Though the open world aspects, after playing a game like the recent release of Shadow of Mordor, feel a little lacking and less alive than they had previously. While the combat takes some queues from other games, the ability to drag your enemies around the world and slam them into different parts of the environment makes each encounter feel like a choreographed fight scene from the movies. Beating enemies into a visible pulp is still, and will always be, entirely enjoyable. The brutal combat system which allows the hero to use martial arts, counters, and savage environmental finishers is still fun. The core gameplay of Sleeping Dogs hasn’t changed at all, and it really didn’t need to. Did it turn Sleeping Dogs into a next-gen game? Not really. So is this the “Definitive” Edition of the game? Well yeah, you can’t beat the price for all the content, and the visual enhancements do go a long way in improving the game. While nearly all of the environmental aspects of Sleeping Dogs looks better, has a higher level of detail, and generally looks sharper in 1080p, you just can’t help but see the game’s last-gen roots still showing. The game did seem to suffer from frame rate issues on the Xbox One, as it most certainly didn’t make it to 60 frames per second, and it seemed at many times like the game was struggling to consistently stay locked in at rate that wasn’t noticeably choppy.
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Enhanced Lighting and impressive weather effects, better draw distances and a more detailed world at large, make the open world of Hong Kong feel more alive than ever, for console players at least. On new gen console hardware the game looks mostly like what it did on the PC when it originally released. Though unlike some “Definitive Editions” that have been released for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, Sleeping Dogs feels the most antiquated. What Sleeping Dogs does, it does well, and it’s an entirely serviceable open world experience - One that pits you in the role of undercover officer, building on meters for your law-abiding side and your alter-ego, lines blurring as the story unravels. It’s got an all-star cast of voice actors, and while Sleeping Dogs is mostly derivative of other open-world games, it does have a certain charm to it. It’s an interesting setting, one that’s rarely been touched before. The open-world Hong Kong crime drama tells the unique story of undercover agent Wei Shen, who infiltrates the Chinese Triad. That’s not to say that Sleeping Dogs is a bad game by any stretch of the imagination. Sleeping Dogs is an odd release by Square Enix, right in the middle of other high profile Fall releases, and of the many “Definitive Editions” 2014 saw, it’s the probably the weakest. It just doesn’t seem like a game that many were asking for, despite the original release being relatively well received by critics. Fast forward a couple of years, and nobody could have seen a “definitive edition” making its way to new consoles. Sleeping Dogs’ troubled development cycle under United Front and rescue by Square Enix made the game an unlikely release in 2012.