“Sleeping Dogs: Nightmare in North Point” is now available for XBOX Live and PlayStation Network. | Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
“Sleeping Dogs” fans looking to get back on the streets of China will be proud to know that an expansion pack released by Square Enix will allow them to do so, only this time the streets are infested with ghosts, ghouls and zombies.
The story of “Sleeping Dogs: Nightmare in North Point” illustrates Detective Wei Shen coming back from seeing a horror movie with his date. While joking about the idea of Jiang Shi Chinese ghosts, one suddenly appears and captures Wei’s girlfriend. It’s now up to him to track down this mysterious ghost who goes by the name of Smiley Cat, to get her back.
The expansion pack brings back some familiar faces throughout the story, including one deceased friend who keeps popping up only to talk about food.
The story is meant to be a Halloween-themed spoof rather than a horrifying game, but the overall presentation is lacking.
The spooky change in Hong Kong’s atmosphere does a good job of portraying a bad comedic horror flick. The streets are littered with pedestrians who have turned evil and attack Shen at any time and cars will randomly blow up as he rides out into the streets.
On the downside, players will be strictly limited to the starting city of North Point, despite the huge map that fans are familiar with and the few missions and side quests that are in this expansion are repetitive and familiar.
As for the story, the intro starts off clunky without much build up. The plot line is so simple that it seems like it was thrown in to give players an excuse to exercise demons via Kung Fu beat downs. The monster-slaying adventure only lasts for a couple hours and will ultimately leave players wanting more.
“Sleeping Dogs: Nightmare in North Point” could have been longer with better effort put into the story, but fighting these new enemies in a Halloween version of Hong Kong is still a lot of fun. The expansion pack does have its shortcomings, but with the downloadable content costing less than $5, players will find it hard to complain.
