Is Yakuza gaming’s greatest Christmas-time franchise?
Nothing says "happy holidays" like beating up a thousand thugs in a neon-drenched corner of Japan
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Alright, new thesis time: The Yakuza games are the Die Hard films of Christmas movies.
No, wait: Don’t flee the cliché! I know discussing John McClane’s status as Santa’s bloodiest helper has climactically fallen off a skyscraper into meaninglessness at this point. But the idea that a work can take on the flavors of the Yuletide season—without necessarily drowning itself in the explicit signifiers of indoor trees and baubles in abundance—still has some merits. (See also the less played-out “Shane Black movies are Christmas movies” argument.) And Sega’s long-running Yakuza games slot into that category pretty neatly, and not just because the holiday season is my only chance each year to indulge in the kind of long-term “explore the shit out of this city” gameplay that makes them so incredibly compelling as December-time binges.
I’ve been playing a Yakuza (or Like A Dragon, as the franchise has been rebranding itself, now that it’s getting more and more distant from just the crime drama genre) game every Christmas for a few years at this point. Nothing helps me sink into a post-ham food coma better than running around the now-familiar streets of the (fictitious) Japanese district of Kamurocho, punching my way through elaborate plots and also, weirdly, helping and befriending huge swathes of the city’s population of obsessive and obnoxious oddballs.
Because, for all their pretensions to John Woo-itude, the Yakuza games are the near-definition of gaming comfort food: Expansive, detailed, and shot through with a blend of the strange and the warm that epitomizes the holiday season. (It’s not for nothing that several games in the series take place right around Christmas; the mix of the festive and the melancholy that naturally follows fits perfectly with the games’ own tone.)
At the heart of it all is, of course, series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu, whose usual franchise nickname, “The Dragon Of Dojima,” could easily be replaced with “The Santa Of Smashing Up Thugs.” Kiryu is low-key one of gaming’s great main characters: A legendary hardass who inevitably finds himself roped into doing anything and everything that some weirdo who flags him down on Kamurocho’s crowded streets asks him to do, with a dedication to both kindness and excellence that borders on the superhuman. (He’s also, despite his intimidating appearance, an enormous dork, who approaches model car racing or bowling with the same single-minded determination that he applies to plowing through the latest local scheming crimelord’s murderous machinations.) One of the reasons I come back to this series every year is that being Kiryu (and, to a lesser extent, some of the series’ other playable characters) feels good; there’s something refreshing about stepping into the stylish shoes of a guy who can’t say no when someone comes to him in need. Isn’t helping a Michael Jackson-type character fend off fake zombies so he can shoot a music video (and then later moonlight as a property manager for your incredibly elaborate real estate simulator) the perfect encapsulation of the holiday spirit?
Meanwhile, there’s also nothing quite like dipping back into Kamurocho itself, which has remained largely unchanged across the nearly 20 years of the franchise’s history. Gaming has so few familiar places, obsessed as it is with new horizons at every turn. Returning to a city I know by heart at this point–from the big-ass Club Sega (with its bastard-cheap-unfair-horseshit claw machines) over in the Theater District, to those maze-like warrens over in the Champion District–is a comfort that’s hard to overstate. That’s the part that really makes these games feel like unexpected holiday classics, for me: The feeling of coming home, and discovering a brand new world full of weird stories to tell, engaging distractions to get sidetracked by, and, of course, an enormous number of shitheads to beat within an inch of their lives.
What could be more “holidays” than that?
15 Comments
I’ve actually never played a Yakuza game, but of the games I have played, ain’t no game more Christmasy than Toe Jam & Earl. Sure, two of the four games completely missed what made the original great, but the original and Back in the Groove are just wonderful co-op games that operate around sharing presents, avoiding most humans whenever possible, and occasionally having petty squabbles about getting to the damn elevator already. You don’t have to squeeze every possible point out of every level; I’ve been waiting in here for like five minutes!I wound up getting through Paper Mario: The Origami King and even 100%ing it much more quickly than expected. The game improved substantially when I realized that it wasn’t going to stop giving me upgraded versions of consumable weapons, and there was no point to waiting until my old ones were obsolete. The minor battles were fun to work out strategies for and thankfully didn’t stay easy forever, and the boss fights were just satisfying all the way through. I’d pay a substantial amount of money for DLC with nothing but new bosses, or I’d pay full price for a new game that played like chapter 4’s weird combination of Paper Mario and Wind Waker, all the way through. Final impression: my favorite of the 4 Paper Mario games I’ve played.Then I just blew through Strange Horticulture, which is a game a lot of people in its target audience are only vaguely aware of. Here’s the elevator pitch: What if Papers, Please replaced doing low-level work for an authoritarian bureaucracy, with identifying and prescribing plants for medicinal and occult purposes? I’m shocked that certain circles I’m in haven’t talked about it more.And now I’m finally playing Perfect Tides. I got stuck surprisingly early on because there were two items I was supposed to mash together without much prompting, but after that, the rest of spring was very intuitive and, as someone who was born about a year before the main character and spent a great deal of 2000 on the Internet dreaming about being a writer, very relatable. I think I’m past the halfway point of summer now, and I guess getting stuck wandering around the island looking for something to do is very setting-appropriate, but I’m just a little bored with taking laps around the island to see which NPC’s hanging out somewhere other than their usual post. I’m enjoying it more than I’m not enjoying it, but I wish there was a little more direction, because when things are actually moving along, the game’s great.
My mom didn’t play many video games, but the she played the hell out of the ones she did. The original TJ&E certainly was one of those; she wore out a couple Genesises (Genesi?) playing it. The last time I played it with her, I was pretty rusty at it and she pretty much carried me through several Game Overs. She was not a fan of the follow-up, Panic on Funkotron, a ill-fated attempt to fir the franchise into a platforming mold.As a rogue-lite far ahead of the current rogue-lite vogue, it holds up pretty well: the co-op split-screen runs smoothly, pulling apart and running back together with little interruption; the random pickups give the players valuable tools, as well as injecting a little chaos into the playthrough (I could do without the “Total Bummer” pickup, which just takes a life); the character and world design is charming; and the soundtrack is energetic and fun. I’ve never played any of the further next-gen sequels.
Yeah, Panic on Funkotron missed the mark. Toe Jam & Earl 3 isn’t even worth looking up gameplay footage of. But Back in the Groove is an update on the original game’s formula with new playable characters, new gifts, and a set of stats (speed, health, luck, etc) that you randomly get a couple points in on level-up, rather than just having a larger health bar every time, so you can’t just get comfortable with the idea that you’re going to be faster than the enemies the entire game. It doesn’t do anything revolutionary with the first game’s premise, but it does more of it, which is exactly what the other games should’ve done. And they nailed the music, too.Top recommendation for your mom, if she still has any interest in video games.
I *JUST* finished up the entire series last weekend, with the Judgement 2 DLC. All the way from Zero up to Judgment, my first time playing. And I can blame Fist of the Northstar for that – I love the anime, heard good notices about the game, played through and went “This is great!”. And that’s when the started releaseing the remastered versions.So yeah, 4 years (ish) later, I have no more Yakuza to play. :(. . . . at least for now.
Good thing Ishin is around the corner.
Made it into Act III in Marvel’s Midnight Suns. Surprised how many of the trophies (achievements) I’ve been able to collect in my initial playthrough. Just earned the one for doing all the side-meetings (e.g., Blade’s Book Club). The only one that I think might be a struggle is going from full Light-affiliation to full Dark. On the plus side, it means I get to see some of the Renegade- dialogue choices (to borrow the Mass Effect analogy), which goody-two-shoes me would normally never pick. Down side is I occasionally lose a friendship point with one of my teammates….but I’ve hit Level 5 with all of the original team (save for Iron Man), and I’m around Level 4 with a few of the late-comers to their little group.Still have no clue how they’re going to incorporate a battle pass & new characters…but I’ll worry about that once I finish the game.Since one card game isn’t apparently enough, I’ve also played a handful of games of the newly-implemented TCG within Genshin Impact. It’s….okay. As with most aspects of the game, I don’t know I’d really be dabbling in it if I wasn’t willing to whore myself out for f2p currency. (Sidenote: Have fun playing Windtrace…if digital Hide & Go Seek’s really your thing!)
I don’t particularly like the metagame in Overwatch 2 right now, so I’m really glad I’m not trying to push beyond the edge of the battle pass. A few weeks in, I’ve already unlocked the new character (Level 45 out of 80) with minimal effort, so I can’t complain too much about the in-game grind. They brought back the holiday games in the Arcade mode (mostly snowball-throwing competitions centered around Mei), which were a fun distraction….but the rewards are nowhere near as good as the event skins from OW1. (Note to Blizzard: Weapon Charms ain’t it.)
I would like to throw the How the Saints Saved Christmas DLC from Saints Row IV into the mix. That was a completely irreverent DLC about the Boss learning the true meaning of Christmas through the complete insanity of Saints Row comedy and carnage. I try to play it every year because it’s both fun and heartwarming.
Did you open the candy cane lock the hard way?
Every time!
Trying to play Lost Judgement, but I’m not sure if I’m enjoying it tbh. Finding it a lot drier the the mainline Yakuza games. Although I’m finding the story more engaging than the usual melodramatic ultra macho-ness (as fun as that can be, I can barely recall anything from the Yakuza games I’ve played).
Love Yakuza. Have played every installment. Returning to the same city each game is underrated. Nothing feels Christmasy about it to me though.Just started Elden Ring yesterday. All the year end lists got me to take the plunge. The difficulty had kept me away.
Read build guide and find spirit summoning bell, find good weapon for you, find how to upgrade it, farm vulgar militia for level up
Its up to you on how to play. Its not always fun to do GitGud run, especially first run on soulslike.I’m not that good of a player, but thanks to a bit overleveling, Spirit summoning bell, a bit proper STR/fth build with decent vigor/endurance, i manage to clear the game while still have great fun with it.I might try to do “Unassisted run” on my second playthrough, but i genuinely think i won’t finish the game if i started unassisted gitgud
I never understood the Soulsborne purists who insist playing solo without any kind of summoning is the “correct” way to beat them. So many of the games’ systems and sidequests are built around it, not to mention how a few bosses summon phantoms/spirits against you.
Played all weekend. Pretty amazing game, somewhat overwhelming. Found a good spot to farm runes, about 6000 a run. Looks like I’ll be playing for months.
I mean for me it’s the Christmas themed , North Pole set Robocod: James Pond 2 , or the Die Hard Trilogy on PS1 , ( Which is totally worth playing especially if you have access to a light gun and old CRT, for the DH2 Time Crisis style gun game )Also, not Xmas themed but Bonelabs on the Quest 2 , which is a bit junky but fun