Thứ Ba, 29 tháng 7, 2014

Prepare to Enter the Sandbox with Sleeping Dogs ... a Shenmue sequel to make Yu Suzuki proud..or wake up...



Sleeping Dogs is the latest sandbox to take on and differentiate itself from Grand Theft Auto. Where the True Crime games were also rans, like Volition with Saints Row the Third , United Front Games have managed to differentiate and free their sandbox franchise from the shadow of Rockstars genre defining series. 

You need the PC version because.... because the Ltd Edition is a steal at £22.74 from Get Games and registers on Steam. The PC version comes with high res textures and 3D support ,the latter which I am testing on the Lenovo X220T with ST1080 HMD.

This is a raw game on PC, looking gorgeous even on low detail settings but the way it has been patched the last 2 days it seems the coders have yet to optimise it for every PC config out there. At launch I could not get the game to scale to full screen , but now patch 1.4 ( a 2nd since release) has fixed that and other foibles. 

Lets move onto the game, this is the finest depiction of Hong Kong since Shenmue 2,  which Sleeping Dogs reminds me of in many ways with styling of the character ,even his leather jacket and blue jeans all nudging memories of the legendary Shenmue series. All that is missing is the character losing his bag to a thief as he arrives in Hong Kong.  As we all know Shenmue transmorphed into the Yakuza series . Don't worry though the coders of Sleeping Dogs keep their influences to Shenmue and not the later longer running largely linear Sega series.

So you  may expect the in game  fighting to be arcadey like Yakuza , the exploration limited like Yakuza and you would be wrong. We all wanted Yakuza to develop into Shenmue 3, but instead Sega turned it into a Zombie cash in... The fighting in Sleeping Dogs is free flowing, more reminiscent of the PPK Tora Tora Tora fests of Virtua Fighter than the Final Fight Yakuza clashes . Where combat feels gimmicky in the Yakuza series and even comical , the combat in Sleeping Dogs is  free flowing, brutal ,tactical a little bit of Assassins Creed mixed with some Batman Arkham only far less one button pushing on rails heavy.. You can develop your own style use the environment to exact various gruesome ends for your foes. And it never feels like one button mashing as AC and Batman Arkham can at times and unlike Assasin's Creed or Arkham or even Enter the Dragon , you stand a fair chance of losing some of those fights which makes a nice change from knowing Ezio , Bruces Wayne or Lee are certain to despatch their foes as soon as they set their sights on them.  

So how does  the game play on the Intel HD3000 ? Here is the first video I made with the game played with 3D on and at 1024 by 768.

In the first video my first play through I had 3D on and would expect the game to play well based on my experiences with games like Spec Ops and Max Payne 3 in 3D on the same machine : but we get some lag 





On day 1 the game was released without proper screen scaling or resolution setting options on PC so playing on a 1080p monitor produces a border when full screening the game at lower resolutions if you could get a lower resolution saved.. to counter this use your GPU settings to to scale the picture.

The 3D option does light up and you can alter depth, but considering 3D is the major reason I bought the game on Steam I am disappointed, if there is 3D the ST1080 is picking it up as frame packed and it is subtle at this stage . Myself I will wait for Tridef to have a plug in for this game, based on my experience with Max Payne 3 and other games it should be insane. 

so what is the cause of this lag ? 

To find out I played at all resolutions 3D and non 3D enabled and found that enabling that option halves or even worse than halves frame rates at every resolution , on the bright side disabling 3D also doubles or trebles your frame rate


Lets go look for that lag : note we are looking for playable game frame rates with the Intel HD3000 not high end 200 FPS scores that comes later with my desktop test!




00:00 to 09.43 the game is played at 768 by 480 59h Hz 16:10 with 3D enabled and low settings  : this is the sweet spot for playing with 3D enabled on the ST1080 using just an Intel HD3000

09:55 to 10:45 960 x 600 x 59Hz 16:10 3D enabled and the frame rate drops noticeably 

10:46 to 13:14 00:00 640 x 400 x 59Hz 4:3 3D enabled and there is a notable increase in FPS by an order of 10 additional FPS 

lets jump the res back up to see the difference again :

13:17 to 14:14 1024x768x59Hz 4:3 3D on and the lag is back

28:03 to 29:03 768 by 480 59h Hz 16:10 with 3D off and we get  a doubling or more in FPS

29:03 to 29:42 1920 by 1080 59h Hz 16:10 with 3D off the game will not play at this res on the X220T without great lag we are talking 1 fps ! so let us switch back to more optimal resolutions for this game on the Intel HD3000..

30:05 onwards   1366 by 768 59h Hz 16:9  1024 by 68 and 768 by 480 all produced marked speed improvements with 3D off , 768 by 480 is the sweetspot for playing in 3D or non 3D using the Intel HD3000 on the Lenovo X220T.


Games at 1024 by 768 or 1366 by 768 usually fly on Intel HD3000 2nd gen i7 powered Lenovo X220T , give United Front Games time and patches will arrive whatever your hardware , after all we waited 6 months for Battlefield 3 and Crysis 2 updates ...It has only been 2 days since release...

The finest sandbox games let you forget the mission altogether and just mess around , I have played every GTA game never finished one , but I venture I have played longer than most just because of the endless fun you can have playing in the sand box and with all of the toys it contains ..wow just like when we were three no?

This is chaotic freedom is where  GTA ,Just Cause 2 ,Saints Row The Third, Mercenaries (the first), the Saboteur, Prototype, Mafia ( the first),Crackdown ( the first) and of course any modern Bethesda RPG  get things right and what Yakuza and No More Heroes on the Wii got things wrong. 

Sleeping Dogs easily sits amongst the giants of sandbox gaming, no mean feat for a game that was once cancelled by Activision. I have no intention of finishing it any time soon or ever but I am going to have a fine time exploring Hong Kong and pushing the sandbox. 

Und so having sorted our hardware specs and settings out , it's time to Enter the Sandbox at speed with no lag and with our optimal resolutions for the Intel HD3000 of 1024 by 768 and 768 by 480 with 3d off ...






I will revisit this game with dekstop gpu resolution tests so come back .. when I am brave enough to refill the water/tec cooler on my desktop...





get to Steam now to download the Steam demo of Sleeping Dogs , if your hardware cannot handle it then go for the onlive version which will release soon ... lets hope they do a touch version as per LA Noire then it will a must buy for me.. Sleeping Dogs full spec on the Nexus 7 ... awesome..






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