Game Journal: Yakuza

I keep wandering around Tokyo. According to Japanophile James Mielke on a recent 1UP Show, the geography of the part of Tokyo presented is very authentic. Trying not to be outdone by the art team, the designers kept coming up with interesting events to have happen on the streets of Tokyo.

After leaving a local bar, I met a Yakuza from a hostile faction. But he just warned me that others would be after me. He came across as a cool guy. Another Yakuza from that faction was polite because he knew he didn't stand a chance in combat. It's a rare brawler where people avoid violence, and for various reasons.

If you want to see more examples, just highlight the hidden text below (or just read it if you're reading in an RSS reader or other browser that doesn't consider HTML colors). I should probably also mention that these encounters are only from chapter four.

**SPOILERS** (highlight to read)
The owner of a small club asked me to guard the door for a bit while she stepped away. A thug came up and started trouble. I beat him up. He came back with a friend. I beat them up. They came back with a large friend. I beat them all up. They gave up. Then the lady came back and gave me some money.

Yes. That story is stupid. But at a certain level it's real. The guy who's dumb enough to start trouble with the Yakuza bouncer is also the guy who's dumb enough to keep coming back with his dumb friends to start more trouble.

I ran into a lady who misplaced her office work. After finding it and bringing it back to her, she told me she's the crime reporter for a local news organization. I'll definitely be seeing her again. And why didn't she recognize me? I guess having been in prison for ten years, I'm from before her time. And she apparently didn't hear about me being accused of shooting Fuma yet. :P

Another lady asked me to help her with a punk kid who was stalking her. I went over to him. He said he knew Yakuza and would call them. I said to go ahead and call and waited for his buddy to show up before trashing them both.

I went to some batting cages and paid to hit a few balls. I wasn't good enough to get a prize, but I could tell that I could probably improve enough to win something if I had the time.

A Yakuza was trying to extort money from a restaurant by standing outside yelling about finding a roach in his food and saying he'd stop if they paid him. I beat him up.

A bum in an alley wanted sake. I gave him some. He asked me to drink with him. I did, and it made him happy.

Just wandering around, I found these underground stairs. Down and down I go into a giant dance club. Nothing was going on there, in game terms. I can't make my character dance or interact with anyone there. But knowing they went to the trouble to make it probably means it will be. And the fact that it's real, that I might be able to go to Tokyo and find it, is cool.

Three jerks were striding down an alley in colorful suits, taking up most of the street. I could have gone around, but their swaggering offended me. All I had to do was stand in front of them. They ran into me. One dialog option later, a fight broke out and I beat them up.

A bum told me about a hostess who carried him to the hospital when he was injured and everyone on the street was just passing him by. I went to the hostess club and spent some money on her to reward her good behavior. There were even dialog choices that let me talk to her about the bum and how grateful he was. Also, she told me about a ramen place where if you make a particular order, something special happens. It turns out there's a really nice casino under the restaurant. It's got proper gambling, unlike all the slot machines, crane games, and other scams in most of the city.
**END SPOILERS**

So there's not just gambling, there are many kinds. I'm surprised I haven't run into the back alley games (with the predictable brawl that breaks out when someone is caught cheating).

A hostess club is a place where you pay ridiculous sums simply to sit and talk to a woman. They're all over Tokyo, apparently. They seem like a huge waste of money, but I've never been loose with a buck. Anyway, I'd occasionally run into people on the street who knew or wanted to know one of the hostesses and would tell me things about them (generally what sorts of gifts to give them). And yes, there is at least one host club in the game for the ladies.

Plus you can eventually woo the hostesses. Putting a dating sim in a brawler. Yep. It's Japanese alright.

Putting all this stuff together just makes for an amazing texture. I mean sure, it's just fighting and fetch quests, but the different types of people and situations are really impressive. I mean it as high praise when I say the game reminds me a lot of Bully. In one way, it's even better. Bully had variety, but a very artificial mission structure. Many of the situations I run into in Yakuza are purely by accident. Sometimes the person may say something in passing to clue the player in that they have a mission, but many people say something in passing that have no mission. And sometimes the person has no indicator at all that they had a mission to give. To the extent it rewards randomly running into people, it's goofy. But to the extent it makes the place seem alive, it's awesome.

And unlike day three, there are more real missions, not just random punks. If I like random punks, I can still fight them. I just have to get drunk. When I'm drunk, people come out of the woodwork to try and beat me up. How perfect is that? If you want to get in a fight, go get drunk and wander through downtown Tokyo. :D And the level of attention paid to alcohol in this game is frightening.

I went to a hole in the wall bar in the ironically named Champion District. They had over a dozen types of alcohol, at many different price ranges, and told me way more than I ever expected to find out about them in a video game. I drank a 17 year old Ballantine's Scotch. It was made from 40 types of Scotch. If I paid more attention I might be able to tell you something about the region it's made in or how many malts or something that would mean something to Scotch drinkers. It told me at least one detail not present on the Ballantine's web site. Seriously!

The fighting is as basic as ever. But exploring the environment has enough surprises that I don't really care. How much more stuff could they have fit in this game? I'm crossing over from being impressed to being awed, which isn't as hard as you might think. Finding new situations and places in Yakuza is like finding ridiculous exploits was in Joint Ops. There can't possibly be more, can there? Wow! There is more! After that cycle repeats three or four times, the evidence that the game can do anything is overwhelming, and the game becomes legendary. I guess for most people, Grand Theft Auto 3 would be the best example.

But I keep thinking about how basic the fighting in Yakuza is, and how much of this content is stuff that I don't care about in other mediums. Why am I enthralled by a Virtual Tokyo Travel Guide where I pretend to be a criminal and beat people up?