Viqor played Sleeping Dogs

Most open world action game tend to ask you to be a character without morals: criminals free of conscience, ne'er-do-wells, and over-the-top gangsters are frequent star in this kind of game. And why not: in a game that lets you do anything, including maiming and killing random innocents, doesn't it make sense to play a character who exists outside the normal confines of morality. In Sleeping Dogs, things work a little bit differently: you play an undercover cop, and are therefore, in theory, more restricted in what you are “supposed” to do. In reality, there is no real penalty for rampaging around like a lunatic from the get-go, but that story-based restraint worked surprisingly well, at least in my case. In the story, you start off small, working your way into the gang by shaking down locals for protection money and beating up some thugs from a rival faction. As time goes on, as you learn the game's restrictions (or lack thereof), Wei (our hero) gets deeper and deeper into the gang, blurring the line between his duty as a police officer and his growing attachment to the gang he's tasked with betraying. Both the story and gameplay, through the increasingly violent nature of the story missions, help to portray Wei as a character growing further and further detached from his original purpose. It's a surprisingly effective way to present an open-world and is keeping me engaged with both the story and the gameplay.