So to actually contribute something of value rather than an existential crisis of age, and to parrot what I've said many times about Sleeping Dogs, what makes this game so satisfying and rewarding to play is the assortment of gameplay states and game systems available, the serviceability of them all, and more importantly how they're intertwined both in freeform play and quest structure.
What I mean by this is that almost all open world games, particularly the GTA-like style, provide a set of gameplay systems contextual to how you engage with the game world and presented scenarios. You can drive vehicles, run on foot, punch things, and shoot. While other games still do these things well, Sleeping Dogs I felt really focused on making each of these gameplay systems not only serviceable by their own merits, but interlinking them in such a way you can seamlessly move between action sequences without the game feeling like it's arbitrarily leading and locking you into scripted moments.
It's the kind of game where you can be in a high speed car chase, catch up to your enemies as they get out of their cars, engage in a fist fight and use the windows, doors, and boot of the very cars you arrived in as props during the ensuring fight; slamming heads in car doors and through windows. A subsequent on foot chase through streets and across building might lead seamlessly into another vehicle pursuit, which can utilise the same parkour systems to have you jump from a speeding bike onto the target's car, to hijack through the window.
The mission design really felt like it accentuated this seamless flow of game systems, and as a result the vertical slice of game design always felt like I was engaging in a large variety of situations and contextual fights that each were varied and exciting in their own way. It's fun to go from belting some dude with a tyre iron and throwing his mooks through windows, to disarming a guy and grabbing his uzi, transforming the game briefly into a John Woo-style bullet time riddled action sequence, then back to fist fights, without the moment-to-moment flow missing a beat.
Sleeping Dogs is a really remarkable achievement in my eyes. I knock Rockstar is the a-typical "gold standard" open world sandbox developer, but I honestly enjoyed Sleeping Dogs significantly more than both its direct competitors in GTA4 and GTA5. It showed me that the GTA-like police/crime sandbox design is not owned by Rockstar and more competition in that space is important, if it's able to produce games of Sleeping Dogs' calibre. And it makes me all the more disappointed that United Front fell apart and we never saw a true successor.
Also, as a side, the DLC was generally really good quality. From memory there were a bunch of goofy outfits and stuff that, while superficial, were of superb quality and thematically an earnest homage to Kung Fu classics. More importantly though the three bigger packs were a lot of fun, and two of the three focused less on trying to be grounded and more of a goofy call back to classic pulpy cinema. One was horror/supernatural themed, and the other a dumb Kung Fu last-man-standing tournament thing. United Front really put a lot of work into making them thematically on point, stylish, and generally a lot of fun to play. The final DLC was great too, even if it was a more traditional Sleeping Dogs experience, namely because it acted as an epilogue to the story.
And while the rest of the DLC was just small bites of more-of-the-same, it was still inherently good content that gave fans of particular components of the game more to play. Liked Street Racing? Here's a pack adding a heap of new races. Cop missions? Here's more of them, too.
As a whole, Sleeping Dogs plus all the DLC is an enormous package of genuinely high quality content and a strong, focused vision from United Front. Honestly, it's one of my favourite games of all time.
