Before starting the presentation for Sleeping Dogs, a United Front Games representative paused to tell us that the game — formerly known as True Crime: Hong Kong before Activision cut it and Square Enix picked it up — had been influenced by gritty Hong Kong cinema like Infernal Affairs and was going to contain intense action. He definitely was not exaggerating. The martial-arts-based combat in the open-world Sleeping Dogs isn’t just brutal; it’s totally gruesome. One minute you’re round-housing a thug to the head, the next you’re grabbing him by his jacket, dragging him a few feet, then grinding his face into a table saw. 

In Sleeping Dogs, you take the reins of an undercover cop by the name Wei Shen, who’s been picked to infiltrate the most powerful gang in Hong Kong. Part of the reason Shen was selected for the dangerous duty was because he grew up with some of the gang’s members, which already makes you wonder if he’s too close to his sources. In an opening cutscene, Shen links up with a childhood friend Jackie in prison. The pair swaps some stories, with Shen saying he’s just back from America (interestingly, the majority of speaking we saw was in English though the game is set in China). Soon after, Shen briefs his superiors in law enforcement that he’s made contact with Jackie, which sets up a series of high-wire missions.

The first stage we were shown – and also able to play through – has you undercover and promising a gang leader you’ll enact some street justice on a double-crossing drug dealer. Through a third-person, behind the shoulder perspective, you slowly make your way out of the gang’s headquarters, which fronts as a Chinese restaurant, and head out into the Hong Kong night. There are fireworks bursting as you step outside into a street that’s alive with pedestrians, vendors, and performers. You’re guided through the mission with HUD prompts and location-based targets, but when you eventually find the offending sleaze bag, he gives chase and suddenly you’re high-tailing it through the crowded streets, pushing aside bystanders, hopping over counters and literally climbing up walls. The dealer leads you into a courtyard where, naturally, half a dozen thugs are waiting to provide interference.

Fighting with just your fists and feet in Sleeping Dogs feels a lot like Batman taking on a mob of goons in Arkham City. You can reverse foe’s attacks or flip over their backs with a spin kick, but the real wild card feels similar to another game. In 2011’s Bulletstorm, you were rewarded for using various pieces of the landscape as a weapon. Sleeping Dogs takes a less cartoonish approach than Epic’s shooter, but there’s still wildness to be had. When you grab a bad guy by pressing B within close proximity, you’re able to drag him to objects that light up if they’re usable. We saw enemies’ faces being shred by wind fans and their heads slammed repeatedly by a car door, for example. 

Shen had to infiltrate a gang hideout to capture a high-ranking member in another mission. He takes out roughly 50 bad guys by himself, sometimes with his hands, others with a meat cleaver, and then at one point grabbing a machine gun — the only time we saw Shen use a gun throughout our showing — and unleashing hell upon the security squad. After the leader speeds away in a car, Shen jumps on a motorcycle and single-handedly dismantles a veritable motorcade of uglies rolling down a highway at felony-level speeds. With the final objective in sight, he leaps from the motorcycle and briskly lands onto the roof of the leader’s car, then climbs in and takes him prisoner. We missed out on the backstory of why we were chasing down this foe, but does it really matter when our target ultimately ends up getting cut up by a butcher?

Whatever Sleeping Dogs lost by dropping its original affiliation with the True Crime series, it’s gained a whole lot in ass-kickery.

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PUBLISHER: Square Enix  •  DEVELOPER: United Front Games  •  MULTIPLAYER: TBD  • RELEASE DATE: Fall 2012  •  FOR FANS OF: True Crime, Grand Theft Auto, rearranging faces