Beaten: Yakuza: Dead Souls

System: PS3
Status: Beaten


Ah yes, this is the reason I stopped blogging about the games daily. I enjoyed this game so much that I didn't want to stop playing to blog about it. That and it was a welcome respite from a horrible job.

My love for the Yakuza series is no secret, it has a definite charm with how it goes about telling stories with complete seriousness, mixed with absolutely goofy side quests, and ultra-violent street combat. Dead Souls is an offshoot, not cannon with the main story, mostly for reasons of zombies.

I have seen reviews of this game that discuss the wonky mechanics for shooting and aiming, which for the most part are correct. The aiming stick switches depending on whether you're looking down the sights or running and gunning. I do think a major issue with people playing this game is they play it like Resident Evil or similar over the shoulder action games. The difference is that the zombies in Dead Souls are fast, and tend to not just let you aim and head shot them at will. The game also gives you infinite pistol ammo, and plentiful ammo for other weapons, most of which tend to be fully automatic or have an area to their shots. Your character also auto-aims while running around, so its perfectly viable to run through a horde gunning like crazy.

The game play as said before is very quick, most of the time you're gunning down hordes and hordes of zombies without much hesitation. Once the game starts introducing special zombies, you have to change things up when you hear their signature sounds or see them from a distance. After a while, there is little surprise, while in free roam the special zombies appear in the same locations every time, maybe adjusted a bit by the free roam area changing between main characters. It is interesting that the game keeps track of total zombies killed for the entire game...usually ending up in the tens of thousands after a single play through.

The story is treated with surprising seriousness, and you can see the city going to hell as the quarantine zone keeps getting forced out further and further. Though the concept is a bit off, the main character's treat zombies running around the city like you would expect them to given their personalities from the previous games. There are references to previous games, though enough explanation is given that its doubtful anyone would be too lost. With how well they treat the story, its hard to believe its a side story. Unfortunately, it seems it'll be the last one released stateside, since they don't plan to release five in English.

If I had any issues with the game, it would be the repetitiveness. Its easier than other games in the series to complete all the side quests and various minigames, but it gets very annoying to have to go in to the free roam zone, do part one of a quest, step back out, go back in to do part two, rinse and repeat, each time fighting the same zombies over and over.

Progress wise, all I need to do is grind my level up to ninety nine for a trophy, then its time for Dead Souls mode.