Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions

November 29, 2002

Platform: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Activision
Publisher: Activision
Reviewed by: Alkaiser

Gameplay: [7] Graphics: [7] Audio: [7] Replay: [5] Overall: [6.8]

Last year when I went to the Tokyo Game Show, and came back with a DVD preview of all the "fun" X-Box games to come, I thought this one was going to be one to look forward to.

The graphics looked sharp, and running over stuff is always fun, so I mentioned this, named Double S.T.E.A.L. at the time as a game to look forward to.

Well, the game was released, and while everyone thought it looked and played well for a little while, it got pretty old quickly, and was basically a rental. So, I was kinda bummed, but really I didn't care much...I mean, I didn't have an XBox, so I wasn't going to be playing it anyway. At least that's what I thought up until last week, when the game shipped for the PS2 and Gamecube.

Starting off, you have the option of playing as two male idiots or two female idiots. The two male idiots are just trying to make money by jacking it from the yakuza. The two female idiots are cops trying to stop the yakuza. (There's a reason the game's got the sub-title "The Yakuza Missions".) Your missions are basically the same, only you have different reasons for doing them, and different blurry, grainy cutscenes in between. What seems odd to me is that the game's set in Hong Kong (You're told you're driving in Kowloon.) and the yakuza are the Japanese equivalent of the mafia. The Triads operate in HK, not the yakuza.

If you beat a mission on Easy, you can then try and beat the mission on hard with certain medal requirements in order to get a Bonus mission which will unlock new cars and stuff.

Driving and control feel pretty nice. Square to brake/reverse, X accelerates. That's pretty much all you're going to use. What strikes me as odd, is that every car seems to have a top speed of 90 MPH, it just takes them all longer to get there. But aside from that, the simple controls make the cars easy to handle. I really don't know what use the little adrenaline cans that make the game all Matrix-y have, but whatever.

Generally, your goal will be one of the following:

Stop car from getting destroyed.
Destroy other cars.
Destroy object.
Don't get your car destroyed.
Find things.

To help you achieve these goals, you'll have a wide variety of cars at your beck and call, and will also have a complement of missiles and adrenaline. You'll also have a bonus goal which is either to finish the mission with X amount of time, or to hit a specified amount of items/cars which will determine which medal you get at the end of the mission.

One of my big complaints is the same as it was with the original Driver. The people in the cars make NO attempt whatsoever to drive like they would. In fact, they will be programmed to hit you in most cases. They're just going to go where-the-hell-ever they're supposed to, and if anything's in the way, that's none of their concern. That kinda ticks me off. I'll be right on someone's tail ready to move in for the kill and all a sudden a fuel tanker decides that it has to occupy the same spoint in space-time that I'm in, laws of physics be damned! That tends to wear on my nerves after a bit.

My other complaint is the cutscenes. Were they this bad on the XBox? Or did we get screwed in the porting process. The rest of the game looked markedly sharper than the cutscenes, and that really bothers me. Maybe since Bunkasha's typically accustomed to developing, erm, well, how shall we put this...non-mainstream software. Maybe they delete the movie off of their HDs as a standard way of doing business, and they did the same and had to rip them from an XBox version of the game. I dunno...all I know is they suck.

As far as audio goes...the voices should sound familiar to you...I think they're Meryl and Millie from the English dubs of Trigun. (At least Meryl's there. She's also Kaoru from Ruroni Kenshin.) I don't understand why voice acting in the US is limited to like 4 people who sound the exact same for every role, yet are never out of work, or high priced actors. It makes no sense to me. If you're going to pay a ton of money for someone who sounds like you're average Joe or Jane...why not just pull them from inside your own staff? I'm sure they'd be thrilled.

The game's pretty simple, and good, instant fun for a couple hours. It'll fill that "I don't wanna think, I just want to have some quick fun" role in a gamer's life. This game is a rental only, but definitely worth the rental. It doesn't have much replay value, and the missions are repetitive to the point where you probably won't even want to finish the game. And that doesn't include the frustration of trying to use the car in a platform-game type scenario.

So, if you're looking for something to enjoyably kill some time on a weekend, Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions should fit the bill for you. It's really not worth buying, unless you can get it cheap on Ebay or elsewhere, but the fun of running over everything in sight, including pedestrians should provide enough entertainment to satiate you for a decent amount of time.