Yakuza 4 Review

By Steve Williams for PSM3 Magazine Subscribe now!

Yakuza 4, then: crime in a big city, the familiar gangster grind to the top. Violence and grit. Blood and money.

Except, of course, it's much more than that - you may already be aware that the Yakuza games are also funny, warm-hearted and absurd, but you may not have realised how brilliantly bizarre they are.

Having escaped prison as the second of four playable characters, Taiga Saejima (and having had such a long and emotional chat on top of the walls the escape went wrong), we meet a homeless man befriending two cats.

Deciding to pop out for milk (the fictional Kamurocho district of Tokyo is the same bustle of shops and businesses) we detour via taxi to the docks to check rumours of a man concreted into a barrel.

LOGGING ON

Finding him about to be thrown into the sea, we take mental snapshots (via quicktime button presses) for the returning Revelation feature - a way to unlock new moves - then whip out a log and start chiselling.

Yes, because Saejima is broke he doesn't have the phone the other characters take pictures with, so instead he sculpts. Saejima's a huge, muscled lunk of a man for whom technological progress means nothing.

He's spent 25 years on death row; he doesn't even know what a CD ROM is. Neither do we. Having been inspired to new fighting moves by a dying man in a barrel, we pop back into town and help a 70-year-old treasure hunter dig a tunnel under Kamurocho; the streets might be the same, but there are now extensive underground, alleyway and rooftop areas, and the tunnels house a whole new world of homeless people and... rich people. Really. We're not going to spoil it, but you'll be impressed.

Along the way we've found 15 locker keys scattered, if the rumours are to be believed, by a man with a green afro; fought maybe 30 groups of Yakuza, street punks and general spanners; thrown four people from roofs; crushed a man with a moped; swung another by his ankles; been chased by the cops; chased and befriended a prepubescent pickpocket; saved a hot chick who turns out to be a thief; got a job; and made a carving of a rubbish hitman who burnt his nuts with his own I'm-too-cool cigarette and crashed his car as a result. It's been a long day.

HELLO KITTY

Finally we return with the milk. Remember the milk? In return, the cats give us lockets containing clues to spots in the abandoned underground mall. Yes they do.

We follow a trail of new clues to our reward - a teddy - before kicking the hell out of our backstabbing 'friends'. Each man fights very differently.

Saejima is strong enough to throw motorcycles, can charge up his attacks and knock down crowds of goons. Lithe loan shark Akiyama is more nimble and great with kicks, while youthful ex-cop Masayoshi Tanimura likes to wrestle. The fourth man, Kazuma Kiryu, was the star of the f rst Yakuzas, and an all-round diamond-hard mad man.

All this dilatory nonsense is the appeal of Yakuza 4. It's a world away from the drive here-shoot-them-pass-mission structure of GTA and the like. The story and random, sometimes connected, events evolve naturally, one on top of the next, your efforts flowing from one strange quest to another.

There's little pressure to square away one thing before starting again, and the slew of ludicrously inspired touches balance the melodrama of often-ponderous cut-scenes and the occasional technical annoyances.

We're thinking of the vanishing pedestrians, old Resident Evil-style load breaks and abundance of invisible walls. Yakuza 4 remains attractive rather than stunning, but it has style by the bucketload.