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Square Enix today revealed its E3 2015 line-up, including new iterations of beloved franchises such as Just Cause 3, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, games from the Final Fantasy franchise and Hitman – among others – on both consoles and mobile platforms. Check out some of the announcements below:

Consoles Final Fantasy Xiv: Heavensward

Platform: PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, Mac Os

Developer: Square Enix

Available: 23rd June 2015

Heavensward is the highly anticipated first expansion for the popular online title Final Fantasy Xiv that charts a new course for players with an increased level cap and brand new adventures. The expansion features an all-new storyline surrounding the Holy See of Ishgard and the thousand-year Dragonsong War, a brand-new playable race named the “Au Ra,” new jobs, and more. The expansion also continues cross-platform gameplay between the Windows PC, Mac Os and PlayStation 3 and Playstation 4 systems.

Nosgoth

Platform: Steam/Windows PC

Developer: Psyonix

Available: In Open Beta

Developed by Psyonix,...

Released back in 2012, Square Enix's Hong Kong-set, open world video game "Sleeping Dogs" was not a major hit right out of the gate as it didn't have the kind of marketing push that a "Call of Duty" or "Halo" or "Assassin's Creed" can afford.

What it did have in its corner though was strong critical reviews and great word of mouth, so much so that over 1.5 million copies of the game were sold within a year. Instead of yet another generic American city, the player was able to explore a more exotic contemporary Hong Kong as an undercover cop infiltrating the infamous Sun On Yee criminal organisation.

Now some new photos are out from "Triad Wars," a spin-off which has you the player trying to rise to power as a criminal kingpin of the Triad underworld. This version treads a very different path as instead of a campaign-based action game,...

While many originally pegged the title as a direct sequel to Sleeping Dogs, United Front Games has confirmed that Triad Wars is an open-world spinoff title set within the same Hong Kong universe.

From the footage released thus far, it’s understood that Triad Wars will hone much of the gameplay from its console brethren —including driving and hand-to-hand combat — though the studio has billed the game as an entirely different beast.

“Triad Wars is the flipside of Sleeping Dogs. Sleeping Dogs was about taking you on a ride along that story,” design director Steve Ferreira explained. “Triad Wars is the other side of that. It’s all about Hong Kong and the criminal underworld within Hong Kong. And this is about you creating your own game.”

In the game, players will have begin life as a low level criminal meddling around the neon streets in search of work. Soon,...

DVD Playhouse—March 2012

By Allen Gardner

J. Edgar (Warner Bros.) Director Clint Eastwood provides a rock-solid, albeit rather flat portrait of polarizing FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, covering his life from late teens to his death. Leonardo DiCaprio does an impressive turn as Hoover, never crossing the line into caricature, and creating a Hoover that is all too human, making for an all the more unsettling look at absolute power run amuck. Where the film stumbles is the love story at its core: Hoover’s relationship with longtime aide Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). In the hands of an openly-gay director like Gus Van Sant, this could have been a heartbreaking, tender story of forbidden (unrequited?) love, but Eastwood seems to tiptoe around their romance, with far too much delicacy and deference. The film works well when recreating the famous crimes and investigations which Hoover made his name on (the Lindbergh kidnapping,...

Continuing to upgrade some of their older releases, U.S. distributor Palisades Tartan has announced that they'll be releasing what they're calling Triad Trilogy on DVD and Blu-ray in the U.S. on February 28th! The box set includes Johnnie To's Election and Triad Election (aka Election 2) alongside Ching-po Wong's Triad Underworld (aka Blood Brothers or Left Hand). All three are excellent gangster films, with the two Election movies being amongst our favorites of all time in the genre, and well worth a Blu-ray upgrade!

Continuing to upgrade some of their older releases, U.S. distributor Palisades Tartan has announced that they'll be releasing what they're calling Triad Trilogy on DVD and Blu-ray in the U.S. on February 28th! The box set includes Johnnie To's Election and Triad Election (aka Election 2) alongside Ching-po Wong's Triad Underworld (aka Blood Brothers or Left Hand). All three are excellent gangster films, with the two Election movies being amongst our favorites of all time in the genre, and well worth a Blu-ray upgrade!

Much like Goodfellas or Casino, it’s not the scenes of violence that drive Triad Underworld forward, but rather the moments of politicking and the impedance of the criminal life upon normal family obligations. The birth of his son brings a crisis of conscience upon Hung (Andy Lau): should he remain as the head of his Triad organization and risk his family’s lives, or should he retire and flee to a remote location and let those who would be king fight it out amongst themselves? Even as his best friend and closest advisor, Lefty (Jacky Cheung) advise him to retire to a safe distance, the underworld of Hong Kong has already caught scent of the chum of uncertainty and selected Wing (Shawn Yue) and Turbo (Edison Chen), aspiring gangsters, to kill Hung. Armed with nothing but a knife, the two would-be assassins scramble about in the night making...

Wong Ching-Po’s 2004 Triad mobster thriller ‘Jiang Hu’ aka ‘Blood Brothers,’ starring Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung, Shawn Yue and Edison Chen hits Us DVD stores and other assorted etailers today – Released via Palisades Tartan, under the moniker of.....drum roll please...Triad Underworld. If you want a very detailed summary of the plot check out the films Wiki page here, or there’s the quickie version below to scan through, before taking a look at what we really want to see - A trailer full of gangland violence, Hong Kong style. Synopsis: On the same night his wife gives birth to their first son, Triad mob boss Hung (Andy Lau) learns that an assassin plans to kill him within the next 12-hours. Encouraged to leave town by his best friend Lefty (Jacky Cheung) and three untrustworthy lieutenants, Hung decides to stay and makes plans to protect himself and his family.

*full disclosure: Palisades Tartan provided a screener of this film.

Director: Wong Ching-Po.

Writer: To Chi-long.

Cast: Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung, Shawn Yue, Edison Chen

The types of films coming out of Hong Kong are usually a unique class of their own. They can belong to one of several categories and the most prominent exports are historical fantasy, martial-arts, and gangster. If they're not on local Chinese community TV, then there are DVDs.

While Kung Fu Hustle (功夫) is the most original take on making the gangster hip and chic by strutting their stuff in the 40's, Triad Underworld (江湖; Gong Wu or Jiang Hu in Chinese) drives home a different image by using the modern day era to romanticize the world of the Triads.

Strangely, however, is that while Hustle was fast tracked for international release, Gong Wu took seven more years. Both products were released in the...

TORONTO -- The Toronto International Film Festival gave world cinema the stage Wednesday as it announced slots for the latest films from Ang Lee, Manoel de Oliveira and Francois Ozon.

Toronto, which considers itself a barometer for international cinema, also announced a high-profile slot at Roy Thomson Hall for Alexi Tan's Chinese-language period drama Blood Brothers, scheduled to debut at the Venice Film Festival.

The 32nd annual Toronto International Film Festival runs Sept. 6-15.

Fortissimo Films' Brothers was produced by John Woo and Terence Chang and portrays three friends in 1930s China who move from the countryside to a life of crime in Shanghai.

Toronto also booked a Roy Thomson Hall sendoff for Bengali director Rituparno Ghosh's The Last Lear, which stars Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan in her first leading English-language role.

Other Toronto titles unveiled Wednesday that will head here after Venice include Lee's Lust, Caution from Focus Features, Ken Loach's It's a Free World and The Sun Also Rises, Jiang Wen's China-Hong Kong co-production.

"Not only does this international presence speak to the diversity of the city of Toronto, but seeing ourselves reflected in films from other countries, we see how the art of filmmaking unites us all," festival co-director Noah Cowan said in making the announcement.