Fallout 4 and Missed Opportunity

Disclaimer #1: The following contains minor spoilers for the beginning of Fallout 4.

Disclaimer #2: I have not finished Fallout 4 and am only a few hours into the campaign, thus if there are any late game revelations about the following, I have not yet seen them.

Fallout 4 has a fantastic intro. It's an intro that I believe lives up to the studio's pedigree despite what I'm going to talk about. Waking up on a storm battered ship in Morrowind, escaping from prison along side a king, being saved from execution by the timely arrival of a dragon, seeing the early years of your life as you grow up deep underground. The studio has always had a knack for openings that draw the player into the world while setting up the grand adventures to come.

Fallout 4's intro is no different. The game opens with you, the player, standing in front of the mirror, getting ready for another pleasant morning in the idyllic Sanctuary Hills. Your beautiful wife stands behind you, lovingly commenting as you alter your character's appearance. When you're finished, she takes her turn getting ready and the player is free to roam their simple house awash in Fallout's altered version of 1950's America. 

Your infant son, Shawn, lies in a crib with a rocket ship mobile, his wooden blocks scattered around the room. A forgotten board game sits in a closet. Your household robot is waiting for you in the kitchen with a steaming cup of coffee. You spend the morning watching TV with your wife, calming your crying son and dealing with a pushy door to door salesman. It's the American dream bottled down into a short, ten minute experience and it works wonderfully.

Then the world ends and you're running. Where to or why you're not so sure. You just know that it's safety, safety for your wife and child in a world suddenly changed, in a world forever lost. You make it, one of the last to reach the Vault as the bombs fall. You watch as the mushroom cloud grows in the distance, as the elevator starts to descend into the earth. Technicians waiting for you at the bottom assure you that everything's going to be alright, that you, your wife and your child are going to be safe and sound and provided for. You relax, trying to figure out what this new life will entail. You finally let your guard down and let yourself breathe, right before the people you trust stick you in a tank that cryogenically freezes you.

And here's where I think Fallout misses a great opportunity, while you're there in the tank. I love the idea of freezing the player, of taking the fish out water approach with the vault dweller. Like the player, the character didn't grow up in this wasteland. They're use to fast food, the nightly news and all American apple pie, not super mutants, rad roaches and Synths. It's a great way to marry what the character is going through to what the player experiences. My problem is what happens while you're in the tank.

They shoot your wife in the head. 

They shoot her right in the damn head and they take your baby and then you go back on ice like the world's worst Captain America impression.

You wake up, cold and alone and venture out into the world. Into your neighborhood shattered by the bomb. Into the ashes of your once perfect house. You wander off into the wasteland in search of a son you may not even recognize, unsure of how long you've been asleep.

And I know why they do it. They want to motivate the player. What better motivation than kidnapping your only child and shooting your pretty, lovely, complimenting you while you fix your hair in the mirror, wife. They do it because they don't want to deal with the baggage, they don't want to anchor the player with this nagging wife whining about her missing son. They want to motivate the player while simultaneously giving him the freedom to conquer the wasteland however they want.

They know what they're doing. They put her in that classic 1950's dress, give her that pleasant, homely voice and the slender figure and then they shoot her in the head. You can't do anything to stop it. You can't fix it. All you can do is take her wedding ring off her cold dead finger and swear revenge like some 80's action hero.

I hate it because it's easy, because it's cheap and easy. And I hate it because it caused them to miss something with so much more depth, with so much more reason.

Imagine what would have happened if they hadn't shot your wife in her adorable little temple. Instead, they kidnap your kid and push her back in the ice box and the two of you thaw slowly out together. She panicking, crying. You wrap your arms around her and tell her everything's going to be all right. The two of you emerge into the wasteland together. You pick through the ruins of your shattered house, comfort your house robot that's been slowly going insane from two hundred years without anyone to talk to. Try to put the pieces of your lives back together.

Narratively, it's a far stronger option. But that's not the only reason I thought they should have gone that way. You see, Fallout 4 has a problem. It has the same problem every Bethesda open world game has. The player has to find their son, it's the only thing that matters to them, the only thing on their mind, a singular goal to motivate them through the trials ahead. Except it isn't. There's the minutemen to rebuild. There settlements to grow. The Brotherhood of Steel to join or fight. The question of the Synths and what should happen to them. The wasteland of the commonwealth is a complex and ever evolving place that the player is asked to weigh in on. Hours into the game I haven't even begun to look for my son. But my settlement has defensive turrets and some pretty sick lights, so clearly my priorities are in order.

This isn't a new problem for open world games, even outside of Bethesda's. So often the player is tasked to save the world, to close the Oblivion gates, to find Ciri and prevent the endless winter. Yet all around them are distractions. Races and card games, companions and damsels in distress. What bothers me so much about Fallout 4's opening is that the player's spouse gives the perfect solution for this problem.

Why does my character, who wants only to rescue their son, give a damn about the minuteman or their settlements, why does he care whether or not they are safe? I think the player would care a lot if their wife was still alive, if she was back at Sanctuary Hills, trying to pick up their life while the player was out trying to rescue their son. Why does my character team up with these random companions, often after only a simple conversation when they could walk through the wasteland side by side with the person they swore to spend the rest of their life with? Shooting side by side against super mutants and the like? Why does my character care about the food supply of settlements, of rebuilding society when there's no one to rebuild it for?

Even the two areas of growth for the character, their moral alignment and their relationship with companions would be made deeper by the presence of the player's spouse. In the beginning of the game, while your player is looking at their eyes in the mirror, your wife remarks that was on the reason she fell in love you, because of those eyes. Wouldn't it be better to have her comment on those same eyes hours into the game, how they've hardened thanks to the horrors of the wasteland, or how, even after everything they've been through they still have that same kindness she fell in love with?

The same applies to companions. Maybe she's supportive of the synths, or doesn't trust you bringing one around the house. There's a throwaway line in the beginning about her taking time to trust the handyman with your son, how does she react to a walking, talking Synth in the house? What about your female companions? Is she jealous? Does the player feel more drawn to a tough woman of the wasteland than to his sheltered wife back home?

There's so much room to explore, so many avenues to go down with these characters that would enhance the experience while simultaneously helping to ground the player in the accomplishments around him, that give the player reason for their actions. Instead they took the easy way out.They took the simple route. Why worry about any of this, why give this person character, give them hopes and dreams when they could shoot her in the head and be done?

The last thing I'll say is this, one of the first things you get after waking up is a recording your wife made for you, safeguarded all this time by your trusty house robot. It's a tear jerking tape of your wife and laughing son telling you what a great father you are, of how much your wife is looking forward to the two of you spending more time together as your try and raise your son in a rapidly changing world.

It's a great tape, one of the rare instances in games when audio logs actually have a meaningful impact. It's shame, cause I would have like to see far more of that interaction between wife and husband.

Instead I'm left with only a corpse sitting in a Cryo tank. With a wedding band in my inventory to symbolize all the conversations that were lost. All I'm left with is a wife that was shot in the head.

A Self Publishing Experiment and a Short Story: Already Dead

Earlier this week I published a short story called Already Dead. It's a story I originally got the idea for two years ago to the month before re-discovering it. I started writing it, got about a quarter of the way through and then gave up. I got stuck, realized I had no idea where I was going with it and moved on to something else.

A few months ago I decided to embark on an experiment with self publishing, to put some of my work out there and see if it could gain any traction. To see if I could muster up some feedback from the public on where I was as a writer. I didn't have any novels or other projects ready to go, so I turned back to my old short stories to give them a good polish and put them out in the wild to live or die on their own.

Already Dead was the first one I picked out. I liked the opening, a man clawing his way out of his own coffin. It was immediate, primal, and a fear I think we all hold at some level. Of being buried alive. Of being forgotten. I new how to get the character out of the grave, how to get them home. But not where to go after. That was where I had gotten bogged down in the original draft. However, reading through it again I got a few ideas going and re-wrote it over the course of a few busy weeks.

This week I published it. It is the first story I have every really published, ever put out in the market place to be ripped apart by anyone who happens to pass by. So far I have sold one copy to some random person in the UK. Whoever they are, I hope they enjoyed it.

If you would like to take a look at Already Dead, you can find on Google and Kindle.

Some Thoughts On Achievements

I don't like achievements in games. What started out as an interesting idea to acknowledge and engage the player has instead grown to do the opposite. Achievements tend to come in two forms, narrative, thank you for playing style achievements and gameplay driven, blow up five enemies with a single grenade, achievements.

The first type is particularly bad, and is the style of achievement I think most people have a problem with when they complain about achievements. You started up the game, congrats have some points. Beat the first chapter? Here's some more points. Are you in the middle of a tense emotional scene that is the make or break moment for your character? How about a nice achievement to ruin the moment. Achievements of this style distract players from the experience, break up the flow of the narrative and with a single chime and pop up ruin your immersion and make you suddenly very aware that you are in fact not a galactic hero or post-apocalyptic wanderer of vengeance, but a person holding a controller and playing a video game. With a single mechanic the developer erodes in moments what they've spent the entire game building up.

The second type of achievements are better in that they serve as a way for the developer to acknowledge something particularly cool the player has done. Fifteen head shots in a row? Hey, that's pretty cool, have an achievement. Go through that entire boss fight without taking damage? Wow, that's impressive, have another achievement. While these work as a way for a player to feel cool and receive some outside validation for something they've done, the usage of these achievements has become perverted over time. Now players use them not as a way to receive feedback on the cool things they're doing, but as a checklist for things to do, for bragging rights and as a way to extend the experience.

Which on the surface is not a bad thing. Finding a way to give the player more enjoyment by adding a list of specific challenges has been in games a long time. This is even an improvement in some ways, integrating the challenges into the natural play experience instead of ripping them out into a separate menu. I personally found this useful when playing Civ V. After the standard gameplay became dull, I challenged myself to win a match with every civilization and used the achievements list as a handy checklist integrated within the software I was already using.

It's this that betrays the underlying problem. I went achievement hunting because I was bored with the overall experience but still wanted to play the game. We all get bored with games. They get too hard, or run out of content or the narrative no longer compels us to see what happens next. This is a natural part of all mediums. However, if we still want to play the game and enjoy its mechanics, but can no longer find motivation to play within the game, that I feel is a failure on the part of the developer. Instead of adding more quests, or missions or side activities to encourage the player to continue to engage with the mechanics they find so satisfying, they instead rely on an external checklist overlaid on the game experience.

There are two more points I'd like to make. First, one thing achievements actually do well is encourage the player to stretch outside of their normal play style or the mechanics they are comfortable with in order to get more out of the game. Again, the Civilization series does this by asking you to play as every Civ, beat the game with each victory condition, on each difficulty level and so on. Other games do this by encouraging you to use different weapons or abilities, or hinting at alternate endings and paths through the game that you can explore. Again though, I think there are better way to do this within the game without having to rely on achievements to motivate the player.

Second, achievements, at least on the major consoles, are mandatory. Games that go through the approval process to get on these platforms must include achievements, must award certain levels or points for these achievements and must implement them in certain ways. This may be the greatest problem of all, as developers who cannot or do not have the time to come up with interesting ways to implement them don't have the option to leave them out, but must instead force them into the experience anyway.

Achievements are going to be around for a long time. They remain in full force in this new generation of consoles and will likely survive long into the next. But I think it's time to take a long, big picture look at achievements and ask ourselves why we are still putting them in games, how we use them, how their use impacts the player, and what their roll is in the future.

Copyright and IP Ownership

I was on Reddit earlier today in this thread an u/paxillus_involutus brought up copyright law, specifically that copyright laws should be much shorter. The idea is that a company or creator should not be able to hold onto the rights of their intellectual property for decades or even centuries on end.

This comes up a lot in regards to Disney, since they argued that fairy tales should be kept in the public domain and used by all, only to then trademark and lock down many of those same fairy tales. Proponents of putting intellectual property into fair use argue that by letting the public have access to these ideas after the original creator has a chance to profit off them, creators have more tools available to them to create, culture can grow unimpeded and we'll all benefit from a greater amount of ideas and stories over all.

For instance, it would be pretty cool if once George Lucas passed away Star Wars passed into the public domain and could then be used by anyone, instead of being locked down by Disney until the end of time. Or if characters like Superman and Captain America could be used by anyone in whatever projects they want without fear of being sued.

The other point frequently argued is that copyright law was created to help spur creativity and culture by protecting the creators, allowing them to make a living off their creations for a time before it passes into the public domain. This way, everyone wins. The creator gets to make a living off his work, at least for a time, and once the allotted time expires that idea is put of for grabs, letting other people tinker it with it and make even more cool and interesting things.

But I'm not sure I buy it.

Now, I'm obviously at least a little biased here, being a writer after all I want to protect my intellectual property and creations as much as possible. They're pretty near and dear to my heart, but why should I be able to continue to hide them away even after I'm dead. After all I'm not around anymore so why should I care? And even if I passed it on to my decedents should they really have any more say in it than the public? They didn't create it  and how long can one be expected to profit off the idea before everyone should be able to take a crack at it.

I come at this from a different angle. Why does it need to pass into public domain at all? Does it really do that much for creativity and culture? For me, in a weird way, this all comes back to Dune.

The original six Dune books were written by Frank Herbert. They're wonderful and had a huge influence on me as writer and as a person and God Emperor of Dune is probably my favorite book of all time. Now Frank died before completing the seventh and final book of the Saga. Sometime later, his son Brian Herbert in collaboration with Kevin J Anderson wrote a bunch of new books in the Dune universe, having the writes passed on by Frank.

Now the new books aren't bad. The Butlerian Jihad trilogy is fine. They just aren't Dune. They don't have the same feel, the same style. My friends and I like to call them the apocrypha. Now, Brian had the rights passed down to him by his father, thus doing these works under the same system I'm techincally argueing for so maybe Dune isn't the best example, but my point is that the newer Dune books sort of cheapen the brand, or the universe. When I recommend the Dune books to a friend I always specify that I mean the core six and not any of the newer ones. The newer books have transformed the universe into a different thing.

Take Star Wars for example. A lot of people really dislike the prequels. I'm sort of middling on them myself. They were made by George Lucas, the original creator of Star Wars. But imagine if they weren't, imagine instead if they had passed into the public domain and been made by someone else. For many people the prequels cheapened the brand, they diluted the original story. Having anyone able to do that at anytime puts a lot of properties at risk.

The upside is that with ideas in the public domain the idea of canon would no longer exist, every version of the stories would be both equally valid and invalid, judged on its own merits, and that might actually lead to some truly wonderful stories.

But again we come back to this idea of more property in the public domain equals more creativity. And it's with this that I fundamentally disagree. Writers, and I think all creators to some extent, don't create in a vacuum. We take bits and pieces of things from all sort of places and experiences from throughout our entire lives and many times we don't even realize we're doing it. Thus, while Dune might be a rigid set of rules and characters, ideas from Dune show up all over the place. I don't know if Dune was the first to have a giant sandworm but they've since shown up in everything from Beetle Juice to Mass Effect.

Similarly if I want to make a Star Wars movie (and if there is a God hopefully someday I will get my chance) I don't need the license to make a movie with the same themes and concepts. Change out Jedi for wizards and stormtroopers for samurai and off you go.  Look at Superman, how many times and how many ways have we seen that character re-done and re-imagined? True, if the property was put into the public domain we might have gotten the amazing Red Son a lot sooner or more stories like it, but under the current system we also get awesome things like the Plutonian from Irredeemable or Apollo and the Midnighter from the Authority.

My point is that whether an intellectual property goes into public domain or not creators are always going to take ideas and concepts from things and rework them into new ideas and new pieces of art because that's what creators do, whether they own the right to the material or not.

It's a complicated issue with no clear answer. Personally I think a hundred year rule starting from when the thing was originally created/released might be interesting.

Some Thoughts On Military History

I was thinking recently about how things have changed for nations over the course of military history, and what was required of them to fight and win wars.

In the days of ancient military history, wars often came down to a single climatic battle or a small series of such battles. While generals had their roles on the battlefield and in planning the fight, the winner was often determined by the training and courage of its soldiers. Casualties in those days were generally limited to the front lines. Once these lines were smashed the others would turn and run. The side that held out longer was usually the victor.

In the time of Rome war became one of campaigns. Multiple battles across wide territories decided the war. Generals and their strategies were the deciding factor. Consider the Punic Wars and Hannibal's march through Spain and across the Alps into Italy. Or his opponents brilliant strategy of avoiding combat until Hannibal's army died on the vine.

Then in the Feudal era war became a contest of money. Which king owned the most land, could raise the most levies, keep them in the field the longest or build the most castles. In the Industrial era war was won by production. Which side had the most railways. Could manufacturer the most rifles, ships, or planes. The American civil war, World War I and II were all ultimately decided by production, logistics and economic output.

These things of course all build upon the other. Factories won't run and goods won't flow without money. All the money and equipment in the world won't matter if you don't have capable commanders controlling them and good men using them.

But I think now, in the modern age, war is not decided by any of these things. War is now decided by people and their will to fight.

Take the United States for example. Right now the United States owns as many aircraft carriers as the rest of the world combined. They are economically and technologically the leading power on the planet. There is nothing, economically or military speaking, stopping them from conquering all of Central America and the Caribbean. Even if the other nations of the world streamed their combined navies against the United States, there would be no clear winner to that fight. The other nations could try and embargo the United States and move away from the dollar as the standard, but they'd be causing significant harm to their own economies in the process.

The only major roadblock to an American Empire, is the American people. They simply wouldn't allow it. Even given a call to action, a Pearl Harbor or 9/11, is no guarantee. How long until they decide that casualties are too high, that the cost isn't worth it? The Unites States has some 5,000 people on board a single aircraft carrier. If one were to be sunk with a total loss of personnel it would be equivalent to the casualties sustained during nine years of fighting in Iraq.

Compare that to the people of Iraq or Afghanistan who continue to fight long after their governments and military have surrendered, after their economic and industrial capabilities have been destroyed or removed. They fight against an economically, technologically, industrially and militarily superior foe out of sheer will. Whether or not they are "winning" that war is debatable, but it shows no matter what side you are considering, it all comes down to the people's will to fight or not.

The day in which a nation can rely on their propaganda, or a public determined to dig in and fight to the last breath is over. People no longer hold onto the purely racial or nationalistic motives to fight. A nation can't simply paint their adversary as being a rape thirsting barbarian without some kind of evidence to back it up. The inter connected nature of the world's communication simply won't allow for painting the enemy as some sick "other" that must be slain for the good of all mankind.

As the nation moves toward bigger, better and more sophisticated weaponry, toward making sure we can fight large conventional armies and insurgents alike, perhaps we should look toward our own people. What good are the world's best weapons, if no one is willing to use them?

Bioshock Infinite Review

The Lighthouse

     Bioshock Infinite is a wonderful, beautiful, finely crafted masterpiece of a game. That may come across as hyperbole, but it isn't. The bottom line is that Bioshock Infinite raises the bar for what games can be. It shows that the medium can be more than mindless, bland shooters that look and feel nearly identical to one another. Everything about this game raises it above the pack. Its world building and artistic design are miles ahead of what anyone else is doing in the genre. Its sound design and music go beyond simple ambiance to reinforce the narrative, cement the player in the world and most importantly, is so damn good as to stand on it's own. And the story is a touching journey of a broken man perfectly wrapped together in themes of religion, patriotism, obligation, and the limits of reality.

    Everything about this world pops. The introduction to the floating city of Columbia, the games setting, takes place during a fair. We are exposed to this society during one of it's most colorful and joyous occasions, while its darker prejudices are swept away in the shadows. Posters and displays perfectly echo the time period as simple carnival games not only endear us to the town and its people, but serve as a brilliant tutorial that is both hidden and optional. The game's operators call to the player to test their skills and destroy the wooden representations of the evil Vox Populi as an a cappella group sings from a floating barge. Simply walking around in the world made me feel like a kid in an amusement park. I am not the kind of person that smiles easily, but walking around in this wonderful land of early Americana gave me no choice in the matter. I couldn't help but stop and look around at the shop displays, posters and fine detail that marks ever corner of this world. The full realization of this game's world building serves not only as an example to every other developer out there, but creators in any medium.

    The themes goes beyond simple window dressing, they permeate every fabric of the society, from the songs of playing children, to a store run on the honor system in a religiously motivated society. On the surface is a world of affluent, god fearing whites of proper heritage. Underneath is a land of segregated bathrooms, servants and Irish factory workers. One of the most memorable moments for me was walking through the squalor of the under city. I stopped and listened as a poor black woman sat on a stage used for prisoner stocks. She sat on the edge and bellowed out a beautiful and haunting version of CCR's Fortunate Son that is bound to stick with me for quite some time. The slight touches of futuristic technology and tears in the fabric of space time create wonders that leave the player breathless, such as mechanical horses, a robotic chaingun wielding George Washington and Cyndi Lauper's girls just wanna have fun being pumped through an old gramophone. Every part of this game leaves and impression on the player, from  the stark contrast between the bathrooms of whites and blacks, to the sounds of Chopin warped through loud speakers of the oppressed workers of Fink Industries.

Bring Us The Girl and Wipe Away The Debt

    The original Bioshock was known for its incredible story of a man washed up on a lighthouse, sent below the waves to a magical city under the city that had been ravaged in a civil war by the very people who built it. In the original the player was a voiceless puppet, proceeding through the game at the behest of Atlas with no voice of their own. Bishock Infinite bucks the trend of the silent protagonist in casting the player in the shoes of Booker DeWitt. A washed up veteran who's seen better days. The mission to wipe away his debt takes him to a lighthouse where the atheist is launched into the clouds. Instead of finding God, he finds himself surrounded by the religious iconography of a madman and is branded with the label of false prophet. While the city's propaganda proclaims itself a paradise in the sky, Booker sees clear signs of racism that was all too recently an everyday occurrence in America. While the town's people speak of an economic land of plenty, Booker witnesses the starving poor and workers at Fink's Industries forced to bid in an auction for jobs, not for how much they will do the job for, but in how fast they can do it.

    Having Booker DeWitt as an actual character, as opposed to a silent protagonist allows for a commentary on the events, as opposed to the player quietly moving between each vignette. Booker feels like a real character in a real situation, as opposed to a floating camera along for the ride. While the game does offer limited choice, in having the main character be an actual person it leads to a great consistency in their actions and stronger impact on the narrative. I saw this while playing Sleeping Dogs as well, and hope it catches on.

Damsel in Distress

    The game's narrative revolves around Booker rescuing a girl locked away in a tower, and bringing her back to his client in New York. The idea of a game long escort mission left me with a sense of dread, but I'm glad to report that Bioshock handles this quite well.

    When you first meet Elizabeth, your head is swirling from all the things you observed in Columbia so far and the rumors of the "lamb" and her place in society. Instead of finding some defenseless fairy tell princess, you find an actual person with her own desires and personality.  Irrational made a very smart decision in never forcing you to protect her. Elizabeth is immune in combat, can never be hurt and actively aids the player. Both in bringing in allies and supplies through "tears" and in throwing Booker ammo and other supplies in combat. Through the story Elizabeth is elevated from a simple errand to a partner, and eventually into an individual agent with goals and desires that separates her from and in some ways conflicts with Booker's.

    Most importantly, she's a real person. A fully realized character that the player feels increasingly attached to during the adventure. She serves not only as a model for a strong female in games, but as a wonderful supporting character that is every bit the hero in her own right, as opposed to be constantly downgraded to the level of sidekick for the player's enjoyment.

More To Life Than Carrying A Gun

    What's most telling to me about Bioshock Infinite is we're at the end of the review I haven't even brought up the shooting, Infinite's primary combat feature. The shooting, whether with guns or vigors is fun, and tighter than in the original Bioshock. But really, it's the least interesting part of the game. And really, how often do we say that? Normally the combat is just the biggest selling point, it's the only selling point. The music, the art direction, plot and world building are all secondary. A coat of paint to make the core experience more compelling.

    This is what makes Bioshock Infinite more than a good game, more than a great game. Every aspect is of the highest caliber. No one part stands above the rest. In most games the combat and graphics may be great, but the music and plot lacking. Or the parts may be really good individually, but disjointed. Bishock Infinite not only maintains the highest quality in its components, but weaves them together masterfully into a whole greater than the sum of its parts. It is not only one of my favorite games in the past year, it is one of my favorites for this generation. My only regret was this I didn't get to spend more time in its world, more time exploring Columbia and its people. This is one game I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel too.

    If you decide to pick up this game, and you should, take your time with it. Walks around and smell the roses. Read the posters and listen to the town folk's dialogue. Rushing past it would cause you to miss one of the finest crafted world's in all of gaming.

I played Bioshock Infinite on a PS3.

I'd like to make a special thanks to my Brother, who got me Infinite for my birthday.

You can follow me on twitter: @MadnessSerenade

Or leave a comment below.

Sleeping Dogs Review

Troubled Past

    Sleeping Dogs, released in August of 2012 began its life as the third game in the True Crime series. For those who don't remember, True Crime was a Grand Theft Auto clone released in the last generation with the twist that you played a cop as opposed to a low life criminal. From what I recall True Crime: Streets of L.A. (the first in the series) was decent, but mostly forgettable. The sequel, set in New York did poorly, and left the franchise in much need of a reboot. This was supposed to be True Crime: Hong Kong. The project was canceled by Activision - Blizzard in 2011 only to be saved by Square Enix who swooped and renamed it Sleeping Dogs.

Just Another Clone?

    The True Crime series was blatant rip off of the GTA open world style adding the gimmick of being a cop to attempt to give some semblance of difference. But that was way back in 2003, now the open world style has progressed beyond the standard GTA clone into a genre of its own with games like Saints Row on one side and Infamous or Prototype on the other.

    Open world games have become pretty popular, offering the player the chance to explore freely and the promise of a large experience with lots of hours of content. With so many games in this space, including the Mafia series and games like L.A. Noire, one has to worry about more than the comparisons to GTA. They have to carve out their own space in an increasingly crowded genre.

A World Away

    This is what makes the decision to base the world in Hong Kong so smart. The open world genre, and most of gaming for that matter is full of western influences. Modern games take place in New York or L.A. Fantasy games are set in European medieval worlds. Even futuristic sci-fi shooters show strong western influence. In the rare case a game is set somewhere else, such as the middle east in military shooters, it's done from the view point of westerners. Setting the game in Hong Kong gives us the chance to see something fresh. A rich culture too rarely explored, and customs different than many westerns are used to. Not to mention the kick I got as an American driving on the wrong side of the road.

    In a lot of ways the game straddles these two world of east and west, having a main character that was born and raised in Hong Kong but lived for a long time in the states. The setting of Hong Kong also gives a strong excuse for the amount of English in the game due to its history of occupation and foreign influence. While the story they chose to go with could have easily been set in another setting with the changing of a few names, I really enjoyed the bold decision of setting the game far away from more conventional choices. It helped give the game an identity that former titles in the series lacked.

Gameplay

    Any one who's played an open world game in the style of GTA will be right at home with Sleeping Dogs. Missions are given through beacons identified on the map and often revolve around driving and combat. Side missions litter the island in the standard side quest/racing/relation ships format with lots of collectables to find along the way.

    Missions are split into to two general categories, with one half advancing Detective Shen's cover with the triad, and the other has Shen helping fellow Officer Teng close cases. During each mission actions cause Shen to gain triad points for rough actions and lose police points for damaging property or hurting innocent bystanders. These points, translated into XP allow Shen to level up and unlock various abilities and perks. The also add in a free running element and the ability to "action hijack" that is hijack a one vehicle from another, but most of this is pretty normal fair.

Don't Hate The Player (or the part where I tell you what I liked)

    So is it good? Yes, to put it simply. But it's not great.

    It took me a while to get drawn into Sleeping Dog's story. While its story hasn't been explored to a great extinct in games, it's well traveled terrain in other mediums. Shen returns to his old neighborhood as an undercover cop to take down the triad. An old friend named Jackie is the stand in wanna-be thug that serves as your entrance into the criminal scene. From the opening moments you see exactly where this story is going. While it tries to throw a few surprises in the mix, they all come across as expected for anyone who's seen one of the many variants of this story before.

    That's okay though. While the plot is predictable and the dialogue often weak, strong voice acting and well developed characters managed to pull me in. Soft handed touches like Shen's paranoia becoming evident in his reports, or the echos from dead friends and foes as he sleeps give depth in what would otherwise be a shallow pond. What begins as a simple gang pissing contest grows into a political game of chicken amongst the leaders of the triad thus side stepping the loss of interest that comes with many of GTA's story lines that focus entirely on a mostly pointless rise to the top.

    Casting the player in the roll of an undercover cop also gives great justification for all those side missions that pop up. In most open world games, and seemingly every GTA, a player needs money or has to impress someone or there is some other flimsy excuse given to have the player learn to race. This serves as the introduction to the mission type and opens up the side missions for the player. While tasking our undercover detective with racing in an effort to learn more about illegal racing rings is just as flimsy, it at least makes sense with the character and story being told.

    Through the story enemies becomes friends and friends enemies, but strong personalities from the characters help the choices they make feel real, and help the player connect to the world they are trying to infiltrate. Detective Shen finds himself drawn into the struggles of the people he's trying to undermine, and you as player find yourself caring right along with him.

    This is added to by the developer crafting a single story through the game. Unlike a lot of recent titles that arbitrarily force you to choose between two paths (see Far Cry 3) Sleeping Dogs has a single narrative throughout (with a fantastic use of the bookend trope). There is limited player choice in some scenes, but overall the player is directed through a single story. This allows for a stronger central character and a satisfying conclusion to their journey, as opposed to diluting the waters across two streams.

    The voice acting is great, bringing in well known actors including Emma Stone, Lucy Liu, Tom Wilkinson and Kelly Hu. Will Yun Lee does a great job in the leading roll as Shen as does Edison Chen, who plays Jackie, the childhood friend.

    The game won't blow any one away graphically, thanks in large part to an old console generation. The tired textures are saved by good design and use of lighting. The slums of Hong Kong tower above the player, and your clothes actually look wet when it's raining in addition to  puddles forming on the streets.

    Tiny things add to the experience. Allowing you to walk or drive while reading the reports on your phone or kick starting a motorcycle help the world feel alive. Hell, when getting a car from the parking garage the attendant puts away his newspaper before addressing you.These simple, but subtle touches bring the world alive in a way that shiny graphics never could.

Hate the Game (The part where I nag about the things I didn't)

    But as I said, the game isn't great. And while it's many of the games smaller touches that help elevate it from being just another clone, it's also the little things that drag it down from Mount Olympus into the lands of mortals.

    While the combat is fun throughout the game, featuring a mostly hand to hand system very similar to the Batman Arkham games or Assassin's Creed, it lacks those game's polish. Especially Batman's. The game attempts to go for the same camera and sounds tricks that the Arkham games employ to add a visceral feeling to the combat, but slightly miss the mark. They achieve the martial arts action movie feeling they're going for, but slight latencies in attacks and misfired combos left me wondering if it was me, my controller, or the game causing me to take an enemy's punch. I never had that problem with the Bat.

    Gunplay is loose, which is not uncommon for the genre, but could have been tighter. Having the two combat systems also causes the problem of areas being separated into binary sections of hand to hand combat and gunplay. I would have loved for there to be a system that incorporated the two elements together, though I admit I don't know how they would have done this.

    Free running is nice, but again is generally limited to pre defined paths and for some reason won't allow you to climb up ramps, forcing you to find their front (especially troubling when swimming.)

    Also, you have a phone and there are cabs in the game that allow fast travel, but no way to call cabs. True, you get the ability later in the game to have a valet deliver a car to you anywhere in the city, but it still baffles me how they left out the option of calling a cab when both elements are in the game.

    The mini-games. My god the mini-games. This game has all of them. Hacking? It's in there. Lock picking? Yep, has that too. How about a combination lock game, karaoke, planting bugs and triangulating phone calls? All in there. That's what, six mini games? Often thrown at you for little reason and with zero explanation out side of the prompts given to you at the time. Don't worry though, cause they are all mind numbingly, tediously easy. Hacking is a simple game with one optimal solution that anyone should be able to realize with a little logic. The combination locks tell you their combination simply by turning a dial. The others follow in similar ways making them more of a chore than an enjoyment. Oh, and there's poker. I forgot about poker. And drug busts, where you point a camera at a high lighted enemy and press a button. Way too many mini-games.

    And quick time events. This game loves quick time events. And for the life of me I can't figure out why, because there is no challenge to them. Zero. Some take place in combat, and these actually work well. If a fat guy grabs you from behind you can press X (the attack button) to kick people in front of you or Y (the counter button) to escape. These work well as they mirror their same actions in combat. Though for some reason B (grapple) allows you to roll out of the way when the fat guy is trying to stomp your face.

    What makes less sense is when you jump from one car to another and have to suddenly press Y to "recover," that is, to prevent your dumbass from falling off the moving vehicle. These happen randomly but a simple press of the Y button causes you to hang on. You're given ample time for this so there's never any danger. Why have it in the game at all? Or the "smooth talking." At certain points in a mission Shen is tasked with persuading his way past a guard or other human shaped obstacle. Once again all the player has to do it wait until the button prompt appears on screen and press it. No effort required. During the game I died in combat, I lost races and failed missions. Never, not once in the whole game, did I fall off a car or fail a "smooth talking" segment. Come to think of it, I don't even know if you actually fall off the car when failing to press Y, as it never happened. All they end up doing is padding the run time of the game, and highlighting how shallow the gameplay can be.

    Face Meter. The game has it. It's a meter that fills up in combat for doing combos and not getting hit. When it fills all the way some enemies back away in fear from you. And that's pretty much it. You can unlock some abilities for it by doing side quests that earn you face points, but the whole thing is pretty pointless. It feels tacked on, as if the developers put it in there because they thought they had too. A simple addition of special abilities or being invincible for a short time would have helped justify it's existence.

    Which brings me to the points. At first the points make sense. The character, Detective Shen, is divided between trying to be true to the law and being a legitimate criminal to avoid the suspicions of those he seeks to stop. Beat the crap out of people or damage things and the bad guys like you. Hurt innocents and the cops don't. Simple, logical, fine.

    Problem is it breaks down pretty damn fast. It has zero implication on the narrative and only serves to unlock certain abilities. The triad meter or points have to be earned, while Shen starts a mission with a full cop meter and points that can only be lost, rarely challenging the player and often penalizing him. These games use random engines for things like pedestrians, often putting the player in situations where innocents will get run over, and penalizing the player for no reason. Speaking of killing people, damaging a street sign will cost you five points. Kill an innocent person? Fifteen. You could kill a half dozen innocent people and still get cop points for the mission. You can also get penalized cop points for "clumsiness" which happens you mess up a jump while free running. I would love for someone to explain to me how that makes any sense. The whole system was in need of a major reworking. It's my guess that it was left in as a hold over from the True crime series and justify the unlocking of abilities. I would highly suggest they go back to the drawing board for this mechanic in a sequel.

Collectables

    The game also has collectables. Probably because having an open world game without collectables is against the gaming Geneva Conventions or something. Health shrines scattered about the world serve as nice scenery and activating five of them give the player a health boost. Lockboxes are the main collectable and have money, clothing and occasionally weapons inside. Most are also guarded by gangsters, which are fun to beat up.

    My favorite however are the Jade Statues. Shen finds these throughout the game and can return them to his old martial arts instructor, who will then teach him moves and combos. Each time the player delivers a statue they are rewarded with a short conversation between Shen and his former Master. I really enjoyed these, and felt they added to Shen's character.

    To me, the collectables seem to sum up everything that works well and poorly within the game. The health shrines are a smart use of an old convention. Tasking the player with finding them but also providing an actual gameplay benefit with a good aesthetic bonus. The lock boxes are standard fare with a pointless mini-game and covered with a few bad guys to give the appearance of depth. And then we have the Jade Statues, again something that reinforces the game's aesthetic,  but also one that adds to the narrative and reinforces the game central theme of being torn between worlds, both in the complexities of the past, the opportunities of the future, and the tough choices of the present.

Conclusion 

    Sleeping Dogs wasn't a blip on my radar. I had zero interest in this game when I saw the trailers for it. I only picked it up based on the positive buzz of those that had played it. While it isn't a great, triple A title, it is a solid second tier game. If you see it on a steam sale or in the bargain bin for twenty bucks, you will defiantly get your money's worth, but I have reservations at recommending it at the full sixty buck price tag. I enjoyed the game a lot, more for its soul and what it's trying to do than for what it actually did and can't wait to see what they do with a sequel.

I played Sleeping Dogs on PC using a controller.

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