On the Download: August 12-18

The new game releases keep on rolling.  There were some big retail releases this week in Darksiders II and Sleeping Dogs and some big downloadable releases in Papo & Yo and Dust: An Elysian Tail, which I will be highlighting today in On the Download.  As I have nothing more to say, let us get on with the show.

Sony's Play promotion continues to roll on with a unique downloadable adventure game from Minority Media, Papo & Yo.  In Papo & Yo, you play as a young boy named Quico, who is accompanied by his best friend Monster.  Monster is a huge beast that has a problematic addiction to poisonous frogs.  Whenever Monster sees a frog, he immediately gobbles it up thus sending the beast into an intoxicated rage where no one including Quico is save.  Due to the bond between the two, it is up to Quico to help his best friend kick this dangerous habit.  In order to solve the puzzles in the game and further the adventure for a cure, Quico must work together with Monster and learn to use the beast's emotions, both good and bad, to their advantage.  Papo & Yo is a deep gaming experience that is directly influenced by creative director Vander Caballero's troubled relationship with his alcoholic father.  It is a really inspiring story for a game and an unique adventure that those interested in taking should make an effort to download Papo & Yo.  You can Papo & Yo from the PlayStation Store for 15 dollars.

Another year, another Summer of Arcade has come and gone.  It has been a very diverse month of games released exclusively for XBLA.  The final game in this year's Summer of Arcade is Dust:  An Elysian Tail.  Made entirely by one person, Dust is a 2D action RPG where you play as an mysterious adventurer on a quest to liberate an oppressed village and in turn find his true identity.  This mysterious adventurer goes by the name Dust and is aided by the ancient Blade of Ahrah and his sidekick, Fidget.  The world of Falana is a massive open world that encourages gamers to explore, take on many side-quests, discover the many secrets of Falana and master the real-time combat system that rewards skilled players and discourages button-mashing.  All the content packed into Dust: An Elysian Tail is suppose to take 20+ hours to complete.  So if you are a gamer looking for a long action RPG to dive into this summer, you can pick up Dust: An Elysian Tail for 1200 Microsoft Points.

Launch Station: Sleeping Dogs

Cancelled by Activision in early 2011, it looked like United Front Games take on the True Crime universe would never see the light of day.  Late last year, Square Enix announced that they had picked up the rights to publish True Crime: Hong Kong under the new name of Sleeping Dogs because Activision still owns the rights to the True Crimes name.  Not many games come back from being cancelled.  United Front Games is very fortunate to have another chance to release the game that have spent the last four years working on.  Hopefully it can live up to some high expectations from the publisher, Square Enix, and the fans of the True Crime series.

Sleeping Dogs follows the story of Wei Shen, an undercover cop apart of an operation to take down the Triads from the inside.  Wei Shen must work his way up in the organization by taking part in the brutal criminal activities without blowing his cover.  As Wei Shen dives deeper into the ranks of the Triad, the lines between truth and honour, right and wrong blur severely and he is left to struggle between his loyalty to the police and the trust he has gained from the Triads.  At its' core, Sleeping Dogs is a open world action game.  You are given all of Hong Kong to explore whatever way you want from walking on foot to driving a variety of vehicles.  While the story missions are necessary to unlock certain areas and content in the game, you are able to complete them at your own leisure.  The city of Hong Kong is bustling with side missions to complete, activities such as gambling and street fighting to participate in and even girlfriends for Wei Shen to date.  While you are able to use guns in the game, most of the combat revolves around hand-to-hand combat, which allows players to perform deadly martial arts and brutal takedowns much like Batman in the Arkham games.  Also Sleeping Dogs features some light RPG elements.  Depending on what you do in the game, you earn three types of experience points, Triad XP, Police XP and Face XP.  Each type of experience points measures your reputation with certain groups or as a whole.

Personally, I have never been a fan of the True Crime series so Sleeping Dogs does not quite appeal to me that much.  I am happy that Square Enix did the right thing and let this game that almost got eaten up by Activision see the funding it needed to reach store shelves.  Now it is up to the fans of the True Crime series that have most likely been following the development of Sleeping Dogs since it was announced in 2008 and those interested in the game to support Sleeping Dogs with their hard earned cash.  If Sleeping Dogs proves successful, it might influence other publishers to help save other games from being cancelled in the future.