While Yakuza hasn’t hit the soft-spot of Western gamers, the series’ intricate story-telling and beat-’em-up action has made the franchise one of the most beloved names in gaming. The games usually follow the themes of family, loyalty and honour, however the series’ new spin-off, Dead Souls, embraces gaming’s flavour of the year – zombies.
Sega are trying something ambitious, and that’s admirable, but it takes too many risks. This new approach injects a lot of life and appeal into a franchise in need of a new hook, but it also pushes it into a genre that it doesn’t manage to compete in.
Honour the dead
The story is somewhat of a supernatural departure for the series as the games’ familiar city, Kamurocho, is plagued by a zombie outbreak. A defence squad sent into the city are unsuccessful, and it’s up to series’ protagonist, Kazuma Kiryu, and a bunch of other recognisable characters to save what remains of the city.
The story-telling is of the Yakuza series’ high but bizarre calibre. The cut-scenes are cinematic and the Japanese voice acting seems enthusiastic and committed as ever. You’ll have to bear with the subtitles known with Yakuza games, but the dialogue and happenings are interesting enough to keep you reading on.
As for the bizarre portion, the Japanese flair shines through, with everything from the country’s love for game shows, karaoke and robotics making an appearance, as one character even wields a machine-gun for an arm. This quirkiness makes Yakuza retain its off-the-wall identity and keeps you laughing throughout the zombie outbreak at hand.
Bringing teeth to a gunfight
Dead Souls does feature the oddly distracting mini-games and side-quests seen in previous iterations, although the game places a much bigger emphasis on shooting things.
This new direction for the series is what makes Dead Souls stand out, as well as slip up.
The shooting uses an unrelenting auto-aim feature that makes the aiming somewhat frustrating for FPS or third-person shooter purists, although once ignored, the shooting can become rather fun.
This focus of shooting over brawling makes the game’s pace incredibly frantic, as swarms of zombies will corner you in moments that leave you with no choice but to mow down the undead who have no resepct for personal space.
Your enemies are also not limited to dim-witted flesh-eaters, as you’ll take on some other creatures that look uncannily like Left 4 Dead’s tank, boomer and witch.
The only thing more frightening than the zombies is the nightmarish in-game camera. It seems to want to kill you faster than the zombies you face, as it swivels and catches on everything it possibly can. It puts you in some compromising spots that can result in cheap deaths.
Starting to decay
This leads to another shortcoming of the game, as the Yakuza series just hasn’t progressed all that much. The technical flaws of the controls and animations are all there, and the mini-games and city you’ve been running around in throughout the last couple games is exactly the same. The new focus on weapons does add a new twist, but it just feels a little too familiar.
The engine hasn’t changed either, leaving some visuals being a little dated in comparison to other games on the market. It’s not a bad looking game by any means, but there are some slow-downs and hiccups when the game tries to keep up with the additional characters on screen this time around.
Gangs and zombies collide
Yakuza: Dead Souls puts itself in a tricky situation, as it tries something new and exciting, and somewhat succeeds in that sense, but it also slips up by joining a genre of shooting that the series has no place being in.
Yakuza 4 was a highlight of the series and was reaching new heights with its bone-shattering brawling mechanics; now suddenly the franchise has done a redesign J-turn. If you’re a fan, you’ll probably appreciate the jump, while others should maybe consider another game that will fill the void; and in this zombie plagued game library we currently have, there’s plenty.
