'Yakuza: Dead Souls' - Want Crazier Yakuza? Just Add Zombies!

Hello, and welcome back to Second Chances where the maligned, forgotten, and ignored rise from the dead and invade the hostess club.

I mentioned before that I'm a longtime fan of the Yakuza franchise. Yakuza 0 is #14 on my 100 favorite games list, and I've had a ball with every game in the franchise. I even enjoyed the offshoot Judgment and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios' take on Fist of the North Star. I think it's awesome that this formerly niche series is now so mainstream that the Playstation 3 games got remastered for new fans. However, there is one entry that got completely ignored in the remastered collection, Yakuza: Dead Souls.

This entry, which released for the Playstation 3 in America in 2012, received meh reviews when it released. It was felt that it was just following the zombie trend of the time which saw the walking dead getting thrown into just about everything like Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare. It especially seemed egregious for a Yakuza game since handing guns to Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima would be as natural as driving a car with a banana. However, I actually think the trend-riding resulted in the most insane game in the franchise. That says a lot since the franchise was already crazy to begin with.

Dead Souls takes place a year after the prior game Yakuza 4. A zombie outbreak in Kamurocho results in sections of the district getting quarantined. Four protagonists take it upon themselves to charge into the quarantine zone to find the cause of and a solution for the outbreak while solving their own problems. Loan shark Shun Akiyama is trying to rescue his receptionist. Disgraced yakuza Ryuji Goda wants to rebuild his cred in the clan. Series mainstay Kazuma Kiryu is out to save his adopted daughter Haruka... again. Finally, the series' whackjob Goro Majima, a fan of zombie movies, is thrilled to find himself in one practically. The plots are nowhere near as serious as in the canonical series, and that works in this game's favor. How can the traditional clan wars between the Tojo Clan and the Omi Alliance possibly work during a zombie apocalypse? The zombies freed Sega, giving them license to make the silliest Yakuza game imaginable. That works for me since the silly, outrageous parts were what I always enjoyed the most in the franchise!

The biggest change to the established formula is in the combat mechanics. Unlike the rest of the series which focused on brawling, Dead Souls focuses on shooting. Sure, there are melee weapons to pick up which break after a few hits like usual, but there's almost no need to rely on them. Each of the four protagonists have a pistol which never runs out of ammo and a character-specific weapon. Akiyama dual-wields pistols, Majima has a combat shotgun, Goda has a minigun grafted to his arm like Barret from Final Fantasy VII, and Kiryu has a sniper rifle. Ammo for those special weapons is plentiful, as well. There is almost no reason to run from the hordes. Along with the basic zombies, there are also special variants which are familiar to anyone who played the Left 4 Dead games. Heat, which powered finishing moves in the other games, is used for environmental kills here, from bursting a water main to blowing up a tanker truck. Also, those who are used to getting ambushed by random thugs on the street can rest easy. Combat is restricted to the quarantine zone. While the controls are a bit weird compared to other shooters, they still work quite well. It's little wonder the shooting mechanics got used for the criminally underrated game Binary Domain that same year.

Despite the switch to zombies as antagonists, Dead Souls still has the things that make a Yakuza game great. The substories are still here, and they're even more wonderfully ludicrous than usual! While most of the substories revolve around rescuing people trapped in the quarantine zone, the set-ups are still delightfully absurd. How would you like to be the star of a zombie movie? Also, as with all Yakuza games, there's a ton of minigames both in and outside the quarantine zone. You can take a break from zombie slaughter to shoot golf, hit on not-quite-living women at the hostess club, and fiddle with the crane games at Club Sega while the world burns outside. I always have a hard time finishing Yakuza games since I get wrapped in playing all the extra stuff, and this one's no exception.

Yakuza: Dead Souls is a very different take on the series and still a ton of fun. As bonkers as the series can get, it's great to find an entry that just lets it all hang out. While it may have been riding the zombie trend of the early 2010s, it did so in the most absurd way possible, and I couldn't get enough! It's still exclusive to the Playstation 3; so, dust it off and return to Kamurocho this Halloween.

What do you think? Any other games worth loading up for Halloween? Let me know, and game on!