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You know that thing that movies sometimes do, where one of the characters says the movie’s title, and everyone in the theater looks at each other and groans?

Max Payne 3 does something like that 14 times. After every level, the chapter title appears in the air ominously, foreshadowing some quip that Payne will grunt after killing a few hundred gangsters. “It’s drive or shoot, sister.” Or, “A fat bald guy with a bad temper.” And sure enough, you know somebody’s sister is going to be driving or shooting next to a fat bald guy with a bad temper at some point or another during the chapter.

It’s fitting, given the way the game presents itself. Payne is very much amused by his own observations; his self-reflective inner monologue is almost as sarcastic as it is omnipresent. When navigating from one firefight to another, you can be sure that Payne’s voice will pick up and ramble about the sorry mess he’s found himself in, or how he sure wishes he could have a drink or pop some pills right about now. Even in the game’s cutscenes (which make up roughly one-third of the single-player campaign’s length), most of Payne’s dialogue happens only in his head. Max Payne only opens his mouth to tell people that he’s about to shoot them.

And lots of people will be shot before the end of this PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (reviewed) game’s 10-hour campaign. It seems that every enemy faction in Brazil has 200 or more soldiers just waiting to be violently shot in the face by Max Payne, usually as he dives sideways out of an exploding explosion and kills 15 people in slow motion before hitting the ground. Payne goes down quick when exposed to fire, but luckily for him, delicious, addictive pain pills that magically heal bullet wounds are scattered all around Brazil.

Sure, there are the expected on-rails segments: boat rides, dangling helicopter fiascos, etc. But mostly, Max Payne is all about walking slowly through beautifully rendered environments, only stopping to take cover and shoot lots of people or sit through a cutscene. Often, cutscenes and gameplay combine for a set-piece moment that forces players into a time-sensitive slow motion shootout with gang members or corrupt policemen.

I’ve played dozens of shooters that claimed to have “enemies that move dynamically to flank the player,” and it’s almost never true, but Max Payne’s enemies really are smart punks. They’re good at taking effective cover and moving to better positions just when you need to reload. As a result, combat isn’t just about waiting for your enemy to pop his head out of cover – taking that strategy will get you killed quickly. Instead, players have to keep a close eye on their surroundings, carefully use the slow-motion ability to take out dangerous targets and move almost constantly to avoid getting swarmed.

Whenever you kill the last enemy in an area, the camera goes into ultra slo-mo and follows the bullet from Max’s gun as it punches through the unlucky gang member/corrupt cop’s body. Then, as the enemy slumps to the ground, the player has the option to continue wildly shooting bullets into the corpse by rapidly pulling the trigger. The result is a gruesome, blood-splattery scene that would instantly earn any movie an R rating.

The plot sags a bit in the first half by focusing so hard on Payne’s alcoholism, but otherwise the dialogue and overall plot feels on par with what you’d expect from a big-budget action movie.

And really, that’s all Max Payne 3 is – a beautiful, playable action movie.

I didn’t expect to like the multiplayer, but I came away feeling pretty impressed by it. It’s all wrapped in a Call of Duty-style progression system, because of course it is. Kill other players to get XP, use that XP to customize your loadouts and buy stat-boosting gear. You know the drill.

The game encourages players in team deathmatch mode to pursue personal vendettas against players that they’re killed by, offering bonuses for taking out an enemy that you’ve declared a vendetta against. Rockstar even managed to make the slow-motion ability work in multiplayer – when using the slow-down power, every enemy in your line of sight (but not everyone on the map) slows down too. While you create a location-specific time rift, other online players keep going, unbothered by the slow-motion madness happening in your area.

That vendetta system almost works too well. Every time you’re killed by a player, you’re shown how many times that particular person has beaten you and vice versa. I found myself really getting worked up whenever somebody consistently got the better of me, to the point that I was yelling at my TV. It works, though, because once you finally nail a tormenter and settle a score the feeling is great.

To keep playing Max Payne 3 longer than 10 hours, you’re going to have to get into the multiplayer. Playing through the game’s solo campaign is akin to spending a whole day watching every Die Hard movie: fun, but something you shouldn’t do more than once in your life.

WIRED Refreshingly interesting third-person shooting mechanics, surprisingly good multiplayer.

TIRED Campaign’s story sometimes drags.

Rating:

$60, Rockstar Games

Read Game|Life’s game ratings guide.

The Umbrella logo from the Resident Evil series features prominently on the game's official website.
Screengrab: Wired

Paging all masters of unlocking: a Sony subsidiary is presenting a “real escape game” in a shuttered Tokyo hospital this summer aimed at Resident Evil fans. Players will assume the roles of UN investigators who are trapped in a hospital and infected with a virus. The goal is to find a vaccine and an exit before time runs out.

The game will be staged in a former hospital in Shibuya that now serves as a studio for horror films and other spooky projects. The event will be produced by Scrap, a company that stages a number of “real escape games” in locations such as stadiums, theaters, and even abandoned schools. Games involve puzzle solving and code breaking, although given the horror-theme and the Resident Evil connection, this particular game will look to scare players as well according to Japanese blog 4gamer.

The Tokyo game runs Thursday through Sunday starting on July 19 and ending on August 31. Tickets go on sale June 2 and cost 3150 yen ($40) for advance purchases and 3650 ($46) the day of the game. Due to the puzzle-solving nature of the game, players are asked not to re-attend so that the experience remains fresh for other guests. Each game lasts about an hour and a half and latecomers may not be admitted, so be early. Children are welcome to attend but must be accompanied by an adult.

Earlier this year, Scrap debuted Real Escape Game in the U.S. The next game, called “The Crazy Last Will of Dr. Mad,” will take place in July in San Francisco.

Zombie mobsters from the Yakuza series at Tokyo Game Show 2010.
Photo: Robert Gilhooly/Wired

Sega will release a new Yakuza game in Japan this December for PlayStation 3, according to this week’s Famitsu magazine.

Yakuza 5 promises to be the biggest entry in the series to date, with five protagonists and action taking place in five major Japanese cities.

The Yakuza series has proven to be a winner in Japan, blending third-person action with dramatic interludes featuring top-class domestic actors. Often compared to Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto games, both series feature open-world gameplay in urban settings with morally-compromised main characters linked to organized crime who frequently break the law.

Sega’s four best-selling PlayStation 3 games in Japan are all Yakuza games.

Yakuza 5 will take place in five different locations around Japan: Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka and Sapporo. Previous games had been centered around a single neighborhood in Tokyo based on the real-life red-light district of Kabukicho.

Last year, Sega actually polled fans about which city should be the setting of Yakuza 5 only to announce later that all five cities would be involved.

Just as Yakuza 4 divided its story among four protagonists, Yakuza 5 will feature five main characters. Three are returning from the fourth game: series poster boy Kazuma Kiryu, loan shark Shun Akiyama and former death row inmate Taiga Saejima.

Tatsuo Shinda is a brand-new character, an ex-ballplayer banned from the sport for gambling.

The fifth character is a young girl named Haruka Sawamura, seen in previous games but never playable. Famitsu did not reveal how a child would fare in the combat portions of the game, which are frequently brutal.

The game is reportedly running on a brand-new engine and is 70 percent complete. Assuming it makes its predicted December release, it will will be the fourth Yakuza game in four years on the PlayStation 3.

Last year, Sega released a zombified spinoff that was delayed by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. It came to the United States in March under the name Yakuza: Dead Souls.

We know that the Nintendo 3DS library isn’t exactly robust right now, but two musical games coming this July will have you dusting off that 3-D screen. If you like music games. If not, don’t bother looking for your 3DS for a while.

In this episode of Game|Life Video, I take a hard critical look at Square Enix’s Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, which has a terrible name but an excellent song list filled with all the classics from 25 years of the popular role-playing series. And I also get into Sega’s Rhythm Thief, which is more of a combination of Rhythm Heaven and Professor Layton.

The virtual card game Shin Sengoku Buster has changed its sales tactics in the wake of a Japanese ruling making a certain type of virtual-goods sale illegal. Images: KLab

Japan’s social game makers are tweaking many of their top-grossing titles following a government ban on “complete gacha” sales tactics.

The country’s Consumer Affairs Agency said last week that the virtual games of chance will be considered illegal and subject to legal action effective July 1.

“We wish to alert businesses and consumers that we have decided, in accordance with the Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations, that ‘complete gacha’ sales are illegal,” Minister of State for Consumer Affairs and Food Safety Jin Matsubara announced in a press conference on Friday.

Matsubara made it clear that the agency was breaking new ground, noting that this was the first time this law was being applied to virtual goods sold online.

“Gacha”-style sales, named after the Japanese word for toy vending machines, are only one of a number of microtransaction models used in social games. The “complete gacha” system that has been banned offers rare prizes to players who complete a set of items through random drawings. It is this aspect of the service that the agency deemed illegal, not the selling of random virtual goods per se.

The move also bans “bingo gacha,” a similar practice in which players try to fill bingo cards through random purchases, according to coverage in the Yomiuri Shimbun.

Japan’s largest social game companies have already decided to drop all “complete gacha” sales by the end of May, well in advance of the government deadline.

With the self-imposed ban already taking effect around the industry, games are beginning to introduce similar sales mechanics that fall on the right side of the law. Shin Sengoku BUSTER by KLab now offers players a 1,000-yen ($13) gacha game in which collecting a full set of 10 cards earns a special rare card, according to Japanese blog ITmedia.

The key modification is that it takes exactly 10 purchases to win the rare card. This small tweak is enough to circumvent the ban.

Other games have removed the “complete” aspect entirely — to the chagrin of some users.

Gundam Card Collection by Namco Bandai now offers ultra-rare cards as random prizes rather than as a reward for winning particular cards. Users are complaining they now have no idea whether or not they are getting closer to winning an ultra-rare card, with one reportedly spending 75,000 yen ($942) to no avail.

Gree, one of six publishers making the joint decision earlier this month, said it did so “in the interests of improving the content of its services for users,” not because of any “infringement of current Japanese legislation.” Gamemakers such as Konami and Namco Bandai quickly followed suit.

Prior to the official ruling, the Yomiuri spoke to an anonymous programmer working at a social game developer in Tokyo’s Minato ward who laid out how important the controversial “complete gacha” sales tactic is to the business model.

“Whether it’s a good game depends on how much you can make a player buy virtual items,” the 30-year-old man told the paper.

“The key is making ‘haijin kakinsha’ players use the game,” he said, using a Japanese slang term for players hooked on online computer games. These big spenders can run through tens of thousands of yen in a month.

“It’s our goal to make more than 10 percent of all gamers spend money,” he continued. “It’s important to keep their spending within certain bounds, since they may not come back to the game if we squeeze too much out of them.”

To that end, the company (which is not named) sends the programmer data every hour with notes such as “Sales are down” or “User counts are too low.” He then changes parameters on the fly, for example, lowering the price of a 300 yen item to 100 yen (about $1.26).

“It’s all about figures,” he says. Online feedback is also monitored and changes can be made to reflect complaints. When too many users say they can’t get the last card in a set, he makes it easier to win.

What of the so-called “haijin” addicts who play these games? Yomiuri talked to a 27-year-old Tokyo office worker about her experience. She started playing social games in April 2010, at first for free, but later she started spending on rare items. It took her less than a minute to spend 3,000 yen ($38).

In total, she said she had spent about 500,000 yen ($6,281) on this “free” game.

Hell must have high ceilings.
Image: Blizzard

Cross another winner of multiple Vaporware Awards off the list: After many long years, Diablo III is finally available.

Blizzard has clearly aimed to capture everything people loved about Diablo III’s 12-year-old predecessor, the addictive dungeon-raiding gameplay that made them crave a sequel so badly, and update it for modern times. This is reflected in the cinematics, soundtrack and game design. Everything is snappier, more intuitive and all presented in high definition. Picking up the explosions of loot that enemies drop like grotesque pinatas is much easier on the ol’ clicking finger.

Before you even start to appreciate the smoothness of Diablo III‘s gameplay, you’ll be blown away by the sights and sounds. The cinematic scenes are so gorgeous that I spent more time looking at the pores on the characters’ faces than I did paying attention to what was happening in them. The soundtrack, for my money, is the best I’ve heard in a videogame in at least five years. It was composed by seven different musicians: Russel Brower, Derek Duke, Glenn Stafford, Joseph Lawrence, Neal Acree, Laurence Juber and Edo Guidotti. Other game music composers need to find out what these guys put in their coffee, because they’re making everybody else look like hacks.

The cutting-edge graphics make the game’s writing, in comparison, seem a bit behind the times. Diablo III’s approach to storytelling makes you wonder if somehow the writing team at Blizzard is trapped in a time warp, permanently stuck working with storytelling tools from 1999. The writing is dry at best, with ambitions that avoid rising above telling a run-of-the-mill dark fantasy story. The main story beats told in the epic cut-scenes are fine, but NPCs function as little more than generic fantasy text generators and the in-engine scenes have all the kinetic energy and narrative punch of a middle school play.

Evil sorcerers have very little variation in fashion sense.
Image: Blizzard

Blizzard tried to spruce things up by adding in lots of diaries lying throughout the game that function like the audio logs in BioShock, but this feature is handled clumsily. Once I helped this necromancer-type guy activate some magical totems, and, after thanking me, his diary flew out of his pants and landed at my feet. He didn’t hand it to me; it emerged, as if of its own free will, from his boxers. So instead of just talking to this guy to learn about his past, I took his crotch-book and listened to an audio reading of his personal logs, performed by him. This is all while he’s standing in front of me. Again: The word is clumsy.

I complained about Blizzard’s difficulties merging story, dialogue and game mechanics in my first impressions piece last week, and I ran into more of that while playing through the game’s full 20-hour campaign. My favorite example happens every time my character runs out of “hatred,” an expendable energy used to fuel special attacks for the Demon Hunter class. Right-clicking to use the attack while I’m low on hatred prompts Demon Hunters to holler out the sort of ridiculous phrase you would only ever hear in a videogame: “I need more hatred to do that!”

Sony Computer Entertainment Japan president Hiroshi Kawano discusses PlayStation Vita during Tokyo Game Show in 2011.
Photo: Robert Gilhooly/Wired

Establishing the PlayStation Vita platform is Sony’s “top priority,” said Japan’s game chief Hiroshi Kawano in a recently published interview with Famitsu magazine.

“It’s not like we’re telling people to stop announcing new games,” the president of Sony Computer Entertainment Japan said when the magazine asked about the paucity of games for the new handheld platform, which it launched in December 2011. Sony has sold 1.8 million units of Vita worldwide since launch. Rival Nintendo has sold 17.3 million units of its Nintendo 3DS.

“Rather, we’ve been continuously asking creators, ‘Please make games for the Vita,’ and many publishers respond by saying, ‘Here is something I’d like to try’ as the Vita inspires creativity,” Kawano said.

Kawano cited Sega’s Samurai & Dragons a free-to-play RPG available as a download on the Vita store with a packaged version containing bonus items in Japanese stores this week, as an example.

“Because creators have a lot of enthusiasm for the Vita,” Kawano said, “we [at Sony] must create an upswing in the market and prepare an environment where they feel comfortable making games.”

Kawano acknowledged that Sony has “a lot of things that need doing,” but insisted that he is confident in the Vita.

When asked to analyze the current situation of the Vita, Kawano said “the real battle begins now.” He spoke of a “mountain” facing the company next month, referring to the collection of software titles coming out soon which includes the latest Gundam robot combat game, a remake of Persona 4 and Metal Gear Solid HD Collection.

Famitsu asked if this would be an opportunity to increase Vita sales. Kawano agreed, noting that a new white Vita will go on sale at the end of June, and that a special limited-edition Vita featuring virtual singer Hatsune Miku will go on sale at the end of August.

Kawano also praised Soul Sacrifice, a title created by Keiji Inafune due this winter, adding that “there are many other prominent games on the way, but I can’t discuss them now.”

Famitsu pointed out that the PSP continues to sell very well in Japan and asked if Kawano hopes PSP owners will hurry up and switch to the Vita or if he wants to keep pushing for both devices. He said he is pushing for both consoles, noting that “our main user base for the PSP is older elementary school and middle school students.”

Sony is actively promoting the PSP to younger customers, he said. “Right now, they are playing the PSP, and eventually they will buy a Vita.”

Image courtesy of Epic Games.

We might have been down a man this week for the Game|Life, but call us Humphrey Slocombe, because we’re still armed with CRAZY SCOOPS. (Seriously, WTF kind of flavor is Strawberry Candied Jalapeno?)

It’s true, Chris Kohler was down at pre-E3 Judges’ Week, subsisting solely on sliders and bitter tears, but we still held it down in the sweltering podcast booth. On the review front, managing editor Marty Cortinas gave his his first impressions of Diablo III, and senior editor Chris Baker broke down the flash and foibles of Rockstar Games’ Max Payne 3, out this week. We also spent a not-insignificant portion of the show—correcting for double negatives, that would come out to a significant portion—discussing our reveal yesterday of the feature on Epic Games and Unreal Engine 4 coming out in our June issue. As the editor of Stu Horvath’s feature, I spoke on some UE4′s most interesting feature, as well as the tech demo itself, which I saw behind closed doors at this year’s GDC. It’s development nuts and bolts the likes of which we rarely talk about, filtered through the mind and halting speech of a man (me) who couldn’t contribute meaningfully to a video game if his sanity depended on it. So enjoy!

Game|Life’s podcast is posted on Fridays. It is available on iTunes, can be downloaded directly, and is embedded below.

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Jane Jensen at home in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
Image: Pinkerton Road

When she launched her new game studio, Jane Jensen had to look no further for inspiration than her own doorstep.

“My husband and I have been into organics for a few years,” she said to Wired earlier this month. “When we lived in California, we belonged to a CSA,” community-supported agriculture. “You subscribe to a small organic farm and get a basket of their latest produce every week.” CSAs cut out the middleman and put consumers directly in touch with their local food growers.

When Jensen and her husband Robert Holmes lived in California in the 1990s, they worked for Sierra, the birthplace of the point-and-click adventure game. Jensen co-designed the fondly remembered King’s Quest VI in 1992 before creating the Gabriel Knight trilogy, a unique series of dark M-rated adventures that gave Jensen her own loyal fan base.

Jensen continued to develop adventure games after the fall of Sierra, but finding the funds to create these author-driven games, considered niche in the post-King’s Quest market, is difficult. Reading an article in an issue of Entrepreneur magazine, Jensen and Holmes found that other businesses were adopting the CSA model: artisanal sheep’s wool, gourmet ice cream.

Why not videogames?

In April, Jensen and Holmes launched their new studio Pinkerton Road, dedicated to the “community-supported gaming” model. A Kickstarter soon followed. Unlike most crowdfunding drives, Jensen’s isn’t asking supporters to back one particular game. She’s asking them to become members of the first year of the CSG’s life, during which they will receive benefits in accordance with their donation levels.

Concept art from Moebius, the first game from Jane Jensen's studio Pinkerton Road.
Image: Pinkerton Road

Pinkerton Road will release at least one game during this “season.” Fans voted on which of three PC game designs they’d like to see realized by the master storyteller, choosing a game called Moebius. It’s a Gabriel Knight-y game about an antiquities dealer drawn into a globe-spanning, deadly conspiracy.

Just what the fans have been clamoring for. But can adventure games grow beyond that?

“There’s a certain new audience that we want to reach that probably would not be very tolerant of some of the classic adventure game mechanisms,” Jensen said. So she’ll create a “casual” difficulty setting that features more “hand-holding.” The objectives will be more clearly stated, spots on the screen that you can interact with will be highlighted.

“At the same time, people are nostalgic for these classic games, and as a designer I’m nostalgic for them,” she said. So the “unabridged” version of Moebius should be the sort of challenge that adventure game die-hards crave. “I don’t believe in making puzzles pointlessly hard,” she says, but adds that “it’s kind of like ‘no child left behind’ — if you always have to go for the lowest common denominator, things can be so obvious that a relatively intelligent person finds no challenge in it whatsoever.”

Fans who donate to the Kickstarter or become a CSG member later via PayPal will get “a virtual seat in the studio,” Jensen says, although she adds that “what that means to them and what that means to me might be different.” They will elicit feedback from fans, letting them beta-test the game and choose between different character design concepts. But ultimately, Jensen says, she and her team will decide whether or not to address fans’ comments and ideas.

Pinkerton Road isn’t funded entirely by Kickstarter; Jensen said that she hopes to get more funding from angel investors and that a second game has been funded by an outside publisher. Going to Kickstarter, though, has put Pinkerton on the fast track to finishing games sooner and with more artistic freedom.

The Kickstarter campaign ends Saturday; nearly $400,000 has been pledged thus far. Two excited fans have pledged $10,000 each for a personalized studio tour of the Pinkerton Road farm and an audience with Jensen.

“It is kind of strange if you think about it,” said Jensen of the top-tier donations. “I probably wouldn’t spend that kind of money for something like that.”

E.X. Troopers emulates Japanese comic books right down to the onomatopoeia.
Image courtesy Capcom

Capcom announced E.X. Troopers, a cartoon-styled spin-off of its Lost Planet third-person shooting franchise for PlayStation 3 and Nintendo 3DS, this week.

E.X. Troopers will occupy the same universe as the Lost Planet games, but it will drop the hard sci-fi look in favor of the comic book approach. Characters look hand-drawn rather than sculpted from polygons, and the action seen in the game’s first trailer is punctuated with on-screen Japanese onomatopoeia.

The main characters appear to be all new and rather young, according to the profiles on the game’s official site. Many of the Lost Planet robots and monsters, however, have made the jump to E.X. Troopers, as Japanese bloggers have found by comparing the trailer with images from previous games.

E.X. Troopers will be released in Japan sometime this year. It is produced by Shintaro Kojima, who worked on Capcom’s Monster Hunter series, according to a translation from this week’s Famitsu magazine.

A proper third installment of that series, Lost Planet 3, is due in 2013.