Diary of A Sane Man

For the past two weeks I’ve been playing my new addiction: Yakuza for the Playstation 2.

People. If you like those free-roaming, mature-rated, ass-kicking games like Scarface, The Godfather, Grand Theft Auto, or The Warriors, you’ll like this game. The Japanese setting is a breath of fresh air too. In this genre it’s usually the seedy underside of America that we see as the setting (even if the city is fictional like San Andreas or Vice City). The Yakuza are also quite different in form and function than the Mafia, American street gangs or American drug dealers, so things are run a bit differently. In other words, it’s a nice break for the genre to be playing an ex-Yakuza bad-ass in Tokyo.

I’ll start with the bad shit: Yakuza, much like any other game, has it’s flaws. Four really stood out for me.

(1) The background “murmur”: There seems to be three distinct levels of “city noise” in the game. The first is the people directly around you that you hear talking. The second is the indistinct noises of the area you’re in (more on this in a second). The third is the distant murmur of the entire city, the remote babble of thousands of voices talking and yelling. And for fuck’s sake it’s the most annoying loop you’ll ever hear in one of these games! No, really. It’s like a six-second loop that sounds more like a Silent Hill creature than a city murmur. Thankfully, you eventually learn to tune it out.

(2) The region “murmur”: Every city block has it’s own sounds of people talking and crying out. It was a cool idea. The execution sucked. Each block has only a few clips of sound and they repeat in the most annoying way. You’ll hear the same two or three cries/calls repeated over and over and over and over ad nauseum until you leave the block just to get away from them. GNARGH!

(3) The third complaint is iffy. Sometimes I like this feature, sometimes it pisses me off. Imagine GTA with random encounters in the city and you have this feature. At random times in the city you’ll be accosted by enemy Yakuza, gang-members, pissed off citizens, gangbusters, and common thugs who will try to pick a fight with you. They’re really hard to evade and once they get close enough to “talk” to you (read: talk shit) you won’t be able to avoid combat. This feature is really nice when you’re out looking to get XP so you can pump your skills up, but it’s also really annoying when all you want to do is get from Point A to Point B without hassle, but every other block someone jumps you.

(4) Load times. Enough said.

Now for the good, and trust me, there’s way more good than bad and it outweighs any complaints I have about the game:

(A) The graphics are pretty sweet in my opinion. They’re what you’d expect from the more recent 2006/2007 PS2 games. Considering the size of the game and all of the action on screen I was expecting more lag than I got. Yakuza’s Tokyo is alive with people, more so than I’ve seen in other free-roam games like this. It really looks like a living, breathing city at times. Sometimes I get lag because of this, but usually the game runs smooth. The fight scenes are smooth as well. They’re smoother than The Warriors and have more moves than The Godfather, and much more exciting than anything GTA has thrown at me.

(B) The plot and cinematics are epic. I’ve felt like a bad-ass in other games like this, but not like Yakuza. There were times I was yelling at the television or seething at wrongs committed against out protagonist in the game. When he brings the beat-down you *want* to bring the beat-down. You *want* to do the things he does. You really feel for the characters (both Kiryu Kazuma, the protagonist, and his allies throughout), especially since this is one of the few games like this where the protagonist is honorable, decent, and… well… good? I didn’t beat the game yet, but I’m on the last chapter. Unless they really drop the ball at the end, this will be one of the better plots I’ve seen in the free-roam/criminal genre. It’s good. And it’s played out like an epic, modern day martial arts movie.

(C) The fighting is fun. Even the random encounters. The more XP you pump into certain skills the more fun the fighting gets as you unlock new moves (either directly from the XP boost or through a mentor you meet later in the game). Of course to get this XP you need to fight, so it’s a never-ending cycle of ass0kicking and skill-raising (not that I’m complaining much). The ass-kicking never stops in the game and damn it feels good to beat on the baddies. Between the plot build-ups and the character developments, laying the smack down has never felt better. Early in the game the moves you can do are very limited, but as the game progresses you get more and more creative.

Did I mention the weapons? Every fight you get into has things nearby that you can pick up and use as a weapon. This ranges from tables and chairs, to golf clubs and baseball bats, to street cones and stun guns. I personally like using the bicycles as weapons, especially for finishing moves. Mmmm.

(D) It’s a long game. I only paid $24 for the game and so far I’ve been playing for 31 hours and I’m still not finished. Besides the main storyline, there’s dozens of side-quests and odd missions, the aforementioned random street-fights and arcade games/gambling to partake in. Sure, you might be able to beat the game much quicker, but part of the fun is immersing yourself in the city. I spent some of those 31 hours gambling at casinos, fighting in illegal boxing rings, messing around in arcades, purposely looking for random fights to boost my XP (and thus stats) and going on dates with hookers hostesses. It’s a big game and for $24 I wound up paying something like $0.70 per hour of game time. Or something. I dunno, I suck at math.

All in all I’m getting a kick out of the game. The plot is intense and as a result I find myself longing to kick the crap out of the villains and push the plot forward to the next “level”. It really plays out like an action-packed martial arts movie. Despite some annoying flaws it’s a fine game and worth picking up used. Does it have replay value? Sure. I definitely plan on playing through it again. Not immediately, but I will.

And good news: Yakuza 2 is on it’s way.

-=Grim=-

I think I want THIS GAME Raw Danger. Usually I smack up organized crime goons, beat down serial killers, deal in illicit goods or kill terrorists in the video games I play. I’ve never played a game where I had to cope with a natural disaster (Prevent, maybe, but cope with? Nah.) so I’m intrigued to say the least. Front row tickets for the city-wide apocalypse and you gotta not only survive, but help other people to survive, all the while dealing with mother nature’s full-on wrath.

I love the idea that you have to keep your body temperature up in the game. With the city flooding and the rain not stopping it would have been a glaring omission had they not included hypothermia as a reality of the game. I hope they pull it off right. It looks like a semi-free roam game (I believe there’s still “levels” but they’re big and roaming) so you might not always find something to warm you up in time. Sweet. There’s some roleplaying elements thrown in too as well. And here’s the killer for me (killer as in “awesome”, not “ugh”), the friggin’ coup-de-grace, the death-strike for any resistance I might have put up: what you do with each of the six playable characters affects some things that happens to the other five characters. Booyah. I’m sold.

The graphics look a little weak, but I have a feeling that it’s intentionally so due to all the shit going on on the screen and in the background. It would suck if the game had lag issues, so I have a feeling that this is why they dumbed down the graphics a bit. They aren’t terrible, mind you, it’s just no Resident Evil 4.

I can’t wait for Raw Danger to hit the stores used shelf.

-=Grim=-