Winston Chu has a bulging, tattooed body, a gold-plated gun and a massive square head. He’s a gangster, so that face is locked into a permanent scowl, a symptom of years of steroid abuse and a childhood under the fist of a psychotic mother with an unhealthy love of cleavers.

Welcome to life in the triads.

Mrs Chu is your mother, too, in a sense. You’re Wei Shen, undercover cop, on a mission to bring down the triads from the inside. The trouble is, once you’re initiated, you’re family. Another brother in a grotesque gang of crooks and killers. You’ll spend most of your time in this richly realised, open-world Hong Kong performing missions for thugs, the better to get close to the sharp suits who run the show.

It’s a good enough excuse to step into the slippers of every Hong Kong action movie hero of the last 30 years. There are shadows of Bruce Lee in Wei’s fighting style as he fends off knife attacks in alleys. In gun fights he channels Chow Yun Fat, vaulting over tables and hosing down enemies in slow motion. On rooftops, he trades on Tony Leung’s ability to look cool in a suit by putting on shades and standing still in front of sunsets. Sleeping Dogs occasionally delivers these moments with more style than any other member of the Mafia/GTA family, but they’re folded into a humourless and predictable tale set in a Hong Kong that often feels like a beautiful backdrop rather than a bustling, interactive city.

At the time of writing this  The Dark Knight Rises review, it is impossible to view the finale to the story of Bruce Wayne and his crime-fighting alter-ego, Batman, as just a movie. The film arrives on a wave of massive hype, yet it is still trying to outrun the long shadow of its predecessor, The Dark Knight - a film that not only set a new bar for what a comic book movie could be, but also blew away critics, snagged two Oscars, and excited fans to the tune of a $1 billion worldwide box office. TDK also changed the course of the industry by launching the “full IMAX” trend in filmmaking, and even coerced the Oscars to expand its Best Picture category to include more nominees (after Nolan’s film was snubbed).

In that sense, it’s almost impossible for The Dark Knight Rises to meet the level of expectation facing it – but has Chris Nolan managed to end his Batman legend on a note that will at once please fans and critics, tie off the story in proper fashion, and still deliver the biggest and best blockbuster movie experience of the year?
The answer to those looming questions is…sort of. The Dark Knight Rises does bring Nolan’s trilogy full-circle to a well-earned conclusion, and features a number of big blockbuster moments and will likely please many fans (and critics) – but it also stumbles in its execution of said conclusion, never really captures the sheer spectacle of films like The Dark Knight or Inception, and will ultimately leave some fans (and critics) cold with its very unique take on the Batman mythos.

Summer is here and it’s time to upgrade your wardrobe for the season and turn some heads out there. After almost 4 years of feedback from all the clients we’ve worked with, we’ve finally put together the best program to take your style to celebrity level in record time.

Jay has been working very closely with celebrity stylists for the past year to fine-tune his personal styling program to match the same results. Reserve a date between July 2 and August 31, and get a special summer rate of only $690 (originally $990), for a full day of transformative shopping with Jay.

Summer dates are filling up, so don’t wait until the summer is over!

What some clients are saying:

Jaguar XFR/XKR Test Drive

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” In the abstract, that Friedrich Nietzsche saying almost sounds romantic. But in the context of real life experience, it’s more than just a cliche. Racing Jaguars on an unexpected wet track definitely falls into this second category.

To try the stunt I traveled with R Performance Academy, Jaguar’s driving school, to Monticello Motor Park, 90 minutes northwest of New York. I’d never driven on that track, a challenging road course full of elevation changes and twisting turns, nor had I driven the cars: Jaguar’s two-door XKR and four-door XFR.

Formally introduced in 2009, the machines come from a long line of X-types dating back to the mid-20th century. Last year marked the 50th anniversary of the classic XKE (also known as the “e” type), considered by auto purists as the most...

It’s one of the scariest franchises to grace consoles. The atmospheric darkness and creepy, jumpy alien-corpse foes made playing Dead Space alone in the dark a terrifying experience. And if you don’t agree, well then you're not doing it right.

That's why it was worrying to fans of the series that when the third game was presented at E3 that the survival sci-fi horror game seemed to have lost some of its eeriness by introducing a second co-op player, and spinning the ACTION dial up to 11.

For this third instalment, you fly off to a distant ice planet where you are looking to discover (and fight) the origins of the Necromorphs (bodies of dead aliens which are taken over by a, frankly terrifying, virus) which have plagued you for the series. It's not scheduled for release until February 2013, but we've had an early hands on: The level we played through sees you on a spaceship, looking for clues in a...“retro future”, as the developers call it, and then landing on a bright white arctic landscape – a far cry from the dark levels we’ve become accustomed to.

Dead Space 3 - Electronic Arts

Whats new?

As was revealed at E3, the most note-worthy game changer to be added is the two-player co-op option. Cutting through the third person shooter's trademark tense atmosphere seemed like a risky U-turn for it to take, and in practice it makes for a...