Yakuza: Of the End

Right, so when this was announced I pretty much instantly wrote this off and filed it away it "WTF" filing cabinet right next to Muscle March. Yakuza with zombies? And gun based? Ahem.

But with the Japanese PSN up, I downloaded the demo. And it's one generous demo - probably the guts of an hour or two of gameplay in there! And I think I've been won over. After an opening that recalls Yakuza of old (table tennis mini-game is mental), you're thrown into zombie town. The combat has a surprisingly visceral impact, and headshots pack a serious punch. There's an AI partner but I couldn't quite work out what the menu options did. The gunplay is solid, and a definite improvement over the absolutely dreadful guns in Yakuza games past. There's a few nice tricks too, like context sensitive special moves / QTE that can have a pleasantly deadly effect.

Major problem is the Yakuza engine once again shows its age, and it clearly isn't built to handle action of this sort - an explosion slows the game down to ridiculously laggy speeds (I'm talking 2 FPS here). It's not common, but it's most certainly notable. And game designers really need to stop copying Left for Dead 'boss' zombies, it's getting embarrassing.

Anyway, it's only released in Japan, so will probably be another year before we see it, but TBH the demo has intrigued me and considering picking up a cheap Asian copy somewhere along the line. It's only sort of Yakuza as we know it, but it seems to be at least a little bit more than a daft curio.