GTA VI: 10 Lessons It Must Learn From The Competition

10. Satisfying Melee Combat - Sleeping Dogs

It's a fairly rare occurrence, but have you ever ran out of ammo in GTA? You end up just feeling completely helpless, as although there is a melee system, due to the terrible animations that connect with the brutality of a light breeze, you end up skating up to your opponent before flailing around and getting shot by an enemy who easily blows your teeth in. Sleeping Dogs on the other hand took the 'Batman combat' (where you have buttons dedicated to attacks and counters, along with visual indicators for when to push them) and paired it with some simplistically fun gunplay, meaning if you happened to be stuck without a weapon, all it took was a suicidal spring towards the nearest enemy only to land a few punches, before you took their weapon and kept going.

The whole thing was seamless, and when you add the fact you could vault over cover to reverse the fate of someone who might have you pinned down, it easily made you consider your environment more than usual, making encounters much more fun than just left trigger-right trigger'ing your way through. So far the melee systems across GTA's III, IV and V have incorporated a dodge and counter system, but with such a poor way of telling you when you're supposed to be using them, the whole thing just looked like a bit of a mess.