The final bit of expansion DLC for Sleeping Dogs that I also accessed via the Definitive Edition extras. Similar to Nightmare in North Point, it's a little extra content that isn't really connected to the overall plot super importantly. It's just a little more Sleeping Dogs for you if you hadn't quite had your fill yet~. It took me around 4 or 5 hours to do everything in it.

Year of the Snake actually does canonically take place after the main story. Wei Shen is on thin ice with his superiors after the giant fiasco that took place in the main game, and now he's a beat cop patrolling the streets. That is, until he accidentally uncovers a cult's plans to blow up Hong Kong in an effort to usher in a doomsday prophecy. Officer Wei is once again called into action to help save Hong Kong~. The story is once again nothing special, and it's a little more tame than even Nightmare in North Point was, and that was pretty tame and bare bones.

In both mechanics and story, it feels like the Cop Job side-content from the main game but spread out into 4-5 hours. The missions themselves are actually more numerous and varied than the ones in Nightmare, but they don't feel like anything you haven't done before, for the most part. The most interesting thing about it is that you're always a cop now, no undercover stuff. That being the case, you now have special cop stuff like the ability to arrest people or tazer them (basically special melee combat options). It gives the way you play the game a neat new framing, but nothing as interesting or silly as Nightmare was. I know that the canceled sequel for Sleeping Dogs was going to have Wei as a cop working with a criminal, so perhaps this was originally intended as a setup for that idea of a more cop-stuff-focused mission structure.

Verdict: Recommended. For another $7, this also is a pretty good value proposition. It feels the least movie-like out of the 3 stories, but it also has a reasonably more large amount of content to do compared to Nightmare, so it's hard for me to recommend one over the other if only could pick one. It's a fine addition to the Definitive Edition's content, and a well-priced bit of add-on content if you only have the base game.

Reviewed on Mar 18, 2024


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