Review: Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition

I don't know where to even begin with this thing. I have a ton of praise that's met with equal amounts of criticism. I didn't even want to review a video game at the moment but Sleeping Dogs left me with such an immense amount of confusion and disappointment that I had to. I'll do the standard format here but the subjective part is mostly going to be full of spoilers.

The premise.

Sleeping Dogs was at one point the smoldering remains of the third title in the True Crime series of video games. Like those, the story follows an undercover cop digging into the criminal underworld. The main character is Wei Shen, a Hong Kong-born young man who joins his childhood friend to join the Sun On Yee, a branch of the Triads. Lines become blurred and Wei has to come to terms with his own loyalties.

Objectively...

The game is clearly a love letter to violent, over-the-top Hong Kong martial arts cinema, as well as open-world games such as GTA and the aforementioned True Crime games. In that sense, the game is incredibly well-made: from grungy run-down docks to the serene natural beauty of Buddhist temples dotting the landscape, Hong Kong comes to life with astounding detail. That being said, the game is only an enhanced port of a video game from 2012 and built for the last generation of consoles. While Hong Kong generally looks gorgeous with its brilliant neon, the foggy and cramped sky overhead, and fairly detailed roadwork, a closer look reveals the game's downsides. Models for non-player characters are typically bare, leading to some moments where Wei (detailed down to his pores and light beard) appears to be talking to a character ripped straight from a PS2 game. It doesn't happen often, but it's not pretty when it does.

Whether it's driving around the winding streets or challenging master arts clubs, there's a wealth of stuff to do. Racing challenges, cop missions, favors for citizens—the list goes on and on. This leads to another problem: the mission structure is generally pretty samey. One race looks like another, some favors involve just driving people around or shooting people while they drive around, occasionally beat up a drunk. For a game with such an enormous world, because of the repetitive nature of missions the world actually feels somewhat limited. And tough luck if you want to go on a GTA-style rampage: unless you hold on to a firearm from a mission, you'll have to either steal a gun from a police officer or level up a perk that allows you to take guns from cop cars. This reflects the staunch gun laws in Hong Kong and gives the world some depth, but considering your character is a cop, it seems odd that you have to jump through so many hoops if you want a pistol.

In fact, many of the games problems arise when guns are so much as hinted at. Sleeping Dogs works best as a martial arts game, but at a certain point in the story a third-person shooter element is introduced. This is more of a subjective problem, but when it comes to shooting mechanics all I can think from this game is just pure misery. More on that later.

All of this serves to point out the major flaw in Sleeping Dogs: for every area the game excels, an aspect of that drags the experience down. Fist fights are deep and tense; Wei can dish out pain but has to be quick to counter or a fight will end quickly. Upgrades involve the addition of new mechanics, different methods of countering or a new throw. Likewise, shootouts are typically groan-inducing slogs and shooting perks are almost always something like "for one particular moment you can slow down time to aim." Driving and racing is fun, but every race typically plays out the same. Some character models are extremely detailed, while others look like they're from a PS2 title.

Keep all that in mind when approaching Sleeping Dogs. The game is very well made, there's a ton of stuff to do and it looks gorgeous—but don't expect perfection simply from an objective approach. If you can look past the flaws, this is a seriously well-made experience.

Subjectively...
In Which I Complain About Guns for Several Paragraphs

Any time a gun appears in Sleeping Dogs everything becomes so stupid I can't handle it. Sleeping Dogs is largely a nod to Hong Kong Kung Fu movies, right? So what's up with the abundance of third-person shooting, especially after the first quarter of the game? That's rhetorical, of course. You gotta have shooting in your AAA shooting game. And yeah, it makes sense in context of the story. Wei's involved with the cops and the Hong Kong Triad, guns are going to come up in some fashion. It's just that whenever they appear, the game's own logic can't seem to handle the gravity of firearms and just huddles in a corner while waiting for the player to end the section.

I'm going to spoil the game at this point. Jump to the end for my score.

Sleeping Dogs manages to handle gun play fairly competently for the first few missions after firearms are introduced, which is why I'm so baffled by how it's handled later. Even when Pendrew hands you your first handgun, he makes it seem like a big deal. Guns are contraband in Hong Kong and only cops really have access to them, and if you're coming across Triad members with guns, you should be prepared for some hardcore thugs to get them. The implication exists that the shooting elements of Sleeping Dogs would be a major event, something that only occurs when you're coming up against a major enemy, or for taking down criminals in high-stakes cop missions.

For me, the shooting isn't very fun either. You have a cover button, a reload button, an aim, and shoot. There's no combat roll, your health recharges after a point (nonexistent in fisticuffs), and general over-the-shoulder aiming is so basic it would not be out of place in an early 7th-gen title. There's nothing to speak of, which makes the fact that you're forced into it even more irritating. You have one gun, no auxiliary weapons like explosives or anything—ever—enemies are all basically bullet sponges in every shootout. For me, this isn't just a low point of the game, it's one of the poorest examples of third-person shooting mechanics in recent memory.

I'd have to go back through the game to pinpoint an exact moment, but the one that stands out to me is Winston's wedding. The twist is shocking and effective and it really feels like you'd need to sneak around to avoid being seen. But no, these highly skill and trained assassins just happen to leave guns lying around and are easily dispatched by Wei, despite being in an emotionally compromised state. With overwhelming odds against him Wei murders with perfect precision (assuming you're skilled at the game) every single 18k assassin, who are unable to effectively surround him or form any logical counter-attack. These are people who tricked the entire wedding procession, including Uncle Po (the chairman of the Sun On Yee Triads), but are incapable of stopping a cop who doesn't even carry a gun with him.

That's what I mean when I say the game's logic doesn't seem to understand what's happening. The 18k attack at a moment when every member of the opposition has their guard down and are unarmed. The gameplay should reflect that, and does so very briefly when Wei finds Uncle Po and carries him out of the building with just a single handgun. Of course this doesn't last very long and Wei runs straight into groups of armed assassins and effortlessly eliminates them with their own guns.

After this point nearly every story mission becomes a shootout. I'm not exaggerating—even missions with huge potential to become giant fist-fights instead devolve into cover shooting. That's it. Cover shooting everywhere and the repetition I mentioned earlier becomes so much worse because you get the sinking feeling that you're going to be just shooting. Favor missions become "lean out of a window and shoot men riding motorcycles while your friend drives." All this aside, a few missions in particular stand out as being particularly poor form.

The funeral of Uncle Po should be a somber event. In all honesty, the 18k and cops should be there as an insult and nothing else happen. Instead, Pendrew uses the opportunity to intimidate Wei by showing he is affiliated with the 18k, supplies them all with guns, and tells them he is going to look the other way while the Sun On Yee gathered at the cemetery are killed. If nothing else, this should have been an escape mission where Wei is the sole survivor of the massacre. It would set the stage really well for the endgame and also give the 18k even more of a threatening presence.

Instead they're reduced to stupid bullet sponges for a stupid cover shooter where Wei and his stupid friends magically spawn guns out of thin air. Another opportunity is missed here, because I simply do not understand why Pendrew and the cops don't just arrest every member of the Sun On Yee for having access to firearms. If he's willing to look the other way for the 18k, why not just go all the way?

That scene leads to Jackie, your hyper and all-around naive buddy who wants nothing more than to be a bonafide Triad member, being abducted and buried alive by the 18k. It really makes you feel for the guy because up to that point, he just wanted to be seen as a serious gangster. But then you have a stupid shootout while riding a boat over to where Jackie has been buried; however, the culmination of this mission isn't the boatguns, it's all about saving Jackie. Wei digs him up and gets him back to the main island, and it becomes clear Jackie doesn't want this to be his life. We see him in a vulnerable state and sympathize with him. Despite the fact that he came off so obnoxious before, this is a man who has given up on his dream and is scared for his life.

When Jackie is brutally murdered in the next mission, it's genuinely shocking and emotional. I can't think of a moment that's hit me so hard in a story-driven game, and when Wei is captured and tortured in the coming scene it's even more effective because we never thought the 18k would come after Jackie and finish the job so soon.

The next mission begins so tense because we feel weak after losing Jackie and having been tortured. I'm usually opposed to quick-time events, but the timing on the mission is pretty tight and I accidentally even died at one point. Yeah, it's embarrassing to admit, but it made the mission even more frightening. This, to me, was finally the stealth mission I thought should have been implemented before. I wasn't so disappointed when the room right after the QTE happens becomes a brawler room, because it seemed like such an easy cop-out to make a shooting section.

So when it became a shooting section I rolled my eyes and went with it. Of course that's it. Luckily the boss of the mission is a hand-to-hand fight, and it's actually one of the more difficult fights in the game. Which makes the final boss in the next mission so mind-boggling.

In the final mission, Wei raids the antagonist's compound in a big dumb shootout, then kicks in the boss's room in a display of being a big tough guy and immediately is shot by the final boss. Here's the problem: this is the first time the boss is shown to be shooting anything, and there's only one round in the shotgun. I don't get it. Why only one round? What happened to the rest of them? He wasn't in the previous shootout, so what? Was he just carrying around a shotgun with a single round of it?

Anyway, the next section is a boat chase and then the final boss begins. But the final boss is Wei, tired, fighting this boss who's been built up for nearly the entire game in a quick-time event. Look, I don't think I'm really a stupid guy, but the mechanics for this mission in comparison with the previous make me think maybe I missed something.

Why not make the next-to-last mission entirely a stealth mission with quicktime event stealth kills, culminating in a QTE boss fight so the actual final boss is a real fight? It seems like the boss design from one mission was cut out and replaced in another. I know this is a different type of complaint, but the mere fact that a gun is involved at one point of this mission goes back around to the fact that firearms are like a black hole of stupidity that drags down the game's story in such a way that it makes the rest of the game look lazy and cheap in comparison.

I'm finally done. Verdict:

The game's story really isn't bad. In fact, I'd say it's pretty engrossing. The world is fun to explore and I really liked the 70s Kung Fu DLC mission, it felt like a supplement to the lack of real combat at the end of the game. I'm glad it was included in the Definitive Edition of the game, because I think I'd have been a bit miffed to have had to pay for it. And honestly, if the shooting mechanics had been as fleshed out as even Grand Theft Auto 4 or Red Dead Redemption, I don't know that I'd be as hard on those missions.

It's a shame that there are problems with Sleeping Dogs, because looking at the game as a whole there's a ton of potential. Outside of the shooting and a few graphical problems, the only other criticism I can give is that the missions are a bit repetitive. Your mileage could vary and maybe I'm just reading too much into it, but even considering all that I didn't hate my time with Sleeping Dogs. It's a great send-up to old martial arts films, there's a ton to do, the story and characters are both fleshed out to a decent degree. For the tight development schedule it was on some of the lazier parts can be forgiven, because with more time and a higher budget a sequel (not that MMO thing) could be very interesting.

FLAWED BUT ENJOYABLE

Review: Birdman

You know what? I'm going to be perfectly candid. The Oscars did somewhat influence my decision to finally seek out Birdman. The first reviews for the film back last winter immediately painted what looked like a film I'd go nuts over, even one that I have wanted before I even realized it. My local theater never showed it. The renting places dragged their feet. So, for the first time in a while, I finally broke down and bought a movie I could have rented or found on television. After such a build-up, the only outcomes for Birdman are whether it was worth the hype or if it will ultimately come crashing to the earth.

The Premise.

Birdman: Or, the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance follows Riggan Thompson (Michael Keaton), a washed-up actor known for his role in the fictional superhero trilogy Birdman. Unlike the famed Attorney at Law, this Birdman seems to be an almost perfect recreation of some other famous superhero. Thompson, in an attempt to legitimize what he believes to be a career defined by schlock, writes (and directs, and stars in) an adaptation of Raymond Carver's short story anthology What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. With a new actor and the production falling apart, Thompson begrudgingly weighs the worth of his career with his fragile ego, often out of touch with reality.

Objectively . . .

Birdman is something of a marvel: the cinematography is impeccable, the soundtrack is very fitting, the actors are perfectly cast—basically, there are very few things about the film to criticize without delving into nitpick territory.

The movie is filmed in a way to mimic a long take with no discernible breaks. This technique is tough to pull off due to the precision required to choreograph entrances and dialogue, and the fact that Birdman appears to be a two-hour-long single take gives the movie a frantic, almost schizophrenic feeling while some of the more chaotic events begin to unravel. Tricky editing is involved, but it's very difficult to notice when cuts are happening due to the seamless work of the director. I mean that quite literally: scenes will jump from a character's private room to a bar with no noticeable transition; characters will appear in one scene only for the camera to pan to a different time of day with that character in completely different clothing; in some rare occasions, scenes will transition from day to night leaving the viewer none the wiser. Red Letter Media's Half in the Bag review aptly compared this to the literary style of stream of consciousness, a technique often brought to film in varying degrees of success (though not often very good). An example would be the literary masterpiece The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. Because the narrative style involves a seamless thought process with no breaks, characters will often remember details in various points of their lives or create fictional dialogue with other people, leaving the reader to piece together the story threads despite having some fairly unreliable narrators. I bring up this novel and Red Letter Media's review because it's probably the best example of this narrative device to be employed in film. The seamless breaks give the impression of the movie having a somnambulist quality, especially when magical realism comes into play. That being said, when the actual breaks in the long take occur, it's very effectively jarring.

The soundtrack, composed entirely of drums, feeds into the dreamlike aspect of the story without being obtrusive or hitting the viewer over the head with symbolism. Percussion often gives tension to a scene in a normal movie, but in Birdman the music is more jazzy and gives punch to scenes, and when they go missing in some scenes you'll notice. The silence can be awkward and painful at points, but this is typically done on purpose: the soundtrack weaves into the movie in such a way that it comes natural, and some twists to the visuals of the music add depth in an unexpected way.

Of course, I couldn't talk objectively about Birdman without touching on the main cast. Sure, Edward Norton and Emma Stone deliver subtle performances that need to be seen, but Michael Keaton, aside from being a very on-the-nose choice for Riggan Thompson (I'd be surprised if the script wasn't written with him in mind), delivers a stunning performance as a man conflicted with what he wants in life. His interactions with the formerly mentioned cast come off as tempestuous, raging at the circumstances beyond his control.

Subjectively . . .

The wait was worth it. I liked Birdman so much it's actually a bit hard to be objective about it for this review: for me, this is a perfect film. Funny at times, cerebral, heart-wrenching, deeply experimental and perfectly cast, Birdman represents a highly original and very enjoyable watch. If I had to criticize something it'd be the antagonist that arises halfway through the movie: for me, it was a massive bait-and-switch and the ultimate "villain" of the movie felt inconsequential, unlike the character I believed at first to be the actual antagonist. The tension between all these characters feels lopsided, but mostly because the antagonist has a very small role to play and has very little development. In a movie so committed to literally following characters uncomfortably close, the lack of development in that character felt like a missed opportunity.

Furthermore, I would have liked the ending to be a tad bit longer. I'll admit, as soon as the film was over I had to look on Google to see if I was crazy or just stupid, and sure enough there are pages and pages of discussion involving the ending, including dozens of theories. I typically enjoy open endings like this, but for Birdman I felt it deserved a bit more closure. Reading that this was something of a makeshift ending when the original didn't pan out makes sense, and truth be told I don't hate the ending at all, but I wish there was more time devoted to it. There's plenty in the movie to guide you to a conclusion, but it's a bit bare if you take it at face-value.

The Verdict:

Objectively, this is a highly experimental, well-directed and soft-spoken film that does not overstay its welcome.

Subjectively, there were minor things that while I didn't necessarily dislike, I would have preferred more dedicated screen time. In a film with so much sublime focus, it's weird that a few key elements are decidedly skimmed over.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

The Subjective Objective.

The internet is a bustling wasteland of reviews. Books, movies, TV, video games; written reviews, video reviews, cartoons, podcasts—you look hard enough and you'll find exactly what you're looking for. However, with this degree of accessibility arises the problem of professionalism in what you're getting into. Sure, the pretty colors or the swear-a-second host might be entertaining, but at the end of the day a review or impression must impart a critical analysis of the title while either augmenting the reader's impression or helping him or her to come to a purchasing decision.

But what is a review, anyway? Not just a dictionary definition; what is the spirit, the essence, of the critical review? In a sense, it is simply an opinion put to paper. Most reviews published on the internet are presented openly as an opinion piece with a grade attached to the end. Objectivity is not often the basis of some such review. An honest, interesting review must couple the subjective with the objective, and this blog means to do just that.

The reviews posted here will follow a format you are sure to enjoy, dear reader. At the forefront of every review will be a synopsis of whatever it is I'm touching at the moment: literature—audiobooks or physical—comics, movies, television, and of course a very large amount of video games. Following this will be an overview of whatever it is in the most objective manner possible: as an example, if I were reviewing a video game then this point would involve a review of the gameplay mechanics, presentation, sound, special features or unlockables. Basically, if it is something plainly presented, it will most likely be reviewed here.

Following this will be my honest opinions and impressions. Again, if it's a video game, this part of the review would be dedicated to story, replay value, and overall how much fun I had with the title. The real nitty-gritty, as it were. After this will be a short round-up with a subjective score and objective score, followed by a straightforward recommendation.

The "objective" of The Subjective Objective is to give you, the reader, both a succinct and in-depth take on several types of media, and I hope it will serve you well.