Monthly Report - April 2020

Won : Redeemer, Redout: Enhanced Edition
Free : -
From bundles/gifts/sales : -

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition

48 hours playtime

59 of 59 achievements

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition - completed

I won this game on SteamGifts.
Overall this is a good game, not great, but good. This game feels different from all the games in this genre, setting it in a city outside of the US, not being afraid to have characters speaking chinese, removing the gun fights from most of the game… All of this generates a feeling that you are not playing yet another clone of Mafia / GTA. Having different XP for doing triad things and cops things is great as it pushes you to be careful and not acting wrong.
And this is great. Where the game fails a bit, is that the story is a bit weak, and it is quickly a bit repetitive.

Also some issues break the immersion :

The worst : you have triad missions and cop missions in parallel. Sometimes you even walk around the city with a cop uniform ! You are supposed to be an undercover policeman, and most of the city knows you (vendors call you by your name), and you walk around as a cop ! Each time this happened, I was thrown out of the story. It feels like the developers didn’t have enough ideas to fill the game with undercover action, and needed to add more. And they didn’t even try to fit that in the story (it could be before/after being undercover, a flashback, or force you to be discreet when investigating…)
And the other thing is mostly technical : you are very good at parkour, you can climb things, jump high… Yet, when the game doesn’t want you to go somewhere, you are often blocked by a simple wall, sometimes a small wall that a toddler could climb is blocking you, sometimes even the sidewalk is blocking. This is the worst… I hate game where you can’t jump.

Besides that, this is quite enjoyable. The combat feels good (although sometimes the controls are not as reactive as they should), the gun fights are relatively rare but they feel very good too. The driving feels a bit strange, but you get used to it and I liked driving around the city (I barely used the taxi, which is quick travel - great idea by the way).

I also played the DLCs :

Year of the Snake : nice. You play as a cop, and not when being undercover. Good ! It feels different from the rest of the game (you have to arrest the thugs !). Good one.
Nightmare in North Point : the base idea sounded great. And then very quickly, it is just repetitive. Doing pretty much the same thing again and again. Too bad, the story and changes in the gameplay were interesting, but there’s a lot of filler between the few events that are really different.
Zodiac Tournament : good idea, overall interesting as the opponents are using unusual combat style. Only issue I had is at the middle of the DLC, an event happens, that you cannot avoid, that makes you walk very slowly. For no interesting reason. I hated this part. Biggest issue : you cannot skip the cutscenes ! (especially the veeeeery long intro)

So overall, a good game that I mostly enjoyed playing, but that had the potential of being a great one.

Achievements : All missions can be replayed, and you can continue to play after finishing it so no achievement is missable, which is great. Finding all the collectibles can be a pain, but pretty early on, some missions allow you to see them on the minimap, so I had most of them by the end of the game. I think the worst one was for Nightmare in North Point, where you have to kill more enemies that there is in one playthrough (if you play properly). This DLC being pretty boring, I was really annoyed to have to replay it.
Ah yes, there is one very, VERY annoying : having a winning balance of $1 000 000 at gambling. The only one that can give you that kind of money are the cockfights, but the bet is capped and the result is random. That was just painful. And useless : I had way more money that I needed…