Eliza Dushku

If you’re expecting a Japanese GTA style game, you’re going to be disappointed. If you want an action game with a linear story but would also like a little bit of free-roaming, pick up Yakuza. However be warned, it seems at times that there is more story than action.

You play as Kazuma, an up and coming Yakuza soldier of the Dojima family in the Toja clan. You are ready to start your own crime family within the clan when your best friend kills your boss. Being the kind-hearted killing machine that you are, you take the rap for the murder. 10 years later you are released on parole. However a lot has changed since you went into prison. The Third Chairman of the clan has been murdered, 10 billion yen has gone missing from the clan treasury and there is a inter-clan feud over who gets to be the next boss. Oh and everybody seems to hate you.

At the start you’ll be given a pretty in-depth introduction to the fighting system. You will also be sitting around twiddling your thumbs as the story is given a full introduction as well. Later on it doesn’t get much better. I found it quite hard to get into the game at the beginning as I spent more time with the controller on my lap watching the screen than in my hand kick arse in game. Now some people might like this sort of thing, but if I wanted to watch something about the Yakuza I would go and rent a DVD not play a game. I know the creators are trying to develop the characters so that when something happens to one of them you’ll feel hurt, betrayed or whatever emotion they were going for, but there must be a way to do this that involves more action.

The missions are relatively easy. You are normally sent to go and see someone who’s on the small sector of Tokyo that you are restricted to. As you head through the street some punk or maybe a Yakuza who recognises you, will stop you and after a few choice words are swapped between you and your opponent a load screen will appear naming your opponent and then you fight. The first few fights are just build ups helping you get experience points which I’ll go into soon. You can’t avoid these fights and really why would you? They’re easy and provide you with the aforementioned and much needed experience points.

The combat controls are easy to use. The fighting system is based around the square, triangle and every now and then the circle button. R1 and L1 are used to keep yourself facing the opponent and to block ao sticking with a combo of these buttons will see you quickly vanquish your foes. Disappointingly there is no gunplay on your part. Your enemies sometimes carry guns but they are more of an annoyance than a sign of your eminent death. You can use various objects that are lying around to help lay the smackdown on your rivals, ranging from any of the umber of boxes that seem to litter the streets of Tokyo through to the golf clubs and baseball bats that will be used against you and also the odd bicycle that some poor fool left lying in the street. These will break or become unusable after a few strikes of your opponent but they still add a lot of benefit to the fight. Also there is a “heat mode” that builds up as you fight, and once you reach the limit of the heat meter you can do special moves that will send you opponents flying. As you progress you will earn experience points. These are used to enhance your fighting abilities in different ways. The three areas that you can change with these points are: Technique, Body & Soul. Placing your experience points in either of these will increase your stats in other areas. By the end of the gamer you should however have enough points to have full experience in all three areas.

Even though you are stuck to a small part of Tokyo, what you see is fantastic. The characters are rendered equally well. The look of Yakuza is great. The combat sequences are also exciting to watch, though as good as the attack animations look, they soon get repetitive.

The developers managed to get some well named actors for the voices of the many characters. Michael Madsen, Mark Hamill, Rachel Leigh Cook, and Eliza Dushku just to name a few. However the American voices are overlaid with the animations from the Japanese voices. This leads to a few poorly timed dubbing issues. The rest of the sound is good. Some of the music can get monotonous but it is used where it should be.

The AI is ok. The fights, while not exactly choreographed, do seem a little predictable. And when you’re not fighting you’re either watching the storyline or running to the next mission. There will be a few times that your opponents get the better of you at the beginning, but once you learn the controls it’s not a problem.

There is limited replay ability in Yakuza. Once you finish the story there isn’t much more to do. You could go back and try on of the mini games that have been put into the game, you know the ones. The coin operated UFO catcher, blackjack, trying to seduce one of the hostesses at the bar... wait didn’t I mention that? Sorry.

In closing, Yakuza is an action game that provides a good immersive story line. You can get a little tired of just sitting at the start but once you get into the story you will find yourself in a very atmospheric world. The fighting style is fun and easy to get used too. All up a very good game.