Moving Pixels Podcast: Disarming the Open World with ‘Sleeping Dogs’

In many ways, 2012 seems to be shaping up as the year of the little game. While the holiday glut from the big publishers has yet to be seen, those games that build massive worlds to play around in have largely been absent from the shelves this year.

We decided this week to take a look at one of the few games of the summer that attempted to fill the open world void, United Front Games’s Sleeping Dogs.

Offering a potentially unique urban sandbox for play through its Hong Kong setting, Sleeping Dogs still largely adheres to the formula established for open worlds by Western gamemakers. However, this week we explore how the game reconsiders how open world combat might play out in a culture with more limited access to guns and question whether or not this is enough to set Sleeping Dogs up as a sufficiently unique experience by comparison to its forerunners.

This podcast is also available via iTunes.

Our podcast contributors:

Rick Dakan is a regular contributor to the Moving Pixels podcast as well as the co-founder of Mob Rules Games.

G. Christopher Williams is the Multimedia Editor at PopMatters.com. You can find his weekly updates featured at the Neuromance blog.

Nick Dinicola is also a regular contributor to the Moving Pixels blog and appears regularly on the Game Hounds podcast.