![]() ![]() It’s no surprise why, looking at the game from a distance, so many players think of the Yakuza franchise as the closest thing to a Japanese equivalent of Grand Theft Auto. Cooked fowl hanging inside restaurants, secret mahjong dens, and ridiculously detailed pachinko machines are just a handful of the weird sights I saw during my time in video-game Tokyo, and they go a long way toward making Kamurocho feel like a real, distinct environment. The fictional Tokyo district of Kamurocho is depicted with incredibly detailed set dressing. It’s fascinating to see the ways a Japanese developer like Sega would choose to render the kind of hyper-detailed urban environments that have dominated the video game landscape in recent years. In fact, that feeling of being a cultural anthropologist is one of the best things about playing Yakuza 4. It may be ludicrous crime drama (and there are some notable plot holes), but Yakuza 4’s cinematic storyline makes for a fun ride throughout, and offers a very different take on the “organized crime” tales we see in America. Even when the game reaches the heights of Japanese melodrama (and it does), the story remains compelling thanks to great voice acting and super-detailed, highly emotive character models that sell the action. The four protagonists of Yakuza 4 bring such emotional conviction to every encounter that you’ll be hard pressed to take the game’s action at arm's length. That ridiculous, twist-heavy story would easily collapse under its own stupid weight if it weren’t anchored by a solid group of characters. Tanimura may seem like a scumbag, but he's a scumbag with a good cause. ![]() Yakuza 4’s story of corruption and betrayal is so littered with revelations, backstabs, twists, and turns that even Phoenix Wright might describe it as a bit convoluted. The story casts every major organization in Tokyo-the Yakuza, the police, the government- as members of an elaborate conspiracy, tied into events that happened both in the distant past and in the first Yakuza game. These four all find that their separate paths lead to the murder of a low-ranking gangster, and further events soon thrust them into a conflict that threatens to embroil all of Tokyo in gang violence. They include Akiyama, the laid-back, fiscally irresponsible owner of a loaning business Tanimura, the corrupt rookie cop who takes advantage of illegal enterprises and Saejima, a hulking hitman who has spent 25 years in Tokyo’s secret prisons. The game once again follows the trials of Kazuma Kiryu, the former chairman of Tokyo's Tojo crime clan, and this time introduces three other seemingly unrelated men whose lives will soon become intertwined, like a Japanese version of Heavy Rain. The best thing in Yakuza 4 is its highly involved, emotional story. Wonky, unrefined gameplay and poor technology under the hood hinder Yakuza 4 at every turn, and the result is an experience that's mildly enjoyable. Like the crime organizations the game focuses on, Yakuza 4 is defiantly traditional in structure, ignoring the advances of modern games in favor of deliberately paced, over-the-top Japanese melodrama, lavish cutscenes, and gameplay that values cinematic production value over interactivity.The problem with Yakuza 4, however, is that the game itself doesn’t always work in favor of the traditions the game reveres so much. The developers of Yakuza 4, however, could not care less about that sentiment. Perhaps the most lobbied criticism towards Japanese developers today is that they’ve fallen behind the gameplay standards and innovation of other developers. ![]()
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