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We have collected 6 reviews of the Yakuza : Dead Souls. Experts rate Yakuza : Dead Souls 6.6/10. Reviewsor.com helps you find reviews, best prices, user reviews of the Yakuza : Dead Souls and Playstation 3 games.
What could be a more perfect way to introduce the sometimes shambling, sometimes sprinting, baseball bat-swinging, molotov cocktail-hurling zombies of Yakuza: Dead Souls than to show the black and white, age-old variety on a small television screen in a Tokyo apartment, the fictional walking dead staggering toward the viewer as the real life, full-color equivalent stumbles into the very room? Dead Souls hammers out a single, obligatory \"What the hell is going on here?” line of dialogue — the kind far too many other sources of zombie fiction stretch into tedious, cliche expositions — and gets on with the show. The game only pauses the action when you come up from the sewers or out of the quarantine zone for air, and even then your time in a safe and friendly Kamurocho is dwindling as the invasion spreads over more of the city. Dead Souls is all about the zombies — and it's damn sure going to give you them. The game divides the story into four interlocked chapters, each one focusing on a different character: first Shun Akiyama, then Goro Majima, Ryuji Goda, and finally Kazuma Kiryu. For an action RPG with a zombie spin, Dead Souls requires at least 15 hours of your time.
Gangsters are known for their guns and zombies are known for being perfect targets, so it only makes sense to mix the two together, right? It's not all that weird, except that zombies have nothing at all to do with what I imagine the yakuza deal with, like loans and protection and finger cutting. You can't scare a zombie with hush money or anything, but again, they have plenty of guns. And in a country that has super-strict gun laws, that helps make the fictional district of Kamurocho a viable battleground for outbreaks. Let the bloodbath begin! The main story is broken up into four chapters, one for each playable character. They each contribute to the story, but they all handle exactly the same, which keeps a level of continuity to each scenario. Each character is out to explain the same craziness that's affecting their collective turf: Why the hell are there zombies everywhere? Four people from four different stages in their careers and from four different sectors of the collective-crime industry (a loan shark, an enforcer, a "don't worry, I'm retired" big man, and current top-dog legend, all from previous Yakuza titles) all find themselves together on the frontline of a battle nobody saw coming. For a game focusing most of its playtime on zombie-blasting gunfire, the story is actually pieced together well and each character stands on their own.
Kamurocho has seen better days. This pleasure district was once a place where yakuza could relax and enjoy the simple pleasure of clobbering each other in the streets. Alas, those days are over. A zombie outbreak has shifted the focus of life in Kamurocho from brawling with the living to killing the undead. Unfortunately, the heroes and villains of earlier Yakuza games who take center stage in Yakuza: Dead Souls don't bring the same level of panache to gunning down zombies that they do to punching street toughs. It's initially entertaining to see Kamurocho turned upside down by this new crisis and watch these familiar characters facing an unfamiliar threat, but battling these zombies is a tiresome and frustrating process, and the series' signature charm is in short supply. Don't let the fact that the box art displays four gun-toting heroes fool you; this is not a Left 4 Dead-style multiplayer zombie shooter. Dead Souls is a single-player, third-person game with a story that leaps from one familiar Yakuza character to another to another. You start out playing as Shun Akiyama, the fascinating moneylender who made his debut in Yakuza 4. But as pleasant as it is to see this likable character again, the narrative gives you too little time to appreciate his confident swagger.
With four North American releases to its name, the barrier for entry to Sega's narrative-heavy Yakuza franchise is intimidating. As an amateur Japanophile, I've always felt like I would find something to love in the under-appreciated series, but I've been afraid of jumping into the middle and feeling like I was missing something. While the zombie-infested Dead Souls may be a bizarre change of pace for those who have followed the series since the beginning, it provides a light-hearted point of entry for curious new players. Previous Yakuza games focused on the hand-to-hand brawling skills of protagonist Kazuma Kiryu, but Dead Souls' supernatural twist calls for a new emphasis on gunplay. This element is the most likely to drive away new players and franchise veterans. Though characters turn, run, and dodge quickly by survival horror standards, most of your shooting will be done via an auto-aim system that is disturbingly similar to early Resident Evil games. Technically, you can aim manually – but the process is archaic and robs you of the ability to move. You'll only want to use this technique when you're required to shoot specific body parts to take down one of Dead Souls' special mutants or boss monsters.
A great number of Japanese games rest on the time-tested foundation of plagiarism; heck, who knows where Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima would be without the combined works of Ridley Scott, John Carpenter, and James Cameron? But there comes a point when imitation is more of an act of desperation than flattery; and in the case of Yakuza: Dead Souls, the flagrant borrowing seen throughout doesn't come from a place of sincere affection, but rather, a desire to graft an undead angle onto a series desperately in need of a reboot. Granted, it's tough to innovate within the overplayed zombie game genre, but it's equally difficult to forgive a game that offers up not one, but four distinct ripoffs of the iconic special infected from Valve's Left 4 Dead within their own game. The Yakuza series is known for featuring an abundance of ideas borrowed from many different sources -- which is why many refer to it as "the Japanese Grand Theft Auto" -- but in the case of Dead Souls, Sega chose to pilfer concepts from a multitude of zombie games without thinking much about what these individual elements added to their respective packages.
If you've played a Yakuza game before, you'll know them as sprawling urban RPGs centred on the tensions and rivalries between different factions of the Japanese mafia, featuring plenty of beat-downs, kerb-stomping and bashing people over the head with tables. Yakuza Dead Souls is… kinda like that, but also with zombies. As a way to end the series in spectacular style (for now at least - Yakuza 5 is on the cards), SEGA has unleashed the undead apocalypse on its fictional version of Tokyo, turning the game into a zombie shooter rather than a brawler in the process. Unfortunately this transition has been anything but painless. In getting rid of the satisfying hand-to-hand combat and replacing it with astonishingly incompetent shooting mechanics, SEGA has excised one of the best things about the Yakuza games. If you're a fan of the series you'll really want to like Dead Souls, but as the game goes on, its problems build up into an insurmountable tower of pain and frustration. Like in Yakuza 4, there are four main characters that share the story between them: kind-hearted loan shark Shun Akiyama, insane pirate gangster Goro Majima, ex-Yakuza boss Ryuji Goda, and the star of the series, Kazuma Kiryu. As the game progresses so does the zombie crisis, and these four characters come together to try to put an end to it.
| Retailer | Information | Prices | |
|---|---|---|---|
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Yakuza Dead Souls | $13.35 | See it |
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Yakuza Dead Souls | $13.91 | See it |
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Yakuza - Dead Souls (PLAYSTATION3 NEW) | $15.99 | See it |
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Yakuza: Dead Souls (PS3) (UK IMPORT) | $25.02 | See it |
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Yakuza: Dead Souls for PS®3 | $59.99 | See it |
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