First Impression: Yakuza

In Yakuza, play the role of Kazuma Kiryu, who takes the fall for a friend of his over the murder of a Yakuza lord and is sent to prison for it. He gets out on parole 10 years later to find things have changed and he's a marked man by his former clan members.

First thing you'll notice is that the game looks like any other Grand Theft Auto clone, with a big city to run around freely in, it's just that your on foot and not jacking cars. You run around crowded streets (like the real Japan) to get to where your going, and fight off thugs who are after your head, or punks who feel you've disrespected them by running into them on the street. There's a bit of an RPG feel to the fights, as you can level up your character with points collected from beating up bad guys and learn new moves and such.

So far the only real complaint Ihave about the gameplay is that there isn't a proper target lock option. While you can hold your position and target what's directly in front of you, it would have been nice to actually be able to target who you want to fight so you can react quicker to enemies sneaking up behind you. And of course there's the bad english voice dubbing, which really doesn't fit when using Japanese references like "aniki". They should have just stuck with the Japanese dub with english sub-titles, since the game is rated Mature anyway so anyone playing should at least be able to read.

Full review coming soon.