15 Best Open-World Video Games Of The Decade (So Far)

8. Sleeping Dogs

Man, the True Crime games on PS2 were awesome. Luxoflux managed to essentially rip-off a whole bunch of games (GTA's mission structure, Max Payne's slow-mo diving, The Getaway's driving engine) before chucking in a whole load of celebrity voice actors and big budget bluster to hold it together. Sadly they went bust in 2010, but after much hoo-harring on what was going to be a third True Crime game, it eventually morphed into Sleeping Dogs; something no one expected to succeed, mainly out of that name alone. Oh, how wrong we were. Sleeping Dogs once again took influence from many games at once (most prominently being Batman: Arkham's brutal bone-breaking combat) and twinned it with a very engaging Fast and the Furious-style 'undercover cop' narrative, meaning the standard open-world formula could be intersected at key intervals with some extremely engaging cutscenes and enthralling linear missions. The moment you'll fall in love with Sleeping Dogs, is right when you've just burned across the city to a spot of Duran Duran's Girls on Film, only to introduce an overly-mouthy thug face-first into the front of a fish tank, coming back in a split-second to roundhouse kick his friend square in the jaw. It's brilliant.