Knights of the Cardboard Castle

I’m getting a bit bored of open world games and I knew that this GTA clone set in Hong Kong had birthing problems, so I approached it cautiously. I’m happy to report that though this game is far from perfect, it easily exceeded my expectations.

• The most obvious inspiration for this is Infernal Affairs. In the end, I would have preferred it if they had lifted more from the trilogy. The story is surprisingly decent for the most part, especially at the beginning. I loved how Wei joins the Triads and moves up their ranks, how he earns the trust of the other gang members, how he becomes alienated from his police handlers and so forth. But it all sort of falls apart the closer it gets to the end. I particularly hated that we never see him outed as a cop to the gang members he actually considers his friends. That was a huge missed opportunity. It felt to me like they ran out of time close to the end and pulled a rush job.

• Characters like Winston, his wife, Jackie Ma, Vivienne Lu,  etc. are all surprisingly solid characters. I actually thought that the main story was too short. I really wanted to see fuller arcs for them. Raymond for example is criminally underused. I would loved to see him in conflict with Pendrew. The characters and the plot felt more grounded to me than the ridiculous angst and drama of the GTA games I’ve played.

• I loved wandering around the virtual Hong Kong more than I thought I would.It’s smaller than the recent GTA games but I’m okay with that. I guess it really helps that I actually have been to Hong Kong and recognize the locations. The worst omission is the complete failure to model their metro system. Seriously, the metro is central to what Hong Kong is like and they couldn’t build in one working train line? I went to Victoria Peak and had to look sadly at the non-working funicular train station. Such a pity.
• The general atmosphere and sense of place is pretty great too. I’m only lukewarm about the music. They seem to lack the biggest, most recognizable Chinese hits. Probably they would be too expensive to license. But the street chatter is really good for the most part. Who can resist cracking a grin at “A man who never eats pork buns is never a whole man.” It felt great to hear all the familiar Cantonese insults. They even did a decent job of interjecting the occasional Cantonese phrase into the English dialogue. Of course, not everything is perfect. The affected Chinese accent when speaking English is still present in some places.
• I liked the gameplay too. Okay, the shooting is pretty crappy, even compared to the GTA games. But the main focus here is on melee combat and it’s decent fun. Sure, it’s a poor rip-off of the fighting system in the Batman games, but if you must copy, copying from the very best still works out pretty well. Given that Wei Shen has some parkour abilities, just navigating the city is still more engaging than the GTA games. And then there are the mini-games. There is a karaoke system with real, licensed songs, Mahjong poker, hacking, cock fighting etc. With the exception of the last one, which seems pointless to me, all of them are pretty good.

• There is a girlfriend system in here too. It feels unfinished but I quite like the system they had in mind, which is a specific number of scripted dates with each girl. What I especially appreciated is that Wei Shen makes it consistently clear that he isn’t serious about any relationship and is just having fun. Kudos to the writers too for avoiding the trope of Wei Shen’s enemies using one of the girlfriends against him. It’s also pretty cool that dates unlock map icons for the various collectibles, so getting them all is actually quite doable.
• The usual stuff like driving, racing, buying clothes and vehicles go without mention. I’d just like to note that buying vehicles is extremely expensive and serves as a money sink here, especially since more expensive vehicles perform markedly better and you unlock more races with each higher category of vehicle you buy. Plus I like that wearing different sets of clothes gives different bonuses. Pity that collecting some of the sets is pretty tedious as you need to go to multiple shops all over Hong Kong.
• Nearly forgot to mention the graphics. I downloaded the high resolution texture pack for it and it looks pretty good to me. Not top of the line, but good.

My final verdict is that this is a solid game that seems under-rated for what it offers. It isn’t as refined as it could be and it does seem rushed in some places, but I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. Now I look forward to Whore of the Orient, despite its unfortunate title.