So this is my first entry here into the world of blogging. So right off the bat i'll let you know exactly what to expect here. I am not a professional writer, reviewer, or critic. I'm just a guy who likes to play games and has some opinions about them, and will probably make spelling and gramatical errors along the way. You can read magazine reviews all you want but you are more likey to take the advice of a friend who played the game, Right? So thats what I'm here to do. I'm not rating things on a massive scale or giving scores in areas of focus. Just going to tell you what I liked, didn't, or if I'll recommend it or shred it a new one, savvy? Good. Then without further adieu.....
YAKUZA 4 (ps3)
So for my first review I would like to cover a game that I personally really liked. When the game first came into the gamestop I worked at, I really thought nothing of it. But they kept airing a commerical for it on the tv we run so for the sake of trying it I took it home. Now, as you can clearly tell this is the 4th installment of the series and if you aren't caught up in your Yakuza backstory, believe me, the game will let you know about it.
It suffers right out the gate by forcing a good 15 to 20 minute install. I understand this is supposed to help you with loading times and such but seriously, can no developer create a way that this install takes place while you play the first level? Nobody wants to buy a brand new game, race home to play to be forced to wait another 20 minutes...
Sorry, I'm getting off topic. Upon starting the game you take control of the first of four characters you play as, Shun Akiyama. From the onset you gather that he is an eccentric money lender of sorts and after a bit of a quick cutscene your secretary forces you out to collect on a debt. It holds your hand on a pretty linear path to start with a tutorial battle along the way, which we'll get to in a moment. After this brief period you follow an aquiantance of your character and then are flung into a rather lengthly cutscene discussing multiple different chracters and clans and who's in charge of who and what clan is at war with this clan and who's has command and yadda yadda blah blah blah. Much like reading Battle Royale unless you are fairly familiar with japanese names this first cutscene will probably make you feel very lost, as I was. In all honesty it was a bit of a put off, but the after that scene and after a bit more walking and miniboss fight you hit the event that starts the ball rolling. From there I focused on the characters I knew and things got a bit easier to follow. There were definitely a number of scenes where I had no idea what was being discussed but the game does do a pretty good job of recapping and remeniscing about it to bring you up to speed. Actually, in the main menu before you start the game, you can view of series of cutscenes from the previous Yakuza games to bring you up to speed. I've yet to watch them all but it is a nice little feature if you are like me and are starting off with the 4th of the series.
The game for the most part plays like a cross of sandbox action game and JRPG. Once the world opens up, you are pretty much free to explore the city of Kamurocho as you please and explore all the mini games it has to offer pretty much right from the start. But unlike most American sandbox games such as like GTA, Saints Row, or Infamous, the game doesn't really provide any vehicles to get around fast in. There are a handful of cabs that you can use to jump to different portions of the map but if you aren't near one then you are walking and that can take time. The other odd aspect of the game comes into the combat. Unlike in say Grand Theft where the moment you hit the streets you can start beating the crap out of anyone you come across that is not the case in this game. Occasionally as you walk some one will charge you and spout some ridiculous reason for why they are angry at you, and you'll get a blurry filter as the game announces who you are fighting a la the random encounter system common in JRPGs. And when I when I say ridiculous, I am not kidding. One of my personal favorites is: "Hey you! Man, you look so familiar.. Don't you just hate it when you can't remember someone? I'll just have to take it out on your face!!!" If that's passers by react in japan then I think my vacation there can wait...
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| Homeboy seems totally justified to me. |
The meat of the game comes in the combat. The controls aren't particularly innovative but they are simple enough as it uses a fairly standard light attack, heavy attack, dodge, block, throw system. But the combos are plentiful and fairly easy to pick up. It does sometimes spawn a large number of baddies in a small area but its pretty rare to get overrun. But I would say the strongest thing working for the combat is that it is flat our visceral I've said this to friend and I honest to god mean this that some of the finishers in this game are harder to watch than God of War. When you see limbs getting shredded off in games like God of War and Dead Space it has like no weight to it because it happens so much and so often that the constant sprays of blood can get downright comical. Yakuza can get rough to watch sometimes as you can watch their jaw dislocate and see a few bloody teeth fly from their mouth. As gruesome as it is, it never stops being fun and I crack a smile every time I swing a punk by his shirt collar spine first into a street lamp. Below you can see some of Akiyama's special moves, just to give you an idea of some of the innovative violence they've crammed in here.
In addition to the main story and the hours of ass kicking you'll do, I eluded that there are mini games to play and there are a lot of them. Many of them aren't listed on the map obviously but if there is no shortage of things to do from casino games, golf, bowling, fishing, cage fighting, pool, darts, restaurants, hostess clubs, and pachinko just to name a few. You can easily get yourself distracted for hours playing all the various different side attractions in the game which gives it an impressive depth and nice little getaway from the main story. A good example to show you is my completed game results:
Those bottom two lines tell the story right there. I played the game for almost 60 Hours and all I had to show for it after beating it was just over 20% percent of the content unlocked.
The only real "complaint" per say comes into one of the characters side missions where you have to do a few jobs for the hostess club that Akiyama runs. Essentially a hostess club is a lot like a brothel for first dates. You come in, meet a cute chick, buy her drinks, listen to her talk about herself, and then if you're lucky get a hug at the door. For a few missions (or the achievement if you wanna put yourself through it) you have to take a girl and dress her up and do her makeup and hair and nails depending on what the clientele of the club wants to see. For a game were I can curb check a guy with a bowling ball, this bizarre pretty pretty princess dress up game seems very out of place. If they forced me to play it more than the three times in order to complete the story, I might not have continued to play it. But if in the event you have to get all the trophies in the game or actually like it, the video below is incredibly helpful for you. Get your achievement and get out, its just creepy to play it.
So to wrap this up as its gotten a bit longer winded than I wanted to, lets bring it to the bottom line. After a bit of a rocky and confusing start, the game and story become very solid as I played through and learned about the characters and their back stories and meshes together a good number of inter connecting story lines and I felt it was pretty deep and engaging. The game contains a strong cast of likable characters that are genuinely easy to get behind. The combat while not as free to engage as I would have liked provided only a small nuisance and fights made the game very difficult for me to put down as you can tell by the image above. The massive number of mini games give the game an excellent variety so even if you get tired of beating ass, you can find something else to keep you playing the game. Overall I would highly recommend this title so if you happen to see a copy on the shelf, give it a shot because its pretty scarce.
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