“Sleeping Dogs,” an open-world crime procedural set in Hong Kong, feels a lot more exotic than “Grand Theft Auto,” and not just because you drive on the left side of the road.
The game offers an island metropolis with all the grit and glamour you’d expect, a clash of cellphones and dragon dances, a place where red-glazed ducks hang in the windows of a restaurant on the bottom floor of a gleaming skyscraper. To this capitalist’s paradise arrives Wei Shen, who grew up here, moved to San Francisco at age 10, and is back as an undercover cop to gain the trust of some of the neighborhood guys he grew up with. The story is gratuitously violent, even by video game standards, but the script makes time for nuance and humor — a van sold at a chop shop is described as a “pre-stolen vehicle.”
