Sleeping Dogs is an imaginative take on the open-world style of play established by Grand Theft Auto, and it takes the sandbox life-of-crime genre to a logical next step.
Set in a fictional version of Hong Kong, the game puts you in control of Wei Shen - a Chinese/American cop whose job prospects take a dangerous turn when he ends up working undercover in a triad gang.
Like so many games, Sleeping Dogs will put your morality to the test, with the separate cop and triad skill upgrade paths being a wee bit reminiscent of the Paragon/Renegade paths in the Mass Effect series.
Walking the line isn't as easy as it sounds. Because the experience - the graphics, the sound, the voice acting, and the writing - is so engaging, it shouldn't be a surprise to find yourself regretting certain actions or wishing you'd done something a little dirtier. The deeper you go, the harder it is to remain purely good - or purely evil, for that matter - and fortunately the game understands that. You can replay completed missions if they haven't been done to your satisfaction.
Whether intentional or not, it's a good thing that the character hardest to care about is your own avatar, Wei. It makes it easier to insert yourself into the Hong Kong underworld, and it makes the morality stuff much more personal.
