Previews// Yakuza 4

There's something rather unsettling that happens to me every time I play a Yakuza game. It's in the sheer brutality of it all. Every time I get Kazuma Kiryu involved in a fight with some snotty upstart street punks, a rather cheeky grin forms as I slam bikes on bad guys' heads and smash my foot in their mouths at mach speed.

Before you start, I'm not “one of those.” Stop tutting over there. I don't exactly get off on realistic urban battles to the death or anything. Hell, I live in Essex – this sort of shit happens on a regular basis around here. What makes Yakuza so satisfying is the downright absurdity of it all. You try and hold a serious face as a man in a crisp white suit shoves a guy's head against a wall, only to knee the back of his head again as he falls. Talk about unnecessary.

If you enjoy the beat'em up adventure antics of Kazuma as much as I do, then you'll feel right at home with Yakuza 4 because practically nothing has changed in terms of gameplay. You still play as the Dragon of Dojima, picking up Staminan Xs and learning HEAT moves, only this time your playtime is split between three other new characters that are equally as hard – their storylines cross over several times as the game progresses, I'm told.

Taiga Saejima is an escaped convict who breaks out some 25 years after being involved in the killing of 18 rival gangsters, and he doesn't exactly look like he keeps himself tidy. Indeed, this unkempt warrior relies on his fists for combat, with each move involving the swift motion of his Hulk-esque gorilla hands. He's a bit of a lurch though, and isn't very capable of dodging attacks – more of a 'brawn over brains' kind of guy.

The other characters have their own fighting styles as well. Masayoshi Tanimura is a rather young undercover cop who goes on a journey through Kamurocho to learn the truth about his father's death in the police service. He's much more agile and goes for painful grapples and abuses enemies' joints and pressure points to bone-crunching effect.

Shun Akiyama is the last of the four playable characters in Yakuza 4, and is the one I managed to spend the most time with. A former homeless person who got his life on track by starting a loans company, Akiyama likes to kick. Practically every move involves a kick – he's like the leg version of Balrog. Doesn't seem to know anything else.

It's fine though, because his moves and combos are both very fluid and entertaining to pull off – particularly a HEAT charge move at the end of a mission where he pushes a goon up against the wall and just starts slamming his foot into his face about ten times. HEAT moves, for the uninitiated, are special attacks you can unleash once you've built up a little blue bar underneath your health. You charge it by beating up enemies, and it goes back down if you start sucking.

Everything else from the combat system of Yakuza 3 has been pretty much brought over in a carbon-copy state – from the familiar surroundings (the final boss fight takes place on a rooftop... again) to the Quick Time Event moments in battle where you have to evade powerful boss attacks with timed presses of the right buttons. There's no revolution or evolution here by any means, it's just more of the same. The changes here are really in the four characters' unique fighting styles.

If that doesn't bother you though – and it can be argued that, much like an RPG, the main draw to each Yakuza title is in its well-written storylines – you can look forward to something of an evolution in the game's adventure segments. In past games, Kazuma could explore the streets of Kamurocho, but was limited in what buildings he could enter at will. Producer Masayoshi Kikuchi told me that this time, players will be able to go into underground parking lots and wander around rooftops, adding two more levels to the playable cityscape.

So it could be that Yakuza 4 could be more open-world, in the same way that Grand Theft Auto is. Kikuchi said that the comparison was a solid one, but that this game won't go quite to the same length as Liberty City. “The main difference here is that we are focusing on quality rather than quantity. So instead of a vast area, we focused more on populating that area with more activities,” he told me.

That's somewhat reassuring, given that some missions in Yakuza 3 were something of a drag. But without having experienced any of the adventure elements of Yakuza 4, I can't say whether there's any dramatic improvement in the exploration side. I guess that will have to wait until I can get my hands on a more complete build.

Before I left the demo – having had a good look at the final bosses for the game and being quite surprised with who Kazuma ends up fighting – I cheekily asked Kikuchi-san if he believed Yakuza to be the 'next Shenmue.' Besides GTA, Yu Suzuki's epic is one of the games that this series is compared with the most.

With a chuckle, the producer said, “personally, I haven't been involved in the development of Shenmue development, nor did I really look to it for inspiration. So I can't really say, but I don't think our games are similar. Perhaps the reason they seem similar is because they are both made by SEGA.”

Well, fair enough then. I guess that rules out any Ryo Hazuki DLC for Yakuza of the End, then...