"No, no, no!" my friend said, raising his brow as if in a momentary epiphany. "Don't drag him over to the planter; take him over to the bench." And so, I took his advice and pulled the street punk over to a park bench in the middle of the lane, then watched my character lift him up onto his shoulder and perform a professional-wrestling "backbreaker" maneuver, dropping the hapless villain face-up so that his back over-extended and folded in half over the bench.


Time for some serious beatdowns.
A moment later, we both gasped and groaned as if we were a rowdy bunch at a sports pub watching our local basketball hero dart through defenders and slam dunk while being fouled.

This scene continued on into the late, dark hours of the night. My friends and I both enjoy playing games and watching others play them, and we had spent times like this before, where there seems to be a new challenge and a new discovery around every corner. It had just been quite a while since there was a game that had made us glued to the tube all night in spite of work in the morning (let alone homes to return to). Sega's Ryuu ga Gotoku 2 (with possible release outside Japan as Yakuza 2) offered us that opportunity to return to the days of our hyperactive, college youths, when everything in popular culture was still entertaining.

So, why such a rave, you might ask? Every once in a while, something comes along that grabs my attention and seems to have raw potential, but isn't quite executed the right way. That sort of thing always makes me wonder if the developers simply didn't have any time or budget or if they just anticipated the market incorrectly and couldn't find a way to get it together--like the brilliant jazz compositions Mingus played at UCLA in 1965, but didn't have personnel who could attempt such heady, complicated themes (or maybe couldn't direct them to do so?).

For whatever reason, this kind of product can be something that you like deep down inside, but every time you mention it, you know that you're going to have to defend it to at least a few people in the crowd. For me, I end up wondering just why they didn't do a few different things so that everyone could see this raw beauty obscured by inexperienced fumbling. It's all very well and good because the artist will usually make another attempt at it, and you feel like you're part of some exclusive club, rooting for someone who's almost a guilty pleasure. It's a bad thing, really; you don't want to become a "fan boy," trust me.