The abandoned sequel to open-world martial arts game Sleeping Dogs would have had online co-op and other ambitious features that would change your city depending on the actions of other players, according to a trove of documents obtained by Waypoint. There were also plans to have a tie-in mobile app that affected events in the base game. All this is academic, however, since plans for a sequel were stuffed down the back of the couch in 2013. Even more unfortunately, United Front Games, the developers of the original, appears to have shut down just one month after releasing their last game, Smash + Grab.
]]>Rumour has it that Canadian studio United Front Games have closed down with a great suddenness. They're best known for open-world crime simulator Sleeping Dogs, and most recently took multiplayer futurecrime brawler Smash+Grab to Steam Early Access. United Front haven't formally announced anything yet, but scattered tweets and whispers suggest they're done for. Smash+Grab has been pulled from sale too. Heck, this is mighty sudden - S+G held a free trial only last weekend. Hurling a brick as a Hail Mary pass.
]]>The studio responsible for open-world martial arts brawler Sleeping Dogs is bringing out a competitive multiplayer punch-up set in a corporate dystopia, they announced today. Smash + Grab [official site] will feature the contestants of an underground competition in which factions smash windows and break down the doors of shops to collect as much loot as they can, fighting off other gangs in the process using third-person combat. The first gang to scoop $50,000 worth of riot loot wins. Come and see, it looks daft.
]]>We don’t do scores on RPS, but sometimes we mourn for the inability to deploy a 7/10. The ur-score, the most double-edged of critical swords, the good but not great, the better than it deserves to be, the guilty pleasure, the bungled aspiration, the knows exactly what it is, the straight down the line. One score that can mean so much.
There is one particular type of 7/10 game that heralds joy, not disappointment: the solid, maybe ever so slightly wonky action game with no interest in being anything more than a solid action game.
]]>Sleeping Dogs is a pretty fun open-world murder simulator, sending an undercover cop punching and kicking and sticking-heads-in-fansing around the Hong Kong underworld (have you played it?), but its follow-up was not really the game expected or wanted. Triad Wars [official site] took the city into a free-to-play online thingy, played solo but with asynchronous multiplayer where you build an empire while interfering with AI-controlled representations of other players' operations. It was not e.g. Sleeping Dogs 2. Soon it'll be nothing, as it's shutting down later this month without even leaving beta.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
The halfway house between GTA's sneering arrogance and Saints' Row's chaotic nonchalance, and that's exactly why Sleeping Dogs has a small but passionate fanbase. It's not quite the Serious Sandbox, but it is very much no mess, no fuss, just cars and fights - which in some respects is more appealing than the excess of its contemporaries.
]]>Sleeping Dogs is one of those quietly under-appreciated games; not because it was brilliant, but because it was surprisingly alright despite all appearances to the contrary. Curiosity abounds then for the follow-up, which is called simply Triad Wars. It's the "flip-side" of Sleeping Dogs, which apparently means it's an online-only "open world action strategy game". Hmm. There's a a trailer full of footage and talking developers below, which explains more of what that means.
]]>You may not have thought that Sleeping Dogs needed higher graphical fidelity for pushing people's faces into fans, breaking their legs, cracking their spines, or smashing their faces on toilet bowls. Perhaps you winced enough already. But technology demands progress, it demands blood, and here we are with a shiny "remastered" version of Sleeping Dogs announced for October.
United Front are polishing up their open-world GBH simulator for re-release on new gameboxes, and bringing it to PC too. Along with extra blood and teeth, and the full absurd compliment of 24 DLC packs, Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition is tweaking the game a little too. Thanks again, Johnny Xbox and Ian Station!
]]>Halloween is quickly becoming a gamer holiday. It's the time when games all over the world come together in celebration of Zombie DLC. They put out Red Bull and Doritos, then try and get some sleep hoping that Develop Claus will have come in the night, riding along in his Gaming Chair, being pulled by his Code Monkeys, delivering a Steam code to sit under your PC. Will Sleeping Dogs: Nightmare at North Point DLC be on your Steam wanted list?
]]>The minute I see a dog that's fallen asleep, I just go berserk. It infuriates me. I absolutely will not tolerate it. And a good way to keep them awake is by blasting out the noise car-chasy Sleeping Dogs at full volume. But what's that? You don't know if you want to commit your money to a project with such a chequered past? Then why not check out the demo? EH?
]]>I've been playing the game that once was Activision's True Crime: Hong Kong, but morphed into Square Enix's Sleeping Dogs. It's a GTA-like set in Hong Kong, starring an undercover cop submerging himself into criminal gangs. Here is what fell out of my head in response to it.
I have opinions on a great many things- why cats are better than children, why mushrooms are the greatest foodstuff on Earth, why I'd have little-to-no problem with all men being wiped out, why habitual smokers should bear in mind that the nurse who comes in to change the bag of liquid faeces they're wired up to for the last, miserable months of their truncated lives isn't going to say 'well, never mind, at least it sometimes made you look a bit like you might be in a band when you were younger' - but I could summon no opinion on Sleeping Dogs for the longest time. (Well, I say 'longest time', but that would imply that 'nine' is the largest sum of hours I can imagine, and that's simply not true. I was on a 14-hour flight once, for instance.) 'No opinion' is not a careful way of saying 'a negative opinion.' I mean exactly what I say - the total absence of opinion, one way or another.
]]>To be perfectly honest, Sleeping Dogs wasn't really on my radar until very recently. I've been burnt-out on sweeping crime epics since GTA IV failed to really hook me, and my opinion of it ended up sleeping with the fishes. But I'm also a sucker for fully realized worlds, and Sleeping Dogs seems to have that in spades. The Hong Kong setting seems rife with detail, and I'm pretty excited about just walking around and seeing the sights. Or parkouring around and kung-fu kicking the sights right in their immaculately rendered faces. Regardless, it'll all look and feel quite nice - at least, if a new trailer outlining Sleeping Dogs' PC features is anything to go on.
]]>Sleeping Dogs, the game that was once True Crime: Hong Kong, does not appear to contain any hounds, unconscious or otherwise. But as an open-world action-thriller it is looking rather packed with the potential to entertain. Lucky that Square saved it from destruction, eh? The latest trailer shows the lead character on the trail of a serial killer, doing police stuff across the huge, open-world Hong Kong map. That means infiltrating a hospital, racing about in a car, and looking at stuff. All fine things for a videogame character to be doing, eh? Take a moment to look at stuff yourself, below.
]]>The reboot of the cancelled True Crime: Hong Kong, Sleeping Dogs, has trailers coming every whichway, one featuring MMA fighters staring at the game, and another slightly more usefully showing eight minutes of its being played, of a level called Mrs Chu's Revenge. You can see both below.
]]>You there! Do you want to know when in the calendar year Square Enix's open-world police drama Sleeping Dogs will be with us? If not, please disregard the next few lines. Here's something to distract you while the rest of us discuss the nexus of time and a game about a man running around Hong Kong punching people in the face. For the rest of us, it's time to talk. Me, you, August 17th, Sleeping Dogs. And to the surprise of nobody, you can pre-order and receive a few special bonuses. One of those is a flying punch. If you want to know more, and want to see eight minutes of footage of the game, just stick £10'000 in my Paypal account and click the pre-order link below. Don't click it first, as I have no way of denying anyone access. Prove to me the honour system works.
]]>Don't they know there might possibly be a potential for someone somewhere perhaps running a bit low on petrol? Square Enix releasing this trailer during a fuel panic has opened my eyes to the truth: they've manufactured the whole scare so we might all understand the sacrifice made at the end of this trailer for the Hong Kong set open world shooter Sleeping Dogs. The bike. The spark. The flames. 30th March, 2012: never forget, people.
]]>I was a little bit mean about Sleeping Dogs last time I saw an advertrailer for it. The message I took away was 'this is a game in which men will hit one another in a generic setting'. In what I can only assume is a response to that post, the developers have released a new video in which they talk about why they chose Hong Kong as the location for the game, taking time to explain the details they've tried to capture, the variety of the place, and the fact that exploration and idle wandering are possible in between the bopping and chopping. Let's take a tour.
]]>Men speak in cliches and then punch each other in this trailer for the reawakened True Crime: Hong Kong, now going by the name Sleeping Dogs. My experience of sleeping dogs is that they sometimes chase imaginary rabbits, which makes them try to run while lying down. That's funny and cute. I don't think it's what Square Enix want me to imagine when I think of the game though. They want me to imagine a serious man saying 'honour' and then repeatedly hitting a vest-wearing collection of tattoos in the testicles with a meat cleaver.
]]>For every amazing game in the pile just to the left of your monitor (I have TWO copies of Tresspasser, there), think about how many didn’t get made. That didn’t make it past the development scribbles, or the publisher pulled out somewhere long the line. Are you thinking of a number? Now subtract one, because Square Enix have just announced Sleeping Dogs, by United Front Games. In a previous life it was known as True Crime: Hong Kong before Activision canned development. We have tiny wee details.
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