Sleeping Dogs Demo Out Now on PS3, 360 and PC

Sleeping Dogs

Just so that we do not end up burying the lede here, the story we are about to report is the availability of full demo's for Square Enix's game Sleeping Dogs on the PS3, 360, and PC platforms.

With the upcoming 25th Anniversary of its very well loved RPG-focused Final Fantasy Series dominating the news cycles for video game publisher Square Enix, it is helpful to remember that in spite of that historic event they are still a game publisher and developer, and they do have other titles both in development and presently available. One of the more interesting of these is their gritty and visceral open-world cop drama Sleeping Dogs -- which is set in Hong Kong, and though it is anything but a Final Fantasy title, happens to share some important elements from the formula that is the acknowledged foundation of the Final Fantasy series: an immersive story line, well developed protagonist and antagonist characters, and iconic plot elements that help to focus gamer attention and contribute to an easy immersion into their stories.

While it likely will not have the same broad appeal of the typical Final Fantasy game due in part to the realistic violence and the darker theme of its story, Sleeping Dogs is a timely tale of corruption and a celebration of the ends justifying the means, the sort of action-adventure romp that, when it strikes the right cord with a gamer, tends to really strike hard, and encourages a stronger than average form of loyalty and fascination among gamers.

Developed by United Front Games in collaboration with Square Enix London Studios, Sleeping Dogs places the player in the role of undercover cop Wei Shen, who is tasked with taking down one of the world's most fearsome criminal organizations from the inside. Make no mistake about it, the common experience in games like the Godfather and Mafia series, LA Noire, the disaster that was the Sopranos video game each contribute to the gaming impression of the traditional role of the gangster and the old-school Organized Crime, while games like the Grand Theft Auto, Getaway, and Saints Row series presenting a more modern view of OC, all of those combined fail to deliver the cold and viscerally frightening image that we find in the Yakuza series, in Stranglehold, and now Sleeping Dogs...

Check out this brand new Demo Trailer from Sleeping Dogs to get a sense of what the game demo offers...

That decidedly foreign element and the army of HK and Japanese gangster movies of the 90's may very well contribute to the melding of high-art, uncompromising personal honor, and vicious crimes that combine to present the image of the modern age Yakuza organization, but in the end what we have is a world that we only sort of understand, and the wide swath of mystery with its unpredictable elements is sufficient to elevate the subject to a narrow field of tense and fearful gonad-shrinking environment in which the idea of a mafia-version of Voldemort lurking in a warehouse somewhere in the dense world of Hong Kong is easy to believe.

Since its launch Sleeping Dogs has received media and fan accolade worldwide, praising its refinement of almost every feature of the open world genre from intelligent story-telling and realistic characterization to incredible martial arts combat and slick gunplay -- in short providing just the right elements, in just the right portions, and in just the right manner to ensure that it obtains and retains the level of attention it was intended to achieve. That being the case, the trick to building its popularity is to get gamers to play the game, and the only way to do that is to provide a demo so that, once they get a taste of it, they understand that this is a game they not only want to play, but want to shell out the admission price in order to do so.

To accomplish that end, a playable demo of Sleeping Dogs is now available via Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and Steam for Windows PC that offers gamers a level to play through whose focus is the rough-and-tumble art of hand-to-hand as well as a sneak look at a later level where gunplay is thrown into the mix as Wei takes on numerous opponents in a dock-side warehouse. It's just a small taste of the high octane action and drama players have been experiencing in the full version of the game, which was released on August 14th, but it is sufficient to paint an accurate picture of what gamers can anticipate in this title.

Additional information about the game can be found at www.sleepingdogs.net and of course you can join the official Facebook page at www.facebook.com/SleepingDogsGame for regular game updates. To find the demo of the game for your preferred platform simply access its online store -- for Xbox 360 that would be the Xbox LIVE Marketplace, for PlayStation 3 it is PSN, and for Windows PC gamers should look to the Steam Digital Distribution System.