Sleeping Dogs
this is it, this is what we've been waiting for, the first of two games axispraxis requested, which would prove this entire thread wrong and showcase I have a shit taste at videogames. I have witnessed TRUE KINO right here, and I wouldn't have wished any other game, this is the first past-S rank
nah i'm kidding game is pretty mediocre, did beat it in full tho, did not drop it
Sleeping dogs is basically an american yakuza/GTA clone released in 2012, it's abotu this undercover police agent who joins the triad of hong kong, but in the process, kinda betrays their police identity and goes full mafia, the story faces a little bit of the same problems GTA IV does, just on a lesser scale
the protagonist doesn't have that much of a personality, they just follow orders, they rarely do stuff based on their own volition, there are also multiple storyline that basically do not touch with each other, which idk if it's better or worse than having the chronology be a mess, like in GTA IV. And again, we face the same problem of, killing people only matters if it is in a cutscene, you can kil llots of civilians and that is not a problem, but kill one boss in a cutscene and dude wtf,,, you can't do that,,, you're going to get kicked out of the police and go to prision,,, in general the story is very bland, it doesn't really say anything or really do anything that hasn't been done better already
the combat is a replica of the combat system in yakuza but without any depth, like really, it's the same type of brawler combat, you also got your heat moves, I mean, environmental moves, can pick up weapons with limited durability and do special attacks with them, you also got your komechi moves, I mean, melee training moves where you have to do a special combat each time you unlock a skill in the skill tree. The difference is that the combat in yakuza often makes you think or at least feel really cool, while in this game that doens't happen
the combat is extremely easy, but that's not the bad part, the bard part is that the optimal way to play the combat is pretty boring. There are a lot of infinites you can do, thing is, most of these infinites won't led that much damage, and given that you're probably using the infinites on 1 on 1 battles, so, bosses, these have a lot of health and lead to very boring combats
but worry not, there is another way to cheese every single combat which is slightly less boring!, in this game there are counters, the counters are really easy to do and every move can be countered, also, if you're in a counter you're kinda immune to what happens around you, so why not just, don't attack so you never get into cooldown and just only attack by doing counters, this is slightly faster than doing infinits but it's still really boring.
there also points in the game where they just give you a gun, the gun combat is fine, except for some reason getting into cover is really weird and often I died or had to press ctrl multiple times for the game to register I want to go into cover
also, I don't really know why the protagonist doesn't wear a gun at all times?, like, you know you're getting into a fight anyways, why not bring a gun?, but what is even worse, is when you literally have a gun in the mission, a cutscene happens and you lose the gun for no real reason, like in the very final mission I reached the final boss with a gun, then the boss kicks me and I drop my gun and then they run and it's a chase sequence, my question is, why didn't the game allow me to pick the gun from the floor and just shot him???, like, it would have cut the entire final boss lol, if you're going to remove my gun at least make it make sense
this game is full of inconsistencies like that, in the penultimate mission in the game your character is FUCKED, and there is a really cool segment, probably the best segment of the game where your body barely responds and your vision is doing funny things and you have to like do two kills in that state, then you hit a loading screen and like your character is at 100% power already and i'm like what
the driving segments feel pretty bad at time, it's not fun for cops to literally pop into existance during a escape sequence, the car hijack doens't really work properly half the time, and everything has an incredible rubberbanding
it also has a lot of random collectables across the map that just works to make the playtime longer if you're aiming for 100%.
it's just a very bland open world AAA game, just play yakuza man, placed in D tier
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next: NFS 2005
, I think the characters and the relationship between them are very good, the comedy is spot on, the music is unironically good for a music anime, animation is good, really, it's a anime on one of my favourite genres (slice of life CGDCT) that is done really well and there is nothing to hate, I've read the manga and while the manga is pretty good I feel most (good) music manga really gets exalted with the anime, tho, if you thought the manga was mid, I don't think your opinion on the anime is going to be all that different