10 Brilliant Video Games That Surprised Everyone - Commenter Edition
5. Sleeping Dogs
Sleeping Dogs, the oddly-titled spiritual successor to the abysmal True Crime series, had no right to be as good as it was.
For starters, it began its life as an entry the True Crime series - the first of which, Streets Of LA, was a mediocre open-world shooter, and the second, New York City, was a dismal experience riddled with bugs and boilerplate gameplay. Secondly, developer United Front had only developed one game prior - ModNation Racers, a user-generated content cart racer. Oh goody.
When True Crime: Hong Kong as it was then known was cancelled, United Front weathered a storm of staff layoffs and other difficulties until being bought out by Square Enix, who recognised the potential of the unfinished title.
Finally completed and released as an entirely new IP, Sleeping Dogs was a surprising gem, capturing the look and feel of both Eastern gangster and martial arts movies admirably. Its core melee combat was depthy and visceral, and the writing, whilst no masterpiece was solid and gripping.
Riding round a lovingly-rendered Hong Kong and kicking that guy in the face every time he shouted "takes guts to wear that!" was an absolute barrel of fun.