Sleeping Dogs is honestly really special. It gets hyped up an awful lot and it seems like every other day they try to sell it for pennies on Steam but it's true, it's a great time. "GTA China" is pretty inaccurate, as are Yakuza comparisons in my opinion - it sort of plays like the Batman Arkham games mixed with Just Cause 2. Great characters, fun story, brutal combat, and a really immersive recreation of Hong Kong filled with weird secrets, like some guy you can buy an air conditioning unit off of.

I actually wanted this game to be longer, the tension and drama really kept me hooked. I do still have some of the expansion DLC to play through at least, but I can easily see myself replaying it in the near future. The only real complaints I have are that the police side missions tend to be short and repetitive, and the camera controls are kind of slow and clunky to get used to at first. Highly recommend checking this one out

We're back in Kamurochō!

Judgment is a spin-off of the Yakuza series by RGG studios, aiming to tell an all new story unrelated to Kiryu, and boy does it succeed. Instead of Kiryu, you play as Yagami, a detective running from his mistakes who gets involved in a scheme surrounding sinister murders.

The story is the first thing to praise, going into the noir mystery vibes the earlier Yakuza games were going for. While it has the standard Yakuza issue of frontloading the player with lengthy cutscenes in the first half, pretty much all the new characters are amazing. While Yagami doesn't match the likes of Kiryu or Ichiban, he's still a great protagonist in his own rights. Kaito is also a great bro character, and characters that fill Yagami's inner circle like Genda and Sugiura are also greatly realized for the most part. Some characters like Mafuyu or Hoshino are a little underutilized, but there's not an outright bad character here. It all gives a more contained vibe compared to previous Yakuza games, which is a welcome change from just how convoluted some of those could get (Yakuza 4 more like Yakuza 4 trips to the wiki to figure out what's going on am I right?)

And on top of that, the city is just as fun to explore as ever! The game introduces a reputation mechanic, where you get to develop a friendship with different NPC's in what are basically mini side quest chains. These are usually just checking in on them when you're nearby and maybe doing a small task for them. It really rejuvenates the setting and makes the world feel more alive. Some of these guys also walk around the city to help you in combat, which is just really cool. And speaking of combat, it's near RGGs best here! Gone is the weird floaty jank of Yakuza 6, giving way to a beautifully animated and agile fighting style, focusing more on quick strikes and agile jumping off walls to counter stronger foes. And it's so good ignoring one MAJOR issue with the combat: mortal wounds, my contender for the single worst mechanic RGG has introduced. Basically, when you take a super strong attack, you lose an entire chunk of your health bar until you either use a specific (and expensive) healing item or get fixed at one specific point of the map (which is also expensive) and I get the point of this. It's to add tension and convey through gameplay that Yagami isn't some Kiryu-tier threat. Only issue is...he's getting there? Dude's a self taught martial artist that can effectively clear out hordes of thugs on his own. Like yeah against prime Kiryu or Majima he'd be screwed, but I could easily see him at least holding his own against the likes of Tanimura or anyone in the Y7 party. But there is a way to not take these hits. There's a heat mode you can activate that means you don't take them! Great! Until you remember this is activated by burning through the heat meter, meaning you won't be using heat moves and finishers in case a boss in that area can just half your health with one well executed move. This makes an RGG combat system where I felt more encouraged to NOT use the elaborate super moves in high stress moments, which is bad. Thank god this system was just removed from the sequel. I could see it being an interesting mechanic in say, a stealth or survival horror game. But Yakuza? Nah, this ain't it.

But the other part of this game is doing cool detective shit. Most of this is great, like flying a drone or looking around for people in a crowd. There are also courtroom moments where you present evidence, even if several of these are very clearly Ace Attorney inspired (look, ballistic markings are a plot point in one of these, they knew what they were doing) and all of these are excellent. Minus tailing missions, they suck ass. It's just stealthing around a person as they go about their day, with the most suspense being them randomly changing their direction or turning around, which is easy to avoid. They're just boring and always go on for way too long. It would be much better if they were replaced/had the option of stakeouts as shown in the games opening cutscene, where the player could gather info from context clues to guess where the target would go, and confronting them that way. Doesn't help that a lot of sidequests revolve around doing these as well. The last one for the main story is also a contender for the worst singular moment in an RGG game. But the other mechanics? Excellent, add to the immersion greatly.

All in all, it's a great story that adds to the RGG universe, showcasing RGG at their best, but also their worst. But there's a sequel which apparently fixes a lot of my issues, so I'll be moving on to that soon.