Game #988: Yakuza - Dead Souls

  Thankfully not a souls-like.

 It's no secret that Yakuza: Dead Souls almost killed the series in the west, and I'm pretty sure it must've underperformed in Japan too, and, despite that... I'm glad that a game like this can exist. This is a pseudo-alternate reality pseudo-what if entry in the series that takes place after 4, in a world were Ryuji Goda survived, minus an arm, and in which zombies take over Kamurocho. I am not making this up. Also, it's a third-person shooter. This is not an April Fool's joke.

 Right out of the gate, the plot is not horrible. It's not as good as the plot from the main series, but it has a few decent moments. In particular, I think the plot does a good job of having the characters behave as they probably would during a zombie outbreak, from Kiryu trying to punch the zombies to submission, at first, to Majima enjoying the craziness. I particularly enjoyed this repentant take on Goda, he's the fallen dragon and he took his fall in stride. Like Yakuza 4 before it, the game offers four playable characters, Kiryu and Akiyama returning from Y4, Majima being playable for the very first time and Ryuji Goda filling in the fourth slot. The playable heroes don't interact as much as I would've liked, but when they do it's great. In a way, I'm a bit disappointed at the amount of plot in the game.

 Like Yakuza 4 and 5, every character gets a set of chapters before you get to play as the next character. Each character has their own unique weapon(Dual Pistols for Akiyama, a Mini-gun arm for Goda, a powerful Rifle for Kiryu and a Shotgun for Majima) as well as their own set of substories for complete. Unlike the rest of the series, however, levels and skills are shared between characters, so you only get stronger. This also means that aside from their unique weapons, characters are pretty much identical.

 Since Kamurocho is infested by zombies, certain areas are quarantined. When inside the quarantined zones, the game plays like your average Yakuza game but without the combat. Restaurants, Karaoke, Hostess Bars, Arcades, Bowling... everything is here. However, as you advance through the game, the zombie outbreak grows and grows and these facilities become blocked out of the quarantined areas. This doesn't mean you can't access them anymore, only that you'll have to get through infinite waves of zombies to get to them, following fairly pre-set paths. Yeah, exploration becomes a bit of a chore... Many streets are blocked off inside the zombie infested areas, and you can only enter this part of Kamurocho through a single gate, so expect a lot of running down the same streets, in the same order, blasting zombies left and right, because outside of Story Missions zombies spawn endlessly.

 As for the core gameplay, it's a very clunky third person shooter. No taking cover, no crouching, all you get is a dumb little sidestep/roll. There's also a melee attack but it's pretty much useless even when upgraded, that said, you can pick up items and use them as melee weapons which works much better. It's easy for enemies, if they manage to swarm you, to just lock you into taking damage and falling down every time you get up, although this tends to happen mostly in narrower spaces. Binary Domain this ain't. You use R1 to shoot and your character will shoot towards the enemy closest to you, you can hold down L1 to strafe. L2 allows you to aim manually, and I'll admit that landing headshots feel SO satisfying, but they made the awkward choice to make precision aiming work with the left analog stick, which will throw you off at first since it'd make more sense for it to be done with the right analog stick. There's a small amount of weapons, and you can upgrade them by finding the right materials. They use different sources of ammo, which use up slots in your inventory, but pistols have infinite ammo.

  Besides your average mindless rushing zombie you'll also find Mutants, which are tougher zombies with a chunky lifebar. These enemies can get a bit annoying, particularly the Aggro mutants that take oh so many bullets to bring down, since they can dodge your bullets. Honestly, at first these mutants were OK but by the end of the game, after going over and over and over through the infested areas of Kamurocho, in order to finish sidequests, I was sick and tired of fighting these Mutants.      

 Lastly, Heat actions return in the form of Heat Sniping. Just land damage to fill your gauge and then press triangle if close to an explosive object or interactive item and bring down tens of zombies in one shot. It's fine.

 Yakuza: Dead Souls is easily the weakest entry that has made it outside Japan... but it's not bad, it's just clunky. That said, as I stated before, I love the fact that such a weird spinoff can exist even if the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Yakuza fans like me will probably get a kick out of it, since it's more Yakuza, but people looking for a Zombie game or a third person shooter ought to look elsewhere, as you'll be playing this game for the plot and its characters.

 6.5