Platform: PC

Action cinema is something we take for granted these days, but back in the day we had to settle for John Wayne cowboy movies and the occasional Steve McQueen thriller to satisfy our cravings for visual violence. Then along came a little-known Chinese director who changed everything: John Woo.

With just two films, The Killer and Hard Boiled, he revolutionised the way we viewed the gunfight, crafting almost poetic sequences with a flair and aplomb never before seen. He directed the actors like dancers and used the physicality of stars like Chow Yun Fat to create a whole new style of cinematography dubbed balletic gunplay. Pretty much every dual-wield dive through a plate glass window, modern gunman showdown and slo-mo bullet death owes a debt to Mr Woo. Without him there would be no Matrix, no Max Payne and now, no Sleeping Dogs.

Originally a fresh IP from little-known developer United Front Games called Black Lotus, it was quickly snapped up by Activision and rebranded as True Crime: Hong Kong in an effort to rejuvenate the old franchise for a new generation. Some time later the corporation declared that the game “…just wasn’t going to be good enough.” and dropped it in the lurch, leaving its future in question and United Front with an 80% finished game and no publisher.

Fast-forward a year and Square Enix London are among the companies being courted by the ailing developer. Claiming they’d found a diamond in the rough, the Japanese company picked it up and immediately began working with United Front to release the game under a new title: Sleeping Dogs. It’s finally here and the big question is, has it lived up to expectations? Squeenix said that Activision must have been crazy to drop the game, so let’s find out if they were right.