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A fantastic, epic adventure through the heart of Japan’s organized crime – wait… sorry, wrong game.
I think after six long, grueling, mother fucking hours of boredom I’m enough of an authority on the game Yakuza to hold a session of class on it. For those of you who’re eagerly awaiting an experience with this game, today’s purpose of class is explicitly to save you the pain of actually playing through the nightmare yourself.
I know there are some developers out there - and some gamers even - who might criticize me for not playing Yakuza all the way through to its completion. Well let me tell you something, so listen the fuck up you pussy-faced nay-sayers! If after nearly seven hours of gameplay you’re not hooked on a game, interested, or even having fun then the developers did something sinfully wrong and you don’t need to continue torturing yourself by playing through the whole thing. I’m all for giving myself the chance to warm up to a new game, to overcome the learning curve, to work my way through any unique design mechanics… but not after six god damn hours!
Yakuza has perhaps three positive qualities about it. One: Oftentimes the camera angles and presentation during cut-scenes are impressive, fun to look at, and entertaining. Two: The game's menu has a built in profile of all the important NPCs you encounter so you can refresh your memory at anytime as to who’s who in Yakuza. And finally three: The game’s story is above average in its concept; while not amazing, it’s still entertaining.
Ahh, but there’s a catch!
And it’s regarding the quality of the story’s presentation, perhaps one of the most annoying aspects of the game; I’m speaking about the voice acting. All the actors, save the protagonist (Kazuma san) are absolutely horrible in their acting capacity. I’ve seen more convincing emotions come out of porn movies! Yakuza was ported over from Japan and infused with some seriously horrible English-dubbing. The game would have totally benefited from the option of keeping the Japanese dialog and using English subtitles. As it is, the only way you’re going to enjoy the mandatory English voice-over is if you’re deaf, you don’t play the game in the first place, or both.
In place of good voice acting, the developers (Amusement Vision) decided to infuse the script with some of the more colorful words in the English language. Now, I have no problem with profanity in a video game, or with gratuitous inclusion of words like, “fuck, shit, bitch, cock, dick, ass, twat, mother-fucker, snatch, deusche, cock-sucker, whore, slut,” or whatever else you can imagine. My problem is that the script in Yakuza makes use of these words in such a way that you’d swear the writers had just discovered profanity and were overly enthusiastic to include them in the script. Kind of like when you were six years old and every time you said the word “shit” you giggled so much you just had to say it over and over again. That’s how Yakuza comes across.
Earlier I gave you my list of three things that were positive about the game, now it’s time for me to throw out the negative aspects in the game. Keep in mind the more I played the game the more I disliked it; so it’s possible that if I played Yakuza all the way through, my brain would have imploded from the sheer lack-luster, dismal gameplay.
The following is a list of things I do not like – I do not like them – not one little bit.
• Horrible English Voice acting – Listening to a dog lick its ass is more entertaining then Yakuza’s English-dubbed voice acting.
• Load Screens or load pauses – These happen all the god damn time: They happen when entering/exiting a building; they happen during dialog in the cut-scenes. They happen before and after “random” fights on the street. Shit, they’re probably even happening when you’re not even playing the game.
• Character animations – They’re stiff as hell; as if all the characters in the game are walking around with multiple tire-irons up their asses. Whether you’re walking, running or fighting the animations all look like turtle-shit. Cut-scenes are the only exception and I assume that’s because the movements were done via motion capture.
• Repetitive background music – Holy monkey nuts! It doesn’t matter where you are or what you’re doing, anytime there’s music in the background during gameplay it repeats as if the score is on a five second loop!
• Shitty camera control – All you can do is click L2 to swing the camera behind Kazuma, outside that you have no camera control. I don’t know why developers keep scrimping on the camera control; if you can’t see what you’re doing, you can’t enjoy what you’re doing, simple as that. Try this exercise: gouge out your eyes, now try to make yourself a sandwich. Is it any fun? NO! Just like Yakuza.
• Combat – Once Kazuma’s started flailing about he’ll be stuck facing the same direction until he’s finished his martial-artistry. The targeting system feels like it was a last minute thought, kind of like a fart, with no obvious way to know who you’re targeting and no way at all to change your target without relocking onto someone else.
• Gameplay pacing – Plain and simple it’s about as slow as two sloths fucking. The average flow of the game goes something like this: Run around the city for five to ten minutes without anything fun happening. Then suddenly some dumb random person will run up to you, call you a “bitch mother fucker” and challenge you to a fight. After the ridiculously long load screen, prepare for a fight that lasts between ten seconds and one minute. Once the fight ends, the random-bad-guy will apologize, probably give you some money and then run away or stand around as if nothing happened. Pay no attention to the fact that they should be dead or at least unconscious. Now continue running around for another five to ten minutes again without any action. Keep in mind that every ten seconds the horrible music in the background will repeat as if it’s trying to brainwash you with some subliminal message.
Those are my major gripes about Yakuza, I’m sure there are bound to be numerous others but I simply couldn’t see subjecting myself to that much more pain. The game carries itself like an RPG mixed with a third-person brawling game; it does have a decent story that revolves around the Yakuza, Japan’s organized crime families. But when you burry that good story beneath shitty play control, horrible voice acting that makes listening to the story actually painful; and let’s not forget that when the dialog isn’t painful it’s down-right – unintentionally – laughable. Now pile on top of that horrible music, overly-frequent load times, long gaps in the action in the event you choose to explore the city; and then you wind up with a game that should not have been released in the first place. At least not in America, not like this; who knows, maybe the original Japanese version flows much better. As it is now the American release flows like a river of diarrhea.
Months before it came out, I was very eager to see what Yakuza had to offer after I had watched several of the games trailers and gameplay videos. Whoever edited those videos together did an amazing job and should be paid in gold-bullion and tight-bodied young virgin women because the editor managed to make an absolutely horrible game appear to be something exciting, action-packed, and enjoyable. Sadly, Yakuza was anything but enjoyable. I hate this game, I’m amazed I put up with it for six god-damn, fucking hours, and I’ll be damned to an eternity in hell to be molested by a horde of demonic whales before I recommend that anyone play this game.
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