Wot I Think: Yakuza 0

Many games are defined by the amassing of wealth but few take such an unseemly, predatory relish in the idea as Yakuza 0. The first of Sega’s Japanese crime epics to appear on PC, it’s an orgy of late 80s materialism in which you don’t merely earn cash by defeating opponents but punch it out of their bodies – banknotes blasting from collars and shirt sleeves with every wallop. Each of the game’s 17 chapters ends with an unsavoury record of how much dough you’ve accumulated through assorted criminal activities, cheekily phrasing it as a multiple of a public sector worker’s salary. Money is everything in the universe of Yakuza 0, a gloriously engrossing, well-written RPG-brawler with a certain, calculated hollowness at its core. Here’s wot I think. (more…)