The Digest

Games Of August 2012: Sleeping Dogs

We cannot tell a lie: Sleeping Dogs surprised us.

By John Teti • September 10, 2012

Sleeping Dogs Cover Art

I wanted to like Sleeping Dogs for a very stupid reason: It has really nice cover art. I mean, look at that box shot on the right there. I gather the illustrator is Tyler Stout. Tyler, I tip my hat to you. But while I was rooting for the game, I didn’t really expect to get into it as much as I did. It’s full of surprises. It has a strong sense of place and a fairly good sense of humor. Like I say in the video, I’ve never been to Hong Kong, so I don’t know how realistic the game is, per se. But the Sleeping Dogs Hong Kong feels like somewhere, rather than a functional Potemkin village of building textures applied to a 3D mass. I also appreciate the game’s mild but appealing ability to laugh at itself. Drew and I didn’t get around to talking about it, but the karaoke side game is completely wacky—thanks to a voice actor who, rather than nailing every note, instead does a perfect rendition of a sometimes-shaky, sometimes-decent amateur crooner.

In this episode, Drew and I also explain why we are enormous hypocrites. I know you’ve all been wondering.

The digestible this week is bubble tea. There’s this Vietnamese sandwich place near Gameological H.Q. that sells what seems like a hundred flavors of the stuff. So I had the interns go out and pick out a few. This was an exercise in self-punishment since I’ve had bubble tea before and know that I don’t particularly care for those little tapioca bubbles at the bottom. Still, sacrifices must be made in the name of snack science.

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