There's not much of interest in the sixth episode, but it was the first to feature SEGA's Yakuza game. Now, I don't understand much Japanese, and I know even less about the Yakuza, but this trailer was cool.
The game is about Kazuma Kiryu, a total Badass whose career in the Yakuza gets railroaded by being sent to jail after a murder cover-up. A decade later, his sentence is over and he leaves jail, only to find that his old friend is missing and that clan's 10 billion yen fortune has stolen... and the entire Japanese underworld is looking for it. Protecting a little girl named Haruka also falls to Kiryu. The trailer closes with cops surrounding them, guns drawn.
Yakuza has some of the most impressive, realistic character models on the PS 2, but the game's journey to the west was apparently marred by the all-star cast for the English dub. SEGA has some of the worst voice acting of any company (just check Audio Atrocities
), but apparently tried to remedy that with the English cast, only to fall to Lip Lock. They didn't, or couldn't be bothered to redo the lip sync for the English-language version, derailing the actors' performances late in the game.
Beyond that, it would seem that the game didn't quite impress the American press, at least. I recall Game Informer being particularly harsh on it. As for myself, I found the game two years ago, played it maybe once, and... left it the cabinet. It's another one for the Backloggery. The battle tutorial taking place in an office where you can smash faces with office supplies was hilarious in a Dead Rising kind of way, though. The series has been successful enough to spawn at least three sequels. The fact that Yakuza of the End takes place during a Zombie Apocalypse for some reason, making my earlier comment kind of Hilarious in Hindsight.
Next: 'CAUSE IT'S CHILLER, CHILLER NIGHT
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