PlayStation Hardware & Games

Get your sharkskin suit and take it to the streets.

Video: 3
Sound: 3
Gameplay: 4

In action games, if you're not a soldier or a mercenary, you're likely a gangster—but never just an ordinary street thug. Instead, you're typically some would-be crime boss or, just as likely, the crook with a strict code of honor. In Yakuza, you're actually both kinds of gangsters, which makes sense, considering the ruthless ambition of some members of this secret society, not to mention the importance that honor and respect play in the Japanese underworld. As Kiryu Kazuma, you're a former rising star who just finished a 10-year prison term (taking the fall for a murder that you didn't commit). You make your return and then have to seek out the usual revenge and retribution.

The story isn't exactly a potboiler, but it isn't the typical paint-by-numbers gangster tale, either. The game is fairly open-ended and involves a lot of free roaming around a digital version of Tokyo. You can play at your own pace and mix up the action. Yakuza closely resembles other free-roaming games—namely Grand Theft Auto, minus the cars—but it manages to make the random sequences flow with the story.

Much of the game actually revolves around fighting, and, at its core, Yakuza is essentially a fighting game wrapped around a fairly compelling story. The random fights even pull you in, and, as they're typically confined to set areas, these fights are inevitable once you reach a certain level of interaction. This can bog down gameplay once you're on a roll, especially if you want to focus on the story. But, then again, who ever heard of a Yakuza soldier backing down?

The big "innovation" with Yakuza is that the fighting sequences allow you to pick up and use practically any object you can find on the street. This makes for each melee to be just different enough. The game adds a bit of an RPG level-up system, so that, the more you fight, the more powerful you become, and thus you can take on bigger bosses. So, I don't recommend that you limit yourself to just the basic story-related brawls, as all the extraneous little encounters help make Kazuma a bigger badass later in the game.

The story is intriguing and has a fairly linear plot that is more story-driven than GTA or its numerous clones. You need to help find a mysterious girl, along with about $100 million of missing Yakuza money, and, of course, you dare not trust anyone. This makes the game fairly cinematic in feel, even if the dated PlayStation 2 graphics aren't quite so immersing. Compared with the latest fare on the Xbox, Yakuza has an old-school look, but the developers really did push the game to the limits with the cut scenes. Sadly, the in-game engine lacks the same level of refinement. The game is presented in a native 4:3 aspect ratio, but there's a software widescreen mode. Both have native resolutions of 480i, so they look OK but not great. Bigger televisions only serve to show off the graphic shortcomings.

Likewise, the sound is a mixed bag. The sound effects are well done, and the voice acting is very good, without sounding too much like a pidgin-English caricature. The language can be unnecessarily colorful at times, as well. While some F-bombs and other descriptive dialogue set the tone, the repeated use of canned lines during the fights wears thin faster than Japan's bullet train.

The look of the game is very good, however, with the characters in their sharkskin suits, big flashy jewelry, and other Japanese-gangster garb to fit the mood. The game also successfully captures the feeling of Tokyo's seamy underbelly, although it isn't nearly so seedy or dangerous when the numerous characters are outfitted appropriately in their flashy clothing and jewelry. Someone clearly did their research to capture the style of the Yakuza—let's just hope they came home with all of their fingers.

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