Sleeping Dogs

Sleeping Dogs is an open environment action game set in the crime world of the Hong Kong Triads. The protagonist controlled by the player is Wei Shen, a Chinese-American police officer who returns to the Hong Kong neighbourhood of his youth to infiltrate the Triad organization Sun On Yee. In the opening scenes he quickly hooks up again with his old friend Jackie Ma who introduces him to the Triad boss Winston Chu. Even though many characters still remember Shen from long ago, he has to work his way back up. The main storyline has him perform various missions for the organization, starting with simple extortion quests with the local merchants. These quests have to be followed to make available new missions and open up new parts of the city, but a role-playing element allows Shen to choose his own path. Three types of experience points can be earned: Triad, Cop and Face. The first two determine Shen's devotion to either the Triad or the police respectively, based on his actions. The third is an overall experience system that determines Shen's global reputation. Leveling up opens up new upgrades through a skill tree system. Players are free to leave the story behind and explore the city at their own leisure.

Shen is able to get a girlfriend, shop for new clothing and get his own apartment. Communication is mostly done through phones. Health generates automatically, but it can also be restored by buying food and drinks from stalls in the streets. Collected money can be used to buy new melee combat moves. As a police officer Shen can hack security cameras to spy on others. Hacking is done through a mini-game similar to Mastermind, but with numbers instead of colours. The player keeps tracks of important marks and objectives through a mini-map in the bottom left corner. When dying during a mission, Shen wakes up in a hospital with some wealth removed.