kidnaps Jackie again to disembowel him and hang his corpse up for Wei to see. With Wei in his grasp, Tong expresses cold joy at getting to torture him to death, hoping to break his record of 48 hours.
  • Sam "Dogeyes" Lin is the slimy head of the Jade Gang faction of the Sun On Yee, serving as Winston's greatest rival. Dogeyes's gang is more brutal and malicious in its activities, and he regularly escalates the war against Winston, resulting in pointless deaths on both sides of the conflict. When Dogeyes is given the opportunity by Big Smile Lee, he personally arranges the massacre at Winston's wedding, claiming the lives of Winston, Peggy, and many of their guests. Dogeyes is particularly loathed by Wei not only for his crimes against Winston, but also for his past as a "procurer" of women who would lure young girls into drugs so he could pimp them out for Lee. Dogeyes personally addicted and sexually abused Wei's sister Mimi—who went on to overdose—and he takes every chance to cruelly mock Wei over her fate.
  • Sonny Wo is a perverted executive and a key member of the Sun On Yee. Namely, Sonny handles supplying the prostitution industry, having aspiring starlets trafficked to Big Smile Lee to become forced sex slaves. Sonny makes "deals" with teens to sleep with older men while he watches in return for their careers, but in the case of Vivienne Lu he continuously prostitutes them out for favors or rewards. Singers who displease, argue with, or simply fail Sonny's expectations are sent to become prostitutes.
  • Year of the Snake DLC: Master Chu is the leader of a doomsday cult who supposedly predicted the world's end on the Chinese New Year. Telling his followers that those who do what he says will go to Heaven alongside him while simultaneously putting little value in them, Master Chu has his cultists plant bombs in largely populated areas throughout Hong Kong in order to initiate the apocalypse, from attempting to destroy crowded marketplaces and parades, to blowing up a bus and killing everybody onboard. Forcing a bomb maker to work for him as his abused slave, Master Chu even has his own men blow themselves up to escape arrest and interrogation.
  • Nightmare in Northpoint DLC: Big Scar Wu, later known as Smiley Cat, was a vicious and ruthless member of the Sun On Yee, so much so that they had him killed for being wicked even by their standards; even giving him an undignified burial via grinding his corpse in cat food and keeping his finger to keep his spirit restless. Mocked for this by the denizens of Hell, Wu plotted revenge before his spirit managed to return and bring with him a demonic army. Wu starts off the DLC by abducting Wei's girlfriend and keeping her captive. Wu then raised demons and Jiang Shi to terrorize and take over Hong Kong, having its citizens possessed and enslaved, using innocent people in rituals to open portals to Hell. Wu then summons the spirits of Wei's dead enemies and has possessed gangsters in order to start his own empire. When Wei confronts Wu at the end of the DLC, Wu mocks Wei with his dead sister, and when seemingly defeated, shows he's secretly possessing Not-Ping.
• Creepy Awesome: Mr. Tong and Big Smile Lee.
• Demonic Spiders: Grapplers. They have the highest health pool of regular enemies, their normal attacks hurt a lot and they are immune to grabs unless you have a specific Face upgrade. On top of that they can grab you (and you can't counter it so you better get out of the way) and if you fail a relatively short timed Press X to Not Die you'll get hit by a very strong attack. The saving grace is that they're almost never blocking but that just leave you open to other enemies attacks when ganged up.
• Disappointing Last Level: The final level basically has you repeat the same Le Parkour chasing you've been doing throughout the game, and concludes with a fight that entirely consists of countering the boss' attacks. You do get to shred him to bits using a nearby ice chipper to finish off the fight, though, so there is that.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: Some critics have said that the game doesn't really do anything new with the open world formula, and/or that the gameplay loop can seem lacking, but consider the story, characters, and atmosphere of Hong Kong to be the best points of the game.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The game has quite a few:
  • Ricky for his charisma and not being a complete bastard among his colleagues.
  • Mrs. Chu for personally butchering the ones who had her son murdered and feeding one to another.
  • Old Salty Crab for being eccentric and overall a lovable and funny character.
  • Sifu Kwok for his hilarious kung-fu related trash talk when learning new techniques from him.
  • The Pork Bun guy. Just look at the comments on this YouTube video.
• Game-Breaker: Wander around town for a bit, and buy one of each of the four kinds of buffs for chump change. Now enjoy 5-15 minutes of being a god of death.
  • Some DLC outfits will dramatically increase your damage or your damage resistance. Combined with the aforementioned buffs, you'll be even more ridiculously powerful.
  • Also, if you have ALL the DLCs, your character will have his cop, triad and face level at eight, which is two more levels to the maximum. The Definitive Edition lacks the boosting DLCs though.
  • Still on DLCs, the Bronze Shaolin Warrior (at the cost of looking ridiculous depending on your perception) reduces melee damage by a whopping 60%, which makes even the most difficult Martial Arts Club a cakewalk. You can go for overkill by drinking an Herbal Tea and boosting your defense even further, making it high enough to shrug off the heavy hits of Grapplers.
  • The DZS-90 from the Wheels of Fury. Granted, you have to complete all five missions before it's yours to keep and fully upgraded, but it's the fastest car in the game and has a tight turn radius thanks to its four-wheel steering, making Class A races (the ones it qualifies for) a cakewalk. As if that wasn't enough, the included concealed machine guns and EMP give you a very unfair edge over the competition.
  • Attacks which stun enemies becomes a game breaker once you realize that it allows you to circle behind the enemy and follow up with a sneak kill (double tap grab when behind an enemy).
• Goddamned Bats: Strikers aren't very difficult to deal with on their own, but they have the worst tendency to hit you while you're busy dealing with other threats.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The bits during the car ride at the end of "Year of the Snake" has Inspector Teng talking with an unheard and unseen caller, implied to be Interpol investigating the terrorist attack in Hong Kong. The last throwaway line is mentioning communists, which Teng shrugged it off because "they already took over Hong Kong". Fast forward to 2019-2020 when a controversial reform on Hong Kong law that benefits the Mainland China sparked city-wide riots by dissenters...
  • The fact that even if Wei Shen is donning cop gear, he is still fighting with the violent martial arts moves, as well as the addition of tasering the target can become a bit uncomfortable to play through ever since the Real Life Hong Kong protests in 2014 and again in 2019, where accusations flew about the police force being overly violent in their handling of demonstrations.
  • During the Wheels of Fury DLC, the conversation Wei and Dr. Tang have after stealing the DZS-90 becomes tragically dated as they talk about import restrictions based on Hong Kong's status as a Special Administrative Region. The island's SAR status was already looking fragile after the 2014 Umbrella Movement, crumbled further with the 2019 protests, and then finally collapsed after July 7th, 2020, when Beijing passed a national security law that essentially applies mainland law to Hong Kong. This also triggered retaliation from the United States government to begin the process to cease recognizing Hong Kong as an SAR and instead treat it as "just" another part of the People's Republic of China because of said law. This is, specifically, a way of imposing backhanded economic sanctions.
    Wei: "We're not China, we're Hong Kong."
    Tang: "You want to make that point to the US state department?"
  • One of the clothing stores in the Night Market sells a surgical mask with the description "Indulge your paranoia!". Likely meant to be a jab at the prevalence of face masks in east Asian countries during flu season at the time of the game's 2012 release, it takes on a considerably different and unintentionally darker meaning after the outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the rise of anti-mask protests in North America and Europe.
• I Knew It!: Superintendent Pendrew turns out to be the main villain of the game. This might not be a surprise for those who never liked him in the first place, especially not after the firearms tutorial mission ends with him putting two fresh bullets into an already dead gangster with a handgun with Wei's prints on it, and then essentially abandoning Wei to flee the police on his own, though him abandoning Wei to die at the cemetery instead of playing along (with Wei in his triad cover insulting Pendrew) confirmed it. He's also the only British character in a game otherwise entirely populated by Chinese characters. The fact he's played by Tom Wilkinson, who also played the Big Bad in a movie taking place partially in Hong Kong (even filling in the same role as an ally revealed to be the main antagonist) tipped many players off before they started playing.
• Last Lousy Point: Due to the fact that the lockbox on top of Victoria Peak is right on top of the location title on the map, the map icon for it is extremely hard to see when it's grayed out.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In this game, James Hong voices a character who has a connection to a group known as "Sun on Yee". 10 years later, he'd voice another character who also has a connection to someone named "Sun Yee".
• Magnificent Bastard: Wei Shen is an officer of the law with a dark side to him. Joining the undercover operation to take down the Sun on Yee, Wei quickly gains the approval of many of the triad members through his incredible tenacity, competence and loyalty to the triad. Acting as the brains of the Water Street Boys, Wei manages to both talk his way out of Winston Chu murdering him by revealing Ming as a traitor in the gang and mastermind a successful raid on Dogeyes' drug manufacturing plant that saves the gang from the wrath of Uncle Po. After successfully murdering the dreaded triad enforcer, Liu Shen Tong, Wei breaks protocol after believing that Henry "Big Smile" Lee has to die and single handedly defeats Lee and his entire gang, bringing in a much better rule by Broken Nose Jiang and her loyalists. Affable, fearless and intelligent, Wei repeatedly shows he has more then one razor-sharp way to get his work done.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Pork Bun Guy, a single character model who sells Wei pork buns all over Hong Kong, whose lines include such gems as "Why do you not have a pork bun in your hand?" and "A man who never eats pork buns is never a whole man!" Aggressive advertisement at its finest, ladies and gentlemen.
  • The Female Clothing Saleswoman. "Hey sexy man you want some sexy clothes? Why don't you let me dress you?!"
• Narm: Should you choose to, you can wear some incredibly silly costumes (especially the "Yakuza Tattoo" which consists of some extra tattoos and a fundoshi) that still appear in cutscenes.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • This game is full of some really scary people, but Mrs. Chu stands out for someone who isn't even in the Triads. She hacks Johnny Ratface into pieces, makes soup out of him, and force-feeds him to Dogeyes right before she chops him up. She's got very good reasons to treat them this way, but watching her go to work is still not a pleasant experience.
  • Despite the campiness, Nightmare at North Point manages to set up an unsettling ambiance. The entire region is covered in a foggy twilight, there are dead people all over just going about their business as bloody corpses with glowing eyes, and occasionally a car driving by suddenly explodes for no reason.
  • The fate of the drug dealer that caused Mimi Shen, Wei's sister, to die of a heroin overdose. His corpse was found floating in the San Francisco bay with multiple broken bones, burns, lacerations and a single gunshot to the head. The police first believed that Wei Shen was the man responsible for his death, but found no conclusive proof. It is never revealed if Wei was the one who tortured and killed him.
• Player Punch: The death of Jackie. For many a player, it hurts to know that you're the reason your best friend died. Hell, he died without knowing that you were a cop. It also comes directly after busting your ass to rescue the twerp from being buried alive in the previous mission.
• Polished Port:
  • Square Enix pushed for a well-optimized and improved PC version.
  • While The Definitive Edition is in some ways graphically inferior to the original PC version at max settings, the Xbox One/PS4 port is easily the best version of the game on consoles. Not only does it include all of the DLC, but the graphics are more detailed and the performance is much better, especially in cutscenes (where the original 360/PS3 versions suffered from framerate drops).
  • The port also organically distributes the DLC throughput the game whereas in the original the game would just kinda dump it in all at once when it was installed. The cop missions now scattered over the map allow Wei to do more actual police work and garner police EXP much easier. The Red Envelopes have also been nerfed and put into actual hiding spots making them feel like an actual collectible instead of a blatant case of Bribing Your Way to Victory.
• Porting Disaster: At the same time, it must be noted the game is still plainly designed for consoles. The camera, for example, locks on rather tightly when you're in a vehicle, so if you want to turn around while looking in the same direction you'll face whiplash. Multiple actions are mapped to one button, so you can't do something like run around a car easily, for example - Wei will almost always decide to jump over it instead (more annoying than it sounds since the driver's seat is on the right and opposite of what gamers are likely used to). The button to go back is hard coded to backspace, which is literally the furthest key from where your hands will be. There's a lot of Button Mashing. What's odd is that some measures have been taken to improve the KB+M experience, but it's inconsistent - you can use a mouse in the bug planting minigame, for example, but not in the drug bust UI to hack the camera.
• Rule of Symbolism: Wei Shen shows up at Winston's wedding in a white suit. In China, white is the color of mourning and is associated with death. It turns into a massacre, courtesy of Dogeyes, and both Winston and Peggy are killed. The suit, naturally, ends up covered in blood, and unlike other outfits it never gets washed off when changing clothes.
• The Scrappy: The unseen guy who, upon exiting any clothing shop, yells "It takes guts to wear that!" if you buy clothing sets that didn't give you stat bonuses (and even then in the Definitive Edition the guy would still often yell that to you despite wearing something that give you stat bonuses) or "Cutting edge! I like it!" otherwise.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Character animations are unskippable. It ranges from tedious, such as Wei insisting on revving a motorcycle every time you get on one, to downright frustrating and player-hostile, such as enemies being able to grab and pull you out of a car for the sole reason that Wei doesn't floor it and just... sits there, watching the enemy open the car door.
  • Carjacking and hailing a taxi are both done with the same button, with the difference being the latter is done by holding down the button for half a second instead of pressing it, but the game still often recognizes your attempts to hail a cab as wanting to jack it if you're in the range to do so no matter how hard you press and hold the button. To prevent this, you need to get in front of the taxi or behind it, which will take some annoying maneuvering to make the prompt to hail it to pop up. Otherwise, you could simply hold down the button while you approach the taxi, then stop beside it.
  • There's one location in the second-to-last mission that gives some people a lot of trouble, and other people none at all. Wei has to clamber onto a ledge he's hanging onto by succeeding in a QTE. However, the timing is very specific. (Tip: Temporarily remapping the sprint button to the mouse makes it a lot easier.)
  • The randomly disappearing pistol. Always seems to happen when you need a gun.
  • The Cop EXP mechanic. While you obtain Triad EXP by overall being awesome in fights, you get Cop EXP on missions for... being a nice guy. You start with 3 badges and each badge is whittled down as you run over street furniture, other cars, shoot innocent bystanders, etc. This sounds great on paper, but the EXP is calculated on how many intact badges you have at the end of the mission. Any single transgression will invalidate the first badge, giving you no buffer to avoid missing out on 33% of the mission's EXP. In some missions, specially the racing ones, 3 badges are nigh impossible to achieve. However one DLC allows you to gain large amount of Cop EXP and once Cop EXP is maxed, you don't need to worry about badges unless for pride. Even with the Definitive Edition, which doesn't have the boosting DLC, still has cop sidequests that, if all completed, could max out the Cop EXP halfway through the main story.
  • In the Year of the Snake DLC, Wei's various grapple attacks are replaced with a single taser attack. Consequently, every hand-to-hand fight becomes a lot more tedious... and there are a lot of hand-to-hand fights.
  • For a game that focuses so much on driving, the car handling is... less than optimal, let's say. This is compounded with the overly aggressive auto camera as well as the complete lack of button to change camera view.
• Spiritual Successor: The game was mostly finished when Activision initially canceled it, so it still feels very much like True Crime, even if new publisher Square Enix couldn't use the title.
• Squick: Mrs. Chu forcing Dogeyes to eat the remains of Johnny Ratface.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: After the janky but likeable True Crime: Streets of LA and the outright broken True Crime: New York City, Sleeping Dogs is considered a mostly polished, well-put together crime-action and Heroic Bloodshed game with a gripping story, great voice acting for the entire cast, and one of the most immersive depictions of Hong Kong in gaming so far. It combines the best qualities from the two previous games and is a great ending for the True Crime series if it indeed never returns.
• Tear Jerker: The deaths of Peggy, Winston and Jackie, especially for the latter, as you hear that Jackie was loyal to you until the very bloody end.
• That One Level:
  • "Meet the New Boss", which is a huge Difficulty Spike from previous missions, is starved for checkpoints and is overly long. It may be harder than the final mission of the game.
  • The Zodiac Tournament: at one point, Wei gets poisoned and the screen becomes shaky, although his strength remains unaltered. Yet, the most difficult part is where you will have to defeat two strikers, one brawler and two grapplers in an arena with a Descending Ceiling. To win this part, you will actually have to get rid of a grappler by grabbing him to the cogs to slow the descending. Also, the Final Boss is a Drunken Master whose moves are very unpredictable and hard to counter.
• That One Sidequest: Death of a Thousand Cuts - you have to beat 30 members of a rival triad. Not too bad? They're all carrying knives. Poisoned knives. And the poison stacks, so all it takes is you slipping on the counter a few times to get a game over. Have fun.
  • Worse yet, a bug causes the poison to stack even when you dodge the attack, making the golden cleaver a detriment due to the counters all being dodging, meaning that ideally you would beat everyone by hand.
  • The community agrees the best way to beat the mission is by throwing cleavers at people, replenishing yourself off the dead thugs. This is however, not very fun, and runs the risk of getting you momentarily trapped with no weapon at all if you are extremely unlucky about enemy positions. Even the exploit to skip the mission is just a lesser That One Sidequest.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: All of the girlfriends Wei can date are terribly underutilized in the story: despite them all having unique personalities and designs, all of them are one-time flings and (barring Ilyana, who plays a major role in the fourth case) completely vanish from the game after their short date missions are done. Amanda gets it the worst, as she's set-up as a possible girlfriend before any of the others and is voiced by famed actress Emma Stone, but essentially vanishes after her two missions with no acknowledgement from Wei afterwards.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Amanda Cartwright is supposed to be an American tourist (complete with blonde hair and blue eyes) voiced by the actress Emma Stone. However, the character's model in question is simply a Chinese girl wearing Whiteface.