Shinjuku no Ookami (Shinjuku’s Wolf) feels like a blend of Yakuza and Grand Theft Auto. But, Eiji Mikami, the lead character, isn’t interested in causing crime, he wants to stop it. In the game you freely walk around Shinjuku and crackdown on crime. Some criminals are easy to spot and you can teach them a lesson with fisticuffs. Other criminals are more savvy and you question them and use detective intuition, shown by a meter on the bottom right hand corner, to determine if they are doing anything shady.
Once you decide to use the power of your badge you can pick three options: arrest, fine, and innocent. If you pick arrest you zap perpetrator with a bolt of lightning and Mikami, standing in Hell’s gate, sends them to a detention center. If you declare them innocent Mikami stands in front of a holy light. The fine system is even more ridiculous. The amount a person has to pay is determined by a roulette wheel. And just to make Mikami even more hard boiled, he has to smoke cigarettes to recover energy to use his law power.
Shinjuku is your sandbox when Spike releases Shinjuku no Ookami on February 19, 2009. Originally, Capcom was the publisher, but they canceled the game last year. Somehow Spike picked the project up.
Images courtesy of Spike / Famitsu.
