5 Things That Sleeping Dogs: Triad Wars Should Feature

Sleeping Dogs was a sleeper hit for Square Enix. While initially the game was silently labeled as a failure due to its slow start in sales and a less than sparkling turnout on the quarterly charts, it turns out that the game's solid design mechanics and core focus on fun-factors and decent storytelling really helped pay off in the end. Eventually Sleeping Dogs became a success and is now labeled as a priority at Square Enix, enabling United Front Games to continue their work on a sequel called Sleeping Dogs: Triad Wars.

We don't know much about Triad Wars (after a very vague update on the official website), and that's a-okay. If the team needs time to flesh out the game then we'll give them time... but we'll also give them a few ideas as to what the game might want to focus on as a sequel to one of the more underrated games of seventh-gen. Hence, this list provides five key things that Sleeping Dogs: Triad Wars should fetaure to help push it to the next level over its predecessor.

Flying Vehicles

Usually, first iterations of open-world titles always lack something their more established rivals and competitors contain. For instance, the first Saints Row lacked flying vehicles, but they made an appearance in the second game onward. GTA IV had to axe flying planes when they switched over to RAGE, a brand new game engine that Rockstar employed for the new generation of consoles back in 2007, but all the flying vehicles made a welcomed return in GTA V.

Even though Sleeping Dogs didn't sport any flying vehicles – and the world was definitely large enough for them – United Front Games can easily make the transition by offering a few helicopters and planes in the sequel. One of the reasons this could be a huge thing for this game is due to the over-the-top action mechanics present in the game. How awesome would it be hanging out of a helicopter while shooting or leaping from a plane and having a mid-air fist-fight like Jackie Chan in The Chinese Zodiac? Yeah, this needs to happen.

Additional Side-Missions

I know this seems absolutely silly to request, but side-missions in Sleeping Dogs were actually really, really fun. In fact, they were so fun that I completed all of them... Every. Single. One. Of. Them. The problem was that there weren't enough side-missions, and I finished most of them half-way through the main game. Bummer.

The side-missions were done quite well and I had no complaints in their actual structure (ranging from doing police fetch quests, to chasing down robbers to breaking up an illegal crime ring) the problem is that there just needed to be more. Throwing in some extra missions would be perfect for extending the game beyond the main quest-line. In addition to this, there were a ton of missions I wanted to do after having acquired additional weapons and clothes... so yeah, more side-missions, please.

Multiplayer Side-Activities

Now I know a lot of people would say “No multiplayer!” and I agree that Sleeping Dogs doesn't necessarily need to be designed around multiplayer. But what if the game featured side-activities that enabled multiplayer functionality? Rockstar dabbled in this sort of thing with GTA: San Andreas, and it was pretty cool. You don't always need to ruin the integrity of the game with needless multiplayer activities but there's a way to do it right.

They just need to make the mutliplayer optional in the side-activities, such as the fight club events or the racing. Can you imagine seeing your friends online and challenging them to a bike race or car sprint through the mountains? How awesome would that be? There's already a mod that partially dabbles in a multiplayer feature and all United Front Games has to do is bring it to life.

Vehicle Customization

As awesome as the vehicle selection was in the original Sleeping Dogs, the sequel doesn't necessarily need a ton of more vehicles (as is the case with most sequels; going bigger and better) but what it does need is better use of what's already there. The cars already had various liveries that you could cycle through, and a lot of them looked pretty cool... but I think one step above that would help put the game over the top.

Being able to customize the colors, custom paint jobs and other tuner options on the vehicles would be pretty awesome. There's a pretty deep tuner scene over in Hong Kong and it would only make sense that that aspect of the culture makes its way into the game. Combined with the possible multiplayer racing options, and Sleeping Dogs: Triad Wars could literally have its own meta-racing culture. How cool would that be?

Better DLC Integration

A lot of what was already in the original Sleeping Dogs was done quite well. The fighting was solid, the story was good, the graphics were great and the shooting worked well enough. Even the DLC for the game was worth the price of entry (and I bought all of it). My only gripe was that some of the DLC wasn't always properly tied-in with the main game. For instance, for some of the major story-oriented missions you would have to start a new game separate from your old one, meaning that you lost a lot of your unlocked abilities or skills. It was a bit janky, to put it bluntly.

If they decide to roll out more post-launch DLC for the game, better hook integration is a must. Being able to add new missions while enabling players who beat the game to be able to play the new missions with all their unlocked gear would be pretty slick. Making all the newer mission DLC hook into the main game like the Zodiac Tournament and the Wheels of Fury DLC would be awesome.