Quick Look: Yakuza 5

Japanese sillyness!

Been waiting for this!

If it weren't 5 in the morning I'd watch this right now!

Off to the soapland!

Good "WTF am I reading?" image on this QL.

AT LAST! Just hope my PS3 has enough hard drive space.

God I love Yakuza. So glad they're releasing at least a few more games that nobody will buy before they abandon the west again.

:(

This is my GOTY. I haven't even finished it yet but after 40 hours I'm sure.

I would've been fine with the entire video having been Austin playing Virtua Fighter 2.

@mjdaley: RIP VF.

I'd totally play a safe taxi driving simulator as well. That's how I played all the taxi missions in GTAV.

(I think I recall seeing a Quick Look of a European taxi simulator but it looked terrible).

I waited all night!

Having a great time with this game, there's so much to do I think I'm approaching 20 hours and I still haven't finished Kiryu's part. And nice to see GB giving a non-AAA Japanese game some good coverage, how about about The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel next :)

Right in the balls.

Glad to see about the combat not being a long load into a separate location. That really killed the last one I tried for me (3 I believe it was).

@blacklagoon: Non-AAA? This is a Sega game, isn't it?

Yakuza 5 is my GOTY. It's so good!

Kazuma Kiryu is the perfect video game protagonist. From the outset and the cover, it seems like you'd be a Yakuza doing criminal activities, but when you play it, you constantly get roped into situations that are, like: "HEY KIRYU! HELP ME TAKE THIS ENTRANCE EXAM!", "HEY KIRYU! HELP ME FIND THE RESTAURANTS WITH THE BEST FOOD!", "HEY KIRYU! COULD YOU TAKE SOME PICTURES FOR THE TOURISM BOARD?", "RACE ALL THESE CARS!", "SERVE ALL THIS FOOD DURING DINNER RUSH!"...

If anything, he actually stops more crime than he is causing. Using his power to do what's right and fair in the face of scammers and criminals is why he is such a perfect hero.

Also, I mentioned it to Austin on Twitter, but if you are interested in more safe driving, check out SEGA's Tokyo Bus Guide for the Dreamcast.

I used to have those old combo cards for Soul Calibur.

LINDA!!!!!!!!!

this game is fucking awesome

So Yakuza is like the gold saucer, right?

Man, I got blue balls from that lighter

Looks like a modern Shenmu game, maybe Shenmu fans don't like undesirables though.

And he's shouting renda, not Linda!

This series feels like the Shenmue series people would actually want nowadays, it's going to be odd to see what Shenmue 3 actually turns out to be in comparison to the Yakuzas.

GBEAST should start a new video series where they play through all the Yakuza games.

I'm almost done with Kiryu's segment; man I love these games. I wish Vinny had time in his life to fully play this game, because there are so many comedic moments that I think he would appreciate.

wasn't expecting to hear dvorak in this quick look. my favorite composer

@hurvilo: Yesssssssss

Is this a perfect game? The combat looked awesome and hilarious, the quirky open world shenanigans, and Japanese as fuck. I've never had the pleasure of playing these games before but I think I'm hooked.

Face grate all day.

Can GBEAST please play Japanese games together forever? Please just play all the Yakuza games back to back.

Those Linda screams made me just think that Kiryu's a big Blue Hearts fan.

How many goats do I have to sacrifice to get a gbeast yakuza 5 endurance run?

ok, i'm convinced, I'll be getting this later, man I'd never think I'd be buying a PS3 game on 2015.

If you like the taxi driving, you can play the dreamcast Tokyo Bus Guide game.

That Initial D music!

19 goats. The cuter they are the better.

Yakuza 5 for 2015's 2012 GAME OF THE YEAR

Is this Shenmue 3?

Rather than do a handful of things amazing, the Yakuza games try to do everything and they are done poorly

These games are the best. I understand why they aren't HUGE hits in the US, but they always seem to get real poor representation in general in the west either from poor or non-existent marketing or press that wholly focuses on negatives or questionable content in them. It always seemed a bit unfair to me.

First off, YUS! Second of all: RIP Japanese Dr. Tracksuit.

I think I need this in my life

We have to go back, Alex. We have to go back!

I think the lighter is hold R1 (or maybe L1), then Triangle. It took me a while to figure it out.

Laughed so hard at the locomotion joke. Holy god.

Edit: buying this just for Taiko.

Never seen a Yakuza game and this seems like my ideal open-world game? I slept on this hard. The number of constraints on what your character can do and where he can go makes it feel...real?

I'd love to see a Yakuza playdate. Maybe when 0 drops next year.

"Watch me grind this man's face into the pavement and impale him with a knife, how cool is that?!"

"Oh uh can't show you this entirely chaste hostess club, sorry"

???

Actually a really good QL overall, I feel like it's the first time that Yakuza has gotten a fair representation on GB, but that was a little weird.

Seeing they put Taiko into this game makes me immediately more interested.

@tomac said:

Well, yes, it's a Sega game made primarily for Japan, and obviously doesn't have the production values of a full AAA game (nor does it have the millions of sales needed to support those kinds of budgets). It doesn't have a lot of voice acting or motion capture outside of the main story cut scenes, usually relying on static scenes, text boxes and canned animations. It's very iterative, and reuses a lot of content from the previous games. It doesn't have much in the way of physics outside of the combat, and you can't walk anywhere but on certain clearly defined paths, etc.

The Yakuza series is more in the realm of a "single/double A" game, with a much more modest budget compared to obvious Japanese AAA franchises like Resident Evil or Metal Gear Solid. And with that comes much less of a PR push in the west, which typically leads them to get drowned out in the torrent of indies on Steam these days. So it's nice to see someone like Austin on staff who appreciates them and gives them some coverage on the site.

The college guy quest is even funnier if you get a bunch of the answers wrong, because Kiryu still BSes about why he's totally right and convinces the guy just through his conviction, which teaches him to have confidence in his knowledge and lets him ace the exam other than the wrong answers Kiryu gave.

I'm bummed there was no karaoke in this video because I feel like that's a quintessential Yakuza thing but this was still a really fun Quick Look.

EVERYONE BUY THIS GAME!!! (I want more to come to the west). My GOTY!

Great QL!