Yakuza: Dead Souls review

Guest Blog Post by Jack @ThePnutbean and YouTube

As he looked around and lay witness to the chaos that had fostered by his very own doing, he began to understand something he had not yet perceived. That piles of bodies that were only moments ago the undead, that these carcasses were once living people… like him. These now empty shells before him start to show remnants of their past; Doctors, Teachers, Bankers, a Secretary, a Police Officer are now just fragmenting of a world that once was. It was at this point, he decided to get ice cream.

Yakuza over the years has turned from a niche darling to a flagship title, with remakes of the first two games and now PC ports, the eastern answer to Grand Theft Auto has finally broke the western market. And rightly so. Yakuza is a sweet and sour type of game; two opposing flavours combine as one delicious whole. Sandbox design with arcade brawler, dating sim and arcade classic collection, melodramatic story meets self-aware camp comedy genre; the designers want you to be absorbed in the story and world but they -like Kojima’s team- know why you are here… too have fun.

All video game series have black sheep in the family. A game that may have been misunderstood at the time or just didn’t have the right dance moves to stand out from the crowd, leaving it to walks home alone… with a kebab for one. That game is Yakuza: Dead Souls.

Yakuza: Dead Souls is developed and published by Sega exclusively for the PlayStation 3. Initially schedule for release in Japan March 2011 only to be pushed back to June 2011 due to the earthquakes and Tsunami that hit the country. Here in Europe and the folks in North America wouldn’t see the release until the following year in March 2012.

Acting as a spin off/alternate timeline succeeding the fourth game, Yakuza: Dead Souls uses the established sandbox action adventure with RPG elements gameplay but this time adding the genre of Survival Horror with the inclusion of zombies and monsters acting as the threat instead of rival gang members.

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