Vicariously Binge-Drinking Through Kazuma Kiryu
Even though my brain tried everything it could to make me feel guilty about it, I took the day off. Basically the only thing I did all day was play Yakuza 0 in bed. Sure, I should've been working on the game jam that ends on Saturday but I needed this. Plus, I think now that I'm a game dev, playing games counts as research—I put in billable hours today!
It's a real treat for me to claim the shared PS5 for a day and plug it into my VCR/CRT TV combo set-up. We inherited the HD TV that already existed in the living room when we moved in and it's barely HD. I'm not sure how old it is but it's definitely seen better days. At this point, I think my 20+ year old behemoth sitting on my futon has better picture quality. The resolution is lower I guess but you can't beat the "pixel" density of CRT! Plus, it has a look that glues everything together, visually. My girlfriend came in to watch me play for a while and she said it "looks like Shenmue 4".
The other thing she noted was the interesting gameplay loop I got caught in for over an hour. I was fully engaged, locked in, on auto-pilot. "What you're doing right now is essentially an addiction simulator," she said with a laugh. I stopped and thought about what she meant and laughed too. Here's what I was doing:
I was trying to make a bunch of money so I could buy upgrades to my fighting styles; I started collecting rents on my real estate and while I waited for that to complete, I ran directly to Vincent's. There's a darts hustler I can't beat because he gets me drunk after I beat him in the first round and it's genuinely starting to piss me off IRL how much Kiryu is just letting himself get hustled. ANYWAY. I go to Vincent's and play darts, inevitably getting smashed. I run back to the office, fighting anyone who comes at me before I get there. Rinse and repeat for over an hour. I made a shit ton of yen and drank bottles & bottles of some sort of clear liquor.
I actually get Kiryu drunk a lot when I play this game? There's something about filling this guy up with extremely expensive whiskey and barreling him around the city that feels like I'm getting away with something. I haven't had a drop of the stuff myself in a year and a half, no binges for me ever again. But there's nothing stopping me from getting as drunk as humanly possible when the human I'm piloting lives inside the Playstation.
I've decided that the next time I get a hard-to-ignore craving for alcohol, the kind the makes me white-knuckle grip the chair I'm sitting in, I will boot up Yakuza 0 and try to beat the shit out of that darts hustler.
Nicky Flowers - 01/29/25 - Drink responsibly; let Kiryu do it for you. - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)