Yakuza 4 review12/29/2023 It’s not just the engine that’s identical, Kamurocho is still the same, and the game feels even smaller thanks to the omission of Okinawa, an entire other urban playground that gamers could explore in Yakuza 3. Busting More Skulls In Kamurochoīoth the pro and con of Yakuza 4 is that it’s the same old Yakuza game you’ve been playing the last few years. It’s not fully voiced throughout, but when the characters do speak, they make it count. The voice acting is, of course, brilliant, since the Japanese have always taken voice acting seriously, with some incredibly earnest delivery from every character. Sound has always been a high point of the series and the same holds true here, with a lush, Dolby Digital audio presentation that’s not as heavy on the bass as the previous game, but adds a nice variety of jazz-inspired tunes to the hard rocking proceedings to give it more of a New York, noir feel at times. What it lacks in polygon pushing it makes up for with an obsessive attention to detail, some moody art direction, and stunning facial capture that manages to convey the nuance of Japanese performance. The game, despite being an exclusive, is not even as technically impressive as some of the top-tier multi-platform titles like Mass Effect 2, and is still prone to some draw in within the environments, though happily, it also has an absolutely rock solid frame rate for the actual gameplay. The big point of contention is that it uses the exact same engine as Yakuza 3 did, made all the more obvious by the fact that it also takes place in largely the same location (as it did in Yakuza and Yakuza 2), that being the fictional district of Kamurocho, a stand in for the real world Kabukicho red light district of Shinjuku in Tokyo. Once you start getting into the technical side, Yakuza 4 reveals just how much of a niche title it is. The plot is focused on a Yakuza conspiracy that dates back to 1985, and becomes more complex and labyrinthine from there. Where past games had heroic Ex-Yakuza member Kiryu Kazuma going solo, he now shares the story with three other main characters Akiyama, an idiosyncratic money lender who puts potential clients through life-altering tests, Saejima, an escapee from death row out to find out the truth before the police catch up with him, and Tanimura, a shady cop who’s underworld dealings are actually quasi-legal charity work for abused foreign workers in Japan. In this fourth outing of the game, and its second on the PS3-not counting 17th century Kenzan spin off-Sega takes a slightly different approach to the story. And now the fourth release of the series is finally here, and unfortunately, once again, it’s unlikely that many will realize how good it is. Here in the West, it’s that Crazy Japanese Game that barely anyone knows about. On the far side of the Pacific, it’s a massive, pop culture phenomenon that is the Japanese equivalent of Halo or Call of Duty, with four games in the main series, a massive fan base, merchandise up the wazoo, and even famous models and porn stars vying to compete to appear as hostesses in each new iteration of the game. If ever there was a game that perfectly portrayed the vast difference in gaming cultures across oceans, this game is it. There’s something very strange about the Yakuza series.
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