Sleeping Dogs has perhaps been the biggest surprise hit of 2012. In a year not exactly packed with classic video games, Sleeping Dogs stood out as being a well-made, well-rounded gaming experience which turned out to be much better than its development history suggested it would be.
Sleeping Dogs was originally titled True Crime: Hong Kong and on course to be published by Activision. But they dropped the title in 2011 claiming it was never going to be good enough, at which point it was picked up by Square Enix, rebranded as Sleeping Dogs, and improved massively.
In the latest issue of Game Informer (via Video Gamer) executive producer Stephen van Der Mescht discusses the development of Sleeping Dogs, saying, “It took six months from the point of cancellation to resurrection. Square approached us very soon after the cancellation, but it was a tricky deal to negotiate with a developer and two publishers.”
He continued, “We are really happy that we ended up back where we started with a new IP … [and United Front Gaming would] love to make another Sleeping Dogs.” I suspect the fans, who rate the game at around 80% on Metacritic right now, would agree. Sleeping Dogs 2 in 2014 it is then!
