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Sleeping Dogs, the upcoming Hong Kong-based gritty action title from Square Enix received a Z rating from the Japanese rating organization CERO (the equivalent of an AO rating from the ESRB). As a result, the game will be modified for Japanese audiences, particularly to penalize players for attacking civilians, according to CVG.

Additionally, a sex scene in the game will be softened, and the game won't include a character that signals the start of a street race. Z-rated games in Japan are not displayed on store shelves, so buyers will have to ask for the game by name at retail store counters (much like the Xbox 360 version of No More Heroes: Heroes' Paradise). The practice of adapting a game for Japanese audiences isn't uncommon, as THQ's Homefront shipped without Kim Jong-il images in 2011.

Sleeping Dogs received a Mature rating from the ESRB, and is set to launch on August 14 in North America.

#finalfantasy At the recent Decade of Final Fantasy XI Vana★Fest 2012, Square Enix and gamers celebrated ten years of FFXI. Ten years! That's quite a milestone and definitely worthy of celebration. This meal, however, isn't. More »

#cosplay While Square Enix still hems and haws over a Final Fantasy VII remake, cosplayers continue to don the duds of the game's iconic heroine, Tifa Lockhart. More »

#finalfantasy Another day, another request for a Final Fantasy VII remake. The game was released in early 1997, and there are still calls for a remake. Endless calls. More »

The following comments and info come from Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada

- Square-Enix will make a Final Fantasy VII remake once we've made a Final Fantasy game that exceeds the quality of FFVI
- Wada says the company is not making Final Fantasy games that exceed the quality of FFVII
- if they did a remake of FFVII now, the franchise would be done with
- the staff is happy to make a remake, but they'd have to fully dedicate themselves to the project

#finalfantasy In case anyone was wondering how ten-year-old Final Fantasy XI scored a brand new expansion pack while you're still waiting for a Final Fantasy VII remake, consider which one makes Square Enix the most money. More »

#dragonquest When Dragon Quest X goes on sale this August in Japan, those folks who have yet to purchase a Nintendo Wii can get a special DQX bundle. That's assuming those people exist! More »

#finalfantasy Commemorating a decade of Final Fantasy XI, Vanafest 2012 revealed a new expansion for the MMO. Seekers of Adoulin will promise new lands, new tales, new jobs—including the "Geomancer," confirmed on the expansion's official site. More »

IGN Wikis shows you where all 24 of the hidden Collectibles are located in Quantum Conundrum.

#bravelydefaultflyingfairy This is Bravely Default: Flying Fairy. It's a role-playing game made by some of the people who made 3D Dot Game Heroes and some of the people who made Final Fantasy: The Four Heroes of Light. Nintendo showed it off during its Japanese livestream last night. And it looks wonderful. More »

#finalfantasy No matter how you feel about the current state of Final Fantasy—and if you're a fan of role-playing games at all, you likely have some sort of unshakeable conviction about which was the best, which was the worst, and how Square Enix has ruined everything—there's one fact you can't deny: It's got some awesome jams. More »

Back in February, Airtight Games creative director Kim Swift told us that she wanted Quantum Conundrum to play like a Saturday-morning cartoon - lighthearted with a slapstick edge, similar to Looney Tunes or Cartoon Network programming. This may be why I found it so unnerving that Quantum Conundrum reminded me more of Fight Club than any kid-friendly cartoons.

The standard-edition DVD of 2002's Fight Club has a looping menu that plays a round of light, elevator-style percussion music while the screen flickers invitingly on the Play button; this lasts just long enough to lull the passive listener into a false sense of tranquility, before it smashes into a measure of jarring electrical guitar and pulsating images for a few terrible seconds. Then the screen clears, and the torture repeats.

One night in my wayward youth, I fell asleep watching this Fight Club DVD. For hours after the movie had finished and returned to the menu, I would be jolted awake just enough to know nothing about what was going on, only to immediately fall back asleep once the soothing interlude picked up again. For hours. It was disorienting, sinister and, looking back on it, kind of hilarious.

Quantum Conundrum's soundtrack may be similar to Fight Club's menu screen's, but the game itself rides those same waves of frustration, persistence and disjointed comedy - the game is lovely, but the story is jarring. Some of its story elements are almost funny, some of the narrative almost make sense, all of it almost reaches a realm of lucid clarity. And yes, it does this for hours.

Stephanie Lee from IGN Wikis shows you how to solve the "Sine Language" puzzle in this video walkthrough for Quantum Conundrum. This puzzle can be found in the Red wing.

Stephanie Lee from IGN Wikis shows you how to solve the "Only A Minor Setback" puzzle in this video walkthrough for Quantum Conundrum. This puzzle can be found after the other three wings have been completed.

Stephanie Lee from IGN Wikis shows you how to solve the "Only A Minor Setback Part 2" puzzle in this video walkthrough for Quantum Conundrum. This is the very last puzzle in the manor.

Stephanie Lee from IGN Wikis shows you how to solve the "Manhattan Transfer" puzzle in this video walkthrough for Quantum Conundrum. This puzzle can be found in the Yellow wing.

A Google cache of the site finalfantasyviipc.com shows evidence of a plan for an updated PC release, with achievements, cloud saves (appropriate!) and a "character booster" that lets players increase HP, MP, and money "with the simple click of a button, leaving you to enjoy your adventure." Final Fantasy VII first came to PC on disc in 1998.

A whois search of that domain reveals it to be owned by Square Enix - registered, in fact, under CEO Yoichi Wada's name.

Square Enix hasn't officially announced the new version yet, so we don't know when this is due, but the cached page prices it at £7.99 / €9.99 (about $12.50).

[Thanks, Phoenixumn!]

#monsterxdragon When people think of Square Enix and online games, Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV—and perhaps the upcoming Dragon Quest X—are probably the games that come to mind. But late last year, Square Enix tried its hand at a free-to-play browser game by the name of MONSTERxDRAGON. More »

#heroesofruin Square Enix's four-way online multiplayer Diablo-esque action role-playing game Heroes of Ruin is out today in Europe and the UK for the 3DS, so they can enjoy this launch trailer. North Americans are free to ignore this until next month. More »

Just a day after some troubling reports surfaced about Square Enix's medieval stealth game, what appears to be a leaked trailer for Thief 4 has appeared on YouTube. The name Eric Wong appears at the beginning of the YouTube post, matching the name of a lighting artist who's worked on CGI trailers for several games, including Deus Ex: Human Revolution for Eidos Montreal. The clip appears to be drawn from cinematics and you can't really suss out any gameplay from the video. Of course, the existence of this doesn't mean that the game isn't in trouble either. What do you think? More »

#squareenix Square Enix, the folks behind Final Fantasy, are working on a new game engine. And hot damn, it looks fantastic. More »

#toys I liked the last Metal Gear figures Play Arts released, but I like the looks of this one a lot more. More »

#superannuationsassortedscoopery Editor's Note: The mysterious figure known as Superannuation is back with more fistfuls of gaming gossip. What has Superannuation dug from the Internet this time to share with you wonderful Kotaku readers? More »

#tombraider The creators of the new Tomb Raider have denied that their new game features an "attempted rape scene," directly contradicting their own statements to Kotaku last week. More »

#guardiancross Here's a look at Guardian Cross, an upcoming Square Enix-published mobile game by some of the development team behind multiple Final Fantasy games. More »

#hitman The director of upcoming stealth game Hitman: Absolution says the team didn't mean to cause controversy with their most recent trailer, which features protagonist Agent 47 slaughtering his way through a squad of scantily-dressed nuns. More »

Hidden in Square Enix's booth, among the dapper murderers and fluffy dimensions, was an iOS rhythm game about a flying, sword-wielding woman and her animate teddy bear who fight demons together in gothic-looking tunnels. Powered by Unreal Engine 3. Sure, why not?

Demons' Score isn't just inspired by Elite Beat Agents and Ouendan.; it marks a return to touchscreen music gaming for iNiS, who created both of those (along with the brilliant Gitaroo-Man), which makes it a pretty cool rhythm game by default. You tap icons in response to an indicator - when a clock-like hand hits the top of the icon, you tap, and you receive a score based on your timing. You'll also have icons that require swipes, multiple timed taps, lines that you drag at a certain speed, and icons that you tap as many times as you can before they disappear.

Taking advantage of multitouch hardware, Demons' Score also features multiple simultaneous icons for you to tap at once. Oh, by the way, all these icons appear in front of enemy demons that you kill upon successful contact.

Along the way, as you fight through disco-musicked demon gauntlets, the boss is constantly bothering you with funky, funky taunts. Why is all the music and dialogue disco-themed? I have no idea!

Tomb Raider‘s demo made me realize something: it’d be a stretch to call what we do in games killing. I mean, yeah, we’re probably the only medium that can (and frequently does) tout multiple physics systems specifically capable of calculating the way bullet-perforated brain bits dance majestically through the air. But really, all we’re doing is knocking down hyper-detailed action figures. We pull the trigger or aim the bow or bury the shank in a fertile bed of neckflesh, and they go down. Then we move on to the next faceless thug, rinse our knives, and repeat.

The Tomb Raider scene I sat in on during E3 really struck me because it didn’t let Lara cut people (or animals) down and then continue gleefully on her way. Death is messy and scary and awful. While the Nathan Drakes and Persian Princes of the world slay 300 people and then sweep corpses under a rug with a dumb joke, Lara – intentionally or not – sticks around for her victims’ final moments. I guess what I’m saying is, I sympathized with an irredeemable, cold-blooded murderer and, er, some random deer. They died scared and spittle-soaked and alone, and I really didn’t feel good about that.

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When it was first launched back in 2010, Final Fantasy XIV for PC was criticized by players and the media, and eventually the planned PS3 version was postponed. Since then, Square Enix decided to reshuffle the leading developers of the game, with Naoki Yoshida now acting as Director and Producer. His challenge is to helm the 2.0 version of Final Fantasy XIV, which is a re-imagination of the original release. It will mark a new beginning for the game when it gets launched this winter, coinciding with the release of the anticipated PS3 version.

The game was not ready to be demoed publicly at E3 this year, but we got a chance to see a brief live demo behind closed doors of the game still running on a PC. It featured lush visuals, with a richly detailed character running through a forest area with dense vegetation and impressive lighting effects passing through foliage. It was something we definitely aren’t used to see in an MMORPG. “Right now it’s optimized for PC. We’re about 50% into the development of the PS3 version, but it’s pretty much how it’s going to look on the console as well,” explains Yoshida. “It uses the same new graphics engine we built just for this game. This summer we’ll have an opportunity to show the PS3 version.”

In the meantime, he briefed us on what to expect from the new version of the game. “We believe that Final Fantasy XIV 2.0 can be considered the next real Final Fantasy game in the series,” he adds. This re-release is based on three pillars that have also been the aspects the series is known for: high quality gameplay, great storyline and beautiful graphics. “And on top of that, there´s our MMORPG community, which will consist of both PC players and also the PS3 players all over the world.” Which means the game will be cross-platform, like FFXI before it on PS2 and PC.

Yoshida-san is quick to emphasize how the legacy is going to be a driving force for this episode: “We’ll have some Final Fantasy staples as well, like chocobos, moogles and summons. But what is a little bit different is that these summons are like demigods in this world, so they´re really powerful, and it’ll take cooperation of all the players to fight these battles.”

Of course, bringing an MMORPG to a console system means tackling some big challenges. “It is a thing that didn’t have been done a lot in the past, and we have to make sure that we design an user interface and control scheme specially for these players”, explains Yoshida. “And we’ll also be adding in-game tutorials and quests that will help players that might not be comfortable with MMOs, and when they play the game, they will feel like they’re playing a console game that just happens to be online.”

Things are looking promising for the second coming of Final Fantasy XIV, and PlayStation fans will finally have the chance to explore the lush visuals of Eorzea in this deeply-revised version of the title. Below, Yoshida-san goes deeper in some details of his project. And we can’t wait to gather some friends and ride some chocobos around those wonderful vistas.

PlayStation.Blog: Besides the new control scheme and new user interface, does the PS3 version has any new exclusive features compared to the PC version?
Naoki Yoshida, Producer and Director: Because players that’ll be playing on the PS3 client and on the PC client will all be on the same servers, we can’t give either group something special, because everyone is playing together.

But we know that a lot of players have a PS3 and PCs as well, and depending on the mood, sometimes you want to sit down and play in front of your screen, whereas in other times you want to sit back on your couch, relax with controller in hand and play. We believe that we offer opportunities for players to enjoy both worlds

PSB: Final Fantasy has a rich universe, evolving its mythos and its narrative from episode to episode. How do you translate this into a massive open world, into an MMO form, where players can dictate the story?
Yoshida-san: It is an open world in the sense that you can explore freely, but that doesn’t mean is hasn’t a main story. In this open world you have this very detailed story, which has a beginning and it has an ending. What is good is that, once that story ends, we can add new tales. That’s one of the greatest thing about an MMO: you expand a certain story or add new storylines via patches.

PSB: We know some friends that still plays Final Fantasy XI today, 10 years after it was first launched. Do you have a roadmap to keep supporting FFXIV long after its launch?
Yoshida-san: Yes, definitely.

PSB: Are you incorporating easter eggs for fans of the series?
Yoshida-san: Yes, we’re definitely planning on lots of references to past Final Fantasies. This is a game we believe is for the fans of the series, so we want to bring back a lot of nostalgic monsters and other things. For example, we’re planning the Crystal Tower, which is the last dungeon of Final Fantasy III. Basically we’re taking all the great things from the the first 13 episodes, squeezing it into the game and giving them some polish. For example, in FFIII you were limited by the technology of the time, and we’re going to re-render that in this type of high quality graphics. So you’ll have the opportunity to re-visit these sections and see the difference between the lower quality graphics from the past and the high resolution visuals of FFXIV.

PSB: Being players of Final Fantasy XI as well, we know the game was really party-based, and that was a problem with some audiences. Can you also play solo onf Final Fantasy XIV?
Yoshida-san: Definitely, you’ll be able to play the content solo too – it won’t be as party-based as Final Fantasy XI. But, on the other hand, we believe that in this current generation there are a lot of people with time constraints, and it’s hard for them to spend time finding a party. So we’re going to make sure that, for party-based contents, we make it easier to recruit a party. With the Content Finder tool, you’re going to be able to decide “Okay, I want to do this today”, then simply press the button and you’ll be joined by other people with similar goals. So you’ll be able to decide if you’re making a party and, if you don’t have the time, just press the button on Content Finder and you’re automatically in a party.

PSB: With the game finally launching on PlayStation 3 soon, how are you planning to attract those potential new players? You know, the console audience is very different from the traditional PC gamer.
Yoshida: We know that a lot of console players never played an MMO and they may be scared by not knowing what to do, and we want to stress that it’s very similar to an offline Final Fantasy that always had great stories, made you cry, changed your life. There will be a beta for a limited time where people will be able to try it out. And an additional factor to bring in console games are graphics: something of this quality you can’t have in any MMO title.

PSB: Will there be a public beta for 2.0?
Yoshida-san: Yes.

#finalfantasy Have a look at the upcoming PSP version of Final Fantasy III. More »