Sleeping Dogs: Screenshot Bonanza and (Japanese) Content Castration (PHOTOS)

Impending gaming colossus Sleeping Dogs is set to stride majestically betwixt the broken corpses of much of the inferiority on the gaming horizon, like your chosen deity him/herself.

With the notable exception of the Japanese edition, which will prevent you from callously running down the little dude that signals the start of a street race. Amongst other schadenfreude-infused shenanigans.

As siliconera yesterday reported, "Square Enix will release Sleeping Dogs in Japan a month after its North American release under the name Sleeping Dogs Hong Kong Secret Police. The Japanese release is rated CERO Z, which makes it an adults only game you have to request at a store counter.

Sleeping Dogs still has a few cuts like an event scene where a person's organs are exposed was modified. Another scene with a sexual reference was cleaned up with alternate camerawork. Square Enix also made one character who signals the start of a street race invincible, I suppose because players could run him or her over. Perhaps the most notable difference in the Japanese version is Square Enix added a penalty for attacking civilians in some missions."

While the source elucidates the fact that the games are otherwise identical, I must concede that a degree of Grand Theft Auto-esque carnage-inducement is forfeit as a result. Civilian-evisceration penalties? Lunacy! What, pray, are those poor bastards to do in the event of an encroaching gaggle of Elvis morons, a laGrand Theft Auto 2? Reducing them into a splattery-blood-and-viscera-meat-clump dripping beneath my righteous justice wheels was a joy indeed.

But fear not, my brethren! Sleeping Dogs for North America and Europe remains unblemished by the uber-violence reducing brush. Celebrate this glorious knowledge-fact with the bountiful crop of screens above, featuring an overweight octogenarian flailing a meat cleaver with merry abandon and a needlessly grandiose explosion.

Images provided by pcgamer.

Source: siliconera.