Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £54.99)
Verdict: A pirate’s life for me
The Yakuza games have always been touched by wackiness. For all their Godfather-esque qualities as a generation-spanning, multistranded tale of Japanese gangsterism, they’ve never been averse to letting you, the player-character, put on a sparkly suit or even fight a digger controlled by a chimpanzee.
But now, with Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii, they’ve reached peak wacky.
Which you could probably tell just from the name. But here’s a synopsis, too. After the events of the last Yakuza game, the hot-headed, heavily tattooed Goro Majima washes up on a Hawaiian island – in 2024 – where the piratical lifestyle appears to be the norm.
Yobs swagger round with cutlasses and tricorn hats. Ships broadside each other on the open seas.
And, with little memory of who or what he is, Majima decides that even though he can beat ’em – easily and brutally, as it happens – he’s still going to join ’em.
The resulting game is a joy. Here is the usual Yakuza gameplay – long cutscenes, button-mashing combat, wonderful minigames – spiced up with the addition of ocean navigation, on-deck swashbuckling and, yes, sea shanties. It sounds like a lot – and it is – but, in that respect, it entirely suits its protagonist’s personality.
Pirate Yakuza has been made with such flair and care that all the parts cohere
Here is the usual Yakuza gameplay – long cutscenes, button-mashing combat, wonderful minigames – spiced up with ocean navigation, on-deck swashbuckling and sea shanties
After the events of the last Yakuza game, the hot-headed, heavily tattooed Goro Majima washes up on a Hawaiian island – in 2024 – where the piratical lifestyle appears to be the norm
Besides, Pirate Yakuza has been made with such flair and care that all the parts cohere.
The crew recruitment and enhancement process is particularly well implemented. Testing out your salty seadogs in the battle-caldrons of Madlantis is practically a whole game in itself.
In fact, I enjoyed it all so much that – even though I was a bit dismayed when Yakuza travelled outside of Japan in its previous instalment – I now want Majima and crew to fly us to the moon.
Avowed (Xbox, PC, £69.99 or included with Xbox Game Pass)
Verdict: Skyrim 2025
Welcome to the Living Lands, a colourful island with one hell of a fungal problem.
If you’ve played either of Obsidian’s Pillars Of Eternity games, then you’ve been here before – or at least you’ve been to this world before. Except it never looked like this.
Where the Pillars Of Eternity games had you moving little fantasy characters around top-down landscapes, in the spirit of, say, the original Baldur’s Gate (1998), this one has you adventuring from a first-person perspective, in the spirit of, say, Skyrim (2011).
Actually, there’s no escaping it: there’s a lot of Skyrim about Avowed. Which – despite the earlier game’s ongoing, never-waning popularity – makes this new release feel like something of a throwback.
Welcome to the Living Lands, a colourful island with one hell of a fungal problem
There’s a lot of Skyrim about Avowed. Which – despite the earlier game’s ongoing, never-waning popularity – makes this new release feel like something of a throwback
This is a game about roaming over the next hill, ducking into caves, discovering whatever horrible creatures are lurking in the depths
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Avowed does the Skyrim stuff extremely well – especially when it comes to exploration. This is a game about roaming over the next hill, ducking into caves, discovering whatever horrible creatures are lurking in the depths. There’s always something to attract your interest, even if it’s not one of the game’s main quests.
Besides, Avowed does some stuff to update the old Skyrim formula. Its narrative – which involves you, an envoy with weird powers, being dispatched to the Living Lands to investigate some mysterious, mushroom-y goings-on – is more sophisticated. Its movement is more fluid. Its options for customising your character are more generous.
But then there’s the combat. It’s not bad, certainly in comparison to the crude hack-and-slash of Skyrim. It’s just that there’s so much of it, all in the first-person, that the fantasy role-playing recedes and Avowed starts to feel like an especially weird Call Of Duty sequel.
Living Lands? Dying, more like – after my merciless berserker has burnt his way through them.