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Yakuza: Dead Souls Review for PlayStation 3 (PS3)

Yakuza: Dead Souls Review for PlayStation 3 (PS3)

A Parody Of Itself

SEGA’s Yakuza series has never been much of a mainstream hit. This fusion of Grand Theft Auto and Shenmue has always appealed to the sort of gamer that likes beating the crap out of their enemies one second and singing karaoke the next. Unfortunately, even massage parlor minigames eventually get old, and since we have already seen four numbered Yakuza titles and spin-off or two, SEGA has decided to mix things up a bit with the latest installment: Yakuza Dead Souls. How do they mix things up? With zombies, of course!

The fictional Japanese city of Kamurocho has fallen to a horrible zombie plague, and when the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force fails at containing it, the mighty Yakuza are called in to stop the outbreak with their sheer manliness. Players will control iconic characters from Yakuza’s past including Shun Akiyama, Goro Majima, Ryuji Goda, and main character Kazuma Kiryu. All of the characters’ models have been updated for this new zombie-themed game. (Heck, Ryuji Goda now has a robot arm that transforms into a chain gun.) It’s up to these four heroes to get to the bottom of the zombie outbreak and save the day. Of course, this doesn’t come before taking a well-deserved break to sing karaoke and participate in massage themed minigames.

Yakuza: Dead Souls Screenshot

Regardless of the zombie outbreak, Yakuza: Dead Souls plays out pretty much the same way any other Yakuza does. You’ll wander around the city looking for fights and participating in diversions until you decide to progress the main story. Even though a third of its residents have become zombified, Kamurocho is still alive and well. Businesses still sell their wares, clubs still bustle with happening nightlife, and there are plenty of NPCs to talk to. However, the streets themselves are more barren than usual. Many buildings have fallen into ruin, and it’s unlikely that you will find any signs of life outside of the shambling undead. It almost feels as if the zombie atmosphere was copy/pasted into Yakuza 4 without anyone stopping to think about how it would affect the rest of the setting. Outdoors you’ll find a horrid apocalypse, but indoors you’ll find ping pong. It’s weird.

Then again, perhaps this strange disconnect between minigame goofiness horrible tragedy is purposeful, as just about everything in Dead Souls is exaggerated to an almost cartoony effect. Goda’s machine gun arm looks like something out of a sci-fi anime rather than a serious mobster zombie drama. Majima has always been a bit crazy, but in this game his insanity makes him seem almost like a cartoon. It’s kind of difficult to take human drama seriously when you are using a shotgun as a baseball bat to knock grenades at your enemies.

Yakuza: Dead Souls Screenshot

Speaking of weapons, the classic Yakuza fist-in-face combat has pretty much disappeared. Since zombies can only be killed with a clean shot to the head, the game shifts its entire focus toward third-person shooting. The only problem is, Yakuza isn’t really cut out to be a third-person shooter. There’s no real cover system, the controls are incredibly stiff, aiming is a chore, and it’s hard to tell when you’ve actually managed to hit something. The camera doesn’t make things easy either, as it loves to spaz out as soon as a horde of zombies ambushes you. You’ll rely heavily on the auto-aim, which actually makes gunfights play out a lot like bare-fisted brawls. You just hammer on the fire button over and over again with reckless abandon, hoping that your enemies die before you do. While this may be fun and frantic in a hand-to-hand combat system, it’s just frustrating in a third-person shooter.

The enemy design in Dead Souls makes me think the game is actually designed to be a parody rather than a serious zombie game in its own right. You’ll encounter cheap knockoffs of the boomers, tanks, and witches from Left 4 Dead, and lickers from Resident Evil. The bosses look like they come straight from Resident Evil’s reject pile, complete with outside organs, arbitrary insect parts, and giant mutated bodies. Not only that, but you don’t fight these special zombies any differently than you fight normal zombie hordes. Just hammer on the fire button till your finger gets tired, and every so often dodge a special attack. The auto-aim will do the rest.

Yakuza: Dead Souls Screenshot

The biggest downfall of Dead Souls is the outdated Yakuza graphics engine. While games like Dead Rising worked hard to create an engine that can display tons of zombies on screen at once, Dead Souls uses the same engine that Yakuza 4 ran on and hopes for the best. Sadly, the best just isn’t good enough. Any time you are fighting more than five or so zombies at once, the game starts to slow down. Sure, it’s fine as long as you are running away, but once you start shooting the zombies up and blood effects start spattering everywhere, the game slows to a zombie-like shamble. The game actually froze on more than one occasion. In fact, graphical glitches were so common that I sometimes had to cut back on my zombie-slaying for fear that the game would freeze again if I was any more effective.

Yakuza: Dead Souls Screenshot

The biggest problem with Yakuza: Dead Souls is that it’s not really doing anything we haven’t seen before in other Yakuza games. The zombies are essentially poor replacements for the gangsters we’ve seen before. They show up with the same frequency and you take them down with the same button-mashing tactics that you’re used to. The side quests and minigames are practically untouched from previous Yakuza titles. Sure, they are built up around the premise of “help rebuild the city,” but you are basically doing the exact same things you did in Yakuza 4. The story isn’t very compelling either. Haruka gets kidnapped again and you have to save her, except this time there are zombies. That’s it.

Overall, Yakuza: Dead Souls really only survives on its novelty value. That’s not necessarily a bad thing if you are a longtime Yakuza fan. If all you really want to do is see your favorite Yakuza characters acting like cartoony parodies of themselves during a zombie apocalypse, then this is the game for you. For the rest of us, you won’t lose anything by passing this game over. If you are a newbie and you want to get into the Yakuza series, pick up Yakuza 4 instead. It gives you a much better feel for the franchise than Dead Souls does. It just goes to show that zombies don’t necessarily make everything better.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 2.5 Graphics
Though the cutscenes don’t look too bad, the in-game slowdown and freezes are infuriating. 3.4 Control
Pressing the square button to fire is a little awkward at first, but once you realize that gunfights are just re-skinned fistfights, you’ll get the hang of it. 3.8 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
The soundtrack is competent but not memorable. The voice acting, however, is excellent as always. 3.7 Play Value
It’s a fun game if you are already a Yakuza fan. It’s just a rather awful introduction to the Yakuza franchise. 3.5 Overall Rating – Good
Not an average. See Rating legend below for a final score breakdown.

Review Rating Legend
0.1 – 1.9 = Avoid 2.5 – 2.9 = Average 3.5 – 3.9 = Good 4.5 – 4.9 = Must Buy
2.0 – 2.4 = Poor 3.0 – 3.4 = Fair 4.0 – 4.4 = Great 5.0 = The Best

Game Features:

  • The revered Kazuma Kiryu and Shun Akiyama return, now joined by Goro “Mad-dog” Majima and Ryuji Goda, the Dragon of Kansai.
  • Unleash new devastation. Use the all-new heat-snipe to unleash chaos in the face of hordes of zombies.
  • The Yakuza franchise takes an exciting new twist with an all-new third-person shooting mechanic, a wide array of guns and upgrades, and a city packed full of the undead.

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