Sega time on the PS3.

Yakuza: Dead Souls

Well then, another new Sega series for me to try out. I’ve had some relatively good times lately with discovering Sega series that I have never gotten into before. Here we go with another one. This time, we are looking at the Yakuza series. I know I’m not starting with the first game in the series, but this game was cheap and easy for me to jump into overall. I’ve heard of this series many times in the past, but I’ve never given it a try until now. On top of that, this seems like it might be a side series anyway, seeing as, as the name implies, this is a zombie game as well. Well then, let us take a closer look and see if this Yakuza game is good or not and if it makes me want to seek out other games in the series or not?


Gameplay

The basic idea of Yakuza Dead Souls is that you are playing as one of four characters as you roam the city of I think Tokyo, but you are in an area known as Kamurocho. This area is slowly starting to be taken over by zombies and you have to navigate the areas that are slowly becoming infested as you guide your characters around shooting zombies and completing missions to either gain experience points or to complete side stories while you work on completing the main story of the game as well. There is no rush to complete the main story, which takes place over five chapters, as there are many other things to do. I’ll get back to the main story more in the next section. The main thing you are doing in this game is just navigating the city as you take on the undead and the large mutation enemies that roam the streets now. I have to say, they actually did a good job of this. The city really does feel like it is under attack from a zombie invasion. You have a variety of weapons to choose from to attack the undead. These range from handguns, to shotguns, machine guns, rifles, and even things like grenades and Molotov cocktails. Not only that, you can upgrade these weapons with items you find around the city. When you have enough materials and yen, you can have them upgraded at this mobile arms dealers place. It’s a good incentive to go hunting for materials, as you will enjoy getting better weapons, even if the selection is a bit limited and not always needed. Better weapons do better damage and have better aiming and recoil effects, but often times they are only barely noticed. You can notice it, but if you don’t upgrade often, as some materials are hard to get, you will easily still get by on older weapons. The missions you do in this game often are pretty simple, as most of them either involve killing all the zombies in an area you are currently in, finding a person in the city and escorting them to safety out of the zombie areas, or helping free the business’ in the cities zombie areas. There are variations on these, but a lot of the time, you will find yourself doing basically just killing and escort missions either with armed or unarmed people. Sure, this can get a little old, but at the same time, the game does offer motivations to do these missions. It tries to make you care about the people in this game and it really does give off the impression that these people are dying and that you need to help them if you want to see some of these side characters and just random civilians survive. This isn’t one of those games that just says, someone is stuck in a zombie area, go get them. The game actually tries to offer up reasons as to why you should save them, and even then, if you don’t want to save people and just want to do the main story, there is nothing stopping you from just doing the main story. Your characters don’t care if you don’t do the side missions. They just want to do the main story. All the side stuff is just bonuses to them. There is even a partner system in place. When you discover certain characters in the game, you will have them recruited by this large black American soldier who will take them back to his gun range where he will train them up and have them ready to join you in the zombie areas when you need them to be there. It’s nice to have help when you are taking on all these zombies, but truth be told, they aren’t always that helpful as you are relying on an AI character to back you up, when you can often cause way more damage yourself compared to them. Still, any backup in certain situations is better than no help at all. You can even upgrade them to have special abilities that can either make them better, or have them help you when you are in a pinch. Certain allies are better than others, this mainly being down to the weapon they are using. An ally with a shotgun is more useful than an ally with a handgun. On top of that, there are lots of little mini games spread out throughout the city. You can play darts, you can play pool, you can bat, you can bowl, and even gamble. There is a lot to offer other than just the main story. While the bulk of the main story is just run around to the new objective while shooting zombies and listening to the characters interact about their situation they are currently in, there is so much side stuff that the bulk of the gameplay of this game is actually quite fun. If you want to just run around and shoot zombies, you can do that. If you want to just run past them all, you can actually get away with that as well. If you want to to the main story, just do it, otherwise, there is a lot of other things to do in the city other than just shooting all the time, even if that is a bulk of the game. While there is a lot to do, you will still find yourself just shooting zombies and doing escort missions throughout most of the game. If you want lots of other gameplay variety, you will just have to keep playing the game. The gameplay variety is quite high here, but you have to keep playing the game to get to it all. Hey, as long as there is variety thrown in there, you know you will keep my attention for quite some time.


Story

I have to say, I’m not sure I usually see games that have a zombie story actually do it properly at times. Most of the time when it comes to a story about a zombie invasion, the games or stories are based on after the invasion has already happened and you are watching as the very survivors are trying to find other survivors and just trying to get by on limited resources. This game though focuses on a zombie outbreak starting to happen in a small section of a large city, as the army works to try and quarantine the outbreak from spreading to the entire city. The city of Kamurocho is also not only home to lots of normal Japanese citizens, but there are lots of Yakuza around as well. That is where a lot of the focus of the games comes in now. You play as one of four characters throughout the game, current Yakuza members, former, and those that are sort of related to the families. You have Akiyama, who is a loan shark. You have Majima, who is a current trigger happy member of the Yakuza. You have Goda, who wears a gun arm, and is a former Yakuza. Finally, there is Kiryu, who is sort of the main character of the Yakuza series, and former leader of one of the Yakuza clans. The game plays itself out through episodes, so you play as one character at different points in the outbreak and you slowly progress the story between these characters until you get to the end of the game. You are so used to watching zombie stories pretty much instantly take over a city, but in this case, you are watching as the city is slowly, section by section, as the city is being taken over by the zombies. The army, or these army like group of soldiers constantly erect these walls to try and keep the zombies into certain areas, but as the game progresses, you slowly watch as certain walls fail or as the zombies find other ways to get out of the quarantine zones to continue to try and spread to the general public who is for the most part being kept in the dark about what is happening. That is why you see people constantly just going out their day to day lives as you roam the town. The bulk of the story now becomes, not only trying to survive and keep the zombies from spreading further into the city, but also how in the world this outbreak started and why it seems to keep spreading. Every time the city seems like it might be safe again, somehow, the zombies keep appearing to have new mutations appearing in the bunch, or they pop up in a different area of the city to cause more havoc. Each of the four characters have different motivation as to why they are doing what they are doing. While some of them are Yakuza as well, even they don’t want to see the normal citizens of the town around them constantly be slaughtered by zombies. I know I’m not going into a ton of detail on each character. I just don’t want to spoil some of the big twists this game throws out to you. And believe me, some of them are real surprises as these people constantly work to stop this invasion and to figure out what in the world started all this. Akiyama, the loan shark, just want to run his loan business with his heavy set female partner, but he does sort of work with not only regular people, but he does help out the Yakuza at times as well as he is the person you come to when you have money trouble. Majima is a nutty member of one of the Yakuza clans, and is actually excited when he first sees zombies. He enjoys zombie movies and getting a chance to run around the city killing zombies is very appealing to him. Goda is a chef in training that sells these balls made out of octopus. Sorry, I don’t remember the proper name for these things. He has a machine gun arm that can change between an arm and a gun as he pleases. He was just minding his own business when he was dragged into all this. Kiryu is a former leader of one of the Yakuza clans in this area, and is a legend in his own sense. Everyone knows him when he is around. He has retired from the business and instead runs an orphanage and looks after a small group of kids that gave him the motivation to stop his life in the criminal organizations. However, someone has kidnapped his main little girl that he looks after and it is up to him to find her and why they would kidnap her. So yes, as you can see, or at least get from what I’m willing to tell you and not spoil the entire game, the story is actually pretty good and detailed as to what is happening. All the side quests, while not usually connecting to the main game are worth It at times if you want to see more sides of the characters you are controlling and if you want to see more people survive the outbreak of zombies. The story does a good job of keeping you hooked and entertained throughout the game, and I have to say, I wouldn’t change anything about it. It goes as the pace you want it to, and it does conclude all stories without anything really appearing to be left to your imagination. If there was a bit focus on something, it is shown to you in the end on how it should be getting solved. So overall, a great story I would say.


Graphics

The city of Kamurocho looks great and is very convincing as an active Japanese city as you look at the currently uninfected areas of the city. The city is crowded with people roaming about on their daily life and everything is just so detailed. It really does look like a current Japanese metropolis in action. The characters all look great, detailed and you can see their reactions and emotions very well. Even in the currently infected areas, the city still has that Japanese city look, but now it has almost instantly turned into devastation as the buildings and areas around you are now all in chaos, ruin, and just in general mayhem and dirtiness. It’s amazing how it happens so fast, which of course may be a bit unbelievable that it looks so bad so fast, but at the same time, if you let that little fact drift away, the areas that are crawling with zombies do for sure have the look of devastation that goes along with what you expect from a zombie invasion. If this was all that the game offered, then believe me, I would almost say the graphics were very close to perfect, though even then, that is still an almost. There is one big problem that I do have to bring up when it comes the graphics of this game and that is the slowdown. When there are too many enemies on the screen, or if you are trying to first person aim your guns with enemies very close to you, the game does have a tendency to have slowdown moments. They aren’t often, but certain big enemies can really do this at times. You will be firing your machine gun and you will notice the sounds of the gun slowing down as the enemies around you start slowing down as well. It’s not enough to break the game and it doesn’t happen that often, but it still will occasionally happen as you are playing. I could get it to happen regularly when it came to certain enemies and in certain locations, so this had to have been something someone should have seen at some point. Really, this is the only major bug I can think of when it comes to this game. Sure, there may be the occasional clipping error you will see every now and then, but that is to be expected with a large open world game such as this. Other than this, the game just looks great in my opinion.


Sound

The city in this game is actually quite alive with the sounds of a hustling and bustling city when you are in the safe areas of the city. You hear the sounds of people talking all over the place, as well as the sounds of business’ all around you. It really does sound like an active city. If you are going to have an open world game that takes place in a city, having it hustling and bustling is a must. I’ve seen games where things are not busy and it feels like you are sort of alone in this large open space. This isn’t one of those games. The zombie areas even sound like they are under attack most of the time, as well as the music that is in this area is more hardcore instead of soft and barely noticeable in the good areas. The characters all do speak in Japanese, so you do have to be good at reading subs if you want to get the full effect of this game and to understand what is even going on around you. I know some people don’t enjoy this, but I’ve long gotten used to reading subs and they don’t bother me at all. I guess I could say I sometimes didn’t notice the music at times in the game, which may be something they were going for in some areas. You more often times heard voices in this game and the hustling and bustling of the city over the music in the game. Yes, there are some areas that are more music focused, especially in the zombie areas, but I guess it could be a little more prevalent in some other areas. Still, the sound in this game is pretty good. If you are telling a story, you need good voice actors and a good script for them to read off to the player. If they can do it and make it sound natural, you got a good game, and I see that here.


Control

The controls in this game aren’t bad either. You run around with little problem. Aiming and shooting your weapons isn’t a problem. It is all done with the trigger buttons on top, so it is done well and it does feel responsive when you are firing them. Dodging attacks works fine, and for the most part does help you dodge when you really need to do it. There are also lots of quick time button presses you need to press in this game if you want to make quick shots to hit certain spots to cause big damage on enemies or to cause nearby explosions as well. These are mostly responsive as well, as the game does expect you to press these buttons very quickly. You usually have less than one or two seconds to press these buttons or the attacks are going to fail. Yes, that is a very short time to press these buttons. In the beginning of the game, you are going to fail these a lot as you are not used to them at all. There is a small learning curve to these, but when you get it, you will rarely fail once you learn the speedy timing you need to hit these events accurately. Once you get it down, you are going to hit it almost every time, so it is easily doable. You just need some good reaction time. All the mini games I played are all simple enough as well. There is one big help that the game does throw at you with these mini games. Every time you find a new one, the first thing the game does is show you a picture of the controls. Hey, I wish more games did this. If you are going to throw a lot of variety into your game, at least make sure the player knows how to play them. So really, other than very very small things, the controls are almost perfect here. Sure, there is a small thing here or there, but really, the controls work just fine to me.


Replay Value

This is another area where this game shines. As I mentioned before, yes you can just do the main story of the game, but there are lots of side stories to work on as you play the game. Each character has fifteen substories they can hunt down in the city and try and solve to either earn experience, money, or new partners. You can choose to do these or not, it is up to you. So if you want a playthrough all about the story, then you can do that. If you want to get more into the side stories about what else is happening in the city, then you can do that as well. If you want to just play mini games, or get more involved with the gambling system that is more familiar to the Japanese crowd, then you can do that as well. Really, there is a lot of variety in this game that you will likely never be bored if you want to take a step away from the main game to do something else. Even when you do eventually finish the main story, you have new game plus where you can keep your stats and such as you go through the game again. There are also two much harder difficulties that unlock after you beat the game once. If you though the game was too easy on your first time through and you want more out of the game, Sega is all too happy to crank up the difficulty for you to make it harder. Not only is there a mode that is pretty much very hard mode, there is one past that, that even says playing this difficulty is not good for your health. Yeah, you want a challenge, apparently this game is willing to dish it back to you if you wish it. I know the story is the same thing on each playthrough and there are only so many side stories you can play, but when you offer so many other things to the player as well, I can let things like not having branching paths or having different things happen on different playthroughs slide. You just gotta offer those extras that make playing the same game over again worth it, and I have to say that Yakuza does do that for sure.


Overall, I would say Yakuza: Dead Souls is a good addition to not only your PS3 library, but also to your Sega collection for those that enjoy series done by Sega. Yakuza Dead Souls offers lots of gameplay variety with so many different things you can do in the game. It offers lots of replayability with new game plus and varying difficulty thrown at the player if they didn’t find the game tough enough. Plus the story is very believable, and it really does feel like something that could happen if a zombie invasion were to happen in a major city in the world. I honestly have very few complaints about this game. Sure, if someone isn’t into the whole running around and shooting zombies concept, they may not enjoy this game, but really, with how many people seem to enjoy zombie games these days, this is a game I would recommend to anyone that is looking for a good one that isn’t just mindless shooting and does have a good story and setting for the zombie story to take place in. If you are a fan of zombies, shooting zombies, or also have some interest in Japanese culture or Japanese like games, such as this one, I would look into Yakuza Dead Souls. I think you might like it. It’s cheap, so go check it out while it is still cheap. I definitely recommend this one guys.


Overall, in my opinion at least, I give Yakuza: Dead Souls a nine out of ten.


Gameplay: 9
Story: 10
Graphics: 8
Sound: 9
Control: 9
Replay Value: 10

Overall: 9