We sound like a broken record lately, with our continuous stream of gameplay videos and indie deal announcements, but it’s a theme we can get behind. This time, we get a mission walkthrough of Sleeping Dogs.

The title from Square Enix will run through “Mrs. Chu’s Revenge.” You play an undercover cop, set to take out the triad forces from within, by any means necessary. You receive your objective to bring back Johnny the Ratface from an authentically speaking Chu. Then, the mission starts as your protagonist called Wei takes a phone call and steps into a car. This prompts a mini-game that will help you locate Ratface. By triangulating a position, Wei needs to pinpoint the area where the culprit resides. The mini-game sections off a few areas where you need to find the largest signal, and then look for a common mark through 3 generated blips. This will zero in on your Ratface.

Sleeping Dogs will offer a big city, fast cars and tons of shortcuts and alleyways. The driving mechanics seem rather on the rough side, but with such a big open world it might be a bit much to ask to refine the whole shebang.

Once arrived at the location, it will be time to participate in Sleeping Dogs’ prime gameplay style: Kicking the crap out of anybody. Fighting scenes are realistically presented, with the studio receiving help from MMA fighter GSP himself. Furthermore, graphic scenes fill the screen as victims can be led to local environmental areas and then finished with a prompt. See a car nearby? Break your opponent’s leg and then smash his skull with the car door. Get creative!

Naturally, Wei also needs to take on armed opponents. These thugs can be overpowered and their weapon can be taken from them to temporarily boost your own power. It’s kind of like mechanics used in traditional beat ‘em up games where you can knife a few people and then the weapon disappears. It’s a rather nice touch. This goes much further with firearms, as shooting gets its own gameplay in Sleeping Dogs. To acquire our first gun, Wei lunges at his opponent and swiftly proceeds to take him down and grab the gun from them.

Cover is handled more actively in Sleeping Dogs, as our hero can shoot blindly or vault out of cover for momentary time decrease. In this slowdown, you can aim and take out more enemies before time resumes. Should you land headshots, this advantage gets an extra time boost. So, it’s wise to use this to your advantage. In that same way, watch out for environment that can take out multiple people at once. If it explodes: shoot it.

To create a true action hero feel, Sleeping Dogs also tries to transition smoothly between gameplay elements. Therefore, a shootout could immediately lead to a car chase. Here, the game takes a few pages from a PSP game called Pursuit Force. While chasing opponents, you can take out your gun and aim for their faces or tires to take them out. During your aim, time will decrease once more, to ease players into a realistic advantage a true action hero would possess. More so, you can perform physics defying jumps to take over another car. This is a good choice when trying to take our friend Ratface back alive and relatively well.

More Sleeping Dogs, you say?  Well, that last car jumping thing might make you remember a little game called Just Cause 2. If that’s the case and you still have a save game on your platform, then Square Enix has a special treat for you. If Sleeping Dogs detects a Just Cause 2 game, players will be able to change Wei’s outfit to that of Rico Rodriguez. More so, you’ll get a new ability right from the start to upgrade your carjacking like Just Cause’s Rico, to perform ridiculous stunts in vein of that wacky feature.

Sleeping Dogs will release on August 17 for Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.