Yakuza: Of The End on PlayStation 3 Hands-On Impressions.

"Erm. Fade To Black," came the unnecessary response. "Exactly," we said in a matter-of-fact tone, "Fade To Black is a PSone game." The proposed point being that Japanese developers continue to ignore the trends of modern times. Yakuza: Of The End is a convoluted mess of control systems, relying on excessive layers of auto-aim, shoddy camera-control and archaic button placements. And yet, despite the poor controls and archaic nature of the gameplay, we came away from our time with Yakuza: Of The End with the exact mentality we'd anticipated: must pre-order now.

While Yakuza: Of The End is the franchise's fourth-entry on the PlayStation 3, there's always been a sense that the series is locked in the previous generation. Odd pacing, unusual control mechanics and somewhat shoddy visuals have often left the franchise tagged with the "archaic" label, and probably rightly so. But there's an engaging soul to the series that's kept us hooked despite the flaws — and Yakuza: Of The End seems to imbue that passion despite the unique setting.

The opening of our hands-on demonstration is actually pretty funny. The Japan-o-phile cultural aspects of the series are still in full-effect. As one-of-the-four protagonists — loan-shark Shun Akiyama — minces through the familiar streets of fictional setting Kamurocho, a middle-aged man falls to his feet, hurling vomit all over the pavement. Akiyama at first looks concerned, but then he chuckles to himself and shrugs the man off as a drunk. Just another day in Yakuza's red-light district. It's this kind of telling-humour and alternate universe dynamic that makes our first couple of hours with Yakuza: Of The End such a joy. When the game was first announced we were furious that SEGA should even dare to take one of our favourite franchises in such a strange direction — but slowly the concept began to grow on us. Yakuza: Of The End tackles the zombie outbreak narrative in a way that's part grindhouse, and part 'what if?' Bizarrely it works. There's an odd, natural regard to the way in which the outbreak occurs that fits the rest of the universe. Make no mistake: Of The End is a silly, self-aware spin-off story, but it still won us over with its respect for the franchise's lore. At heart it's still a Yakuza game, despite being wildly different to its predecessors.

And it is different in key areas. The martial arts are all-but gone, with fire-arms slapped in their place. In our demo, Akiyama is cornered in a sub-way terminal by a horde of zombies, relying on the pistol that's handily fallen his way in the chaos leading up to the full-scale out-break. As previous mentioned, Square operates your trigger, while R1 is used to strafe and L1 operates reload. It's a pretty clunky set-up, but we warmed to it as the demo progressed. The gun-fire is fast and snappy, and while the zombies rarely provide a challenge, taking out groups of them can be pretty satisfying. It actually feels very arcadey — almost on-rails at times — which certainly gives the game some identity. Zombie shooters are ten-a-penny right now, but Of The End's got some individuality to it. It's fast-paced and linear but very satisfying. Swotting a large variety of undead culminates in the ability to fire off a charge-shot. These are Of The End's equivalent to the curb-stopping moves found in the traditional Yakuza campaigns. We take note of a clump of zombies huddled around a car, and use our focus to fire a bullet right into the petrol tank. The game slows and we watch as Akiyama pulls the trigger, releasing a slow-motion bullet hurtling towards the make-shift explosive. A quick QTE pops on the screen, requiring us to hit Circle to land the shot and... Boom. The screen lights up and the tally to the right of our screen counts up: 15-16-17-18-19 Dead! It's dumb, but good fun.

Later on in the demo we encounter an AI partner who we can control with the L2 button. Commands seem to range between attack, stay and fall-back, but we can't read Japanese so we're not entirely sure. What's particularly cool is that the duo can combine their attacks for a devastating special move. While Akiyama's focus shot relies on a conveniently placed explosive, his AI partner can lob grenades into the air. As several grenades cluster in the air, Akiyama fires off another slow motion round to detonate them mid-air. The animations will probably get repetitive over the course of a full campaign, but they're undeniably awesome at first.

We use the tactic to pick off the demo's boss character, a stupid lumbering ogre guarding the exit of an underground location. The infected corner of Kamurocho has been shut-off, and Akiyama and co are looking for a way to return to reality. The boss character falters at our explosive tag-team and we emerge out of the underground to witness a startling sight: the blue sky is beating down on us and the people of Kamurocho continue to waddle freely through the streets of the shady city. Ahead of us the Club SEGA pulsates with the chip-tunes of Super Hang On and Outrun. Intriguing — we'd just spent an hour in hell and yet the rest of Kamurocho continues to act as nothing is wrong at all.

Curiouser and curiouser, but its credit to Off The End that we leave the demo aching for more. The game's not out in Japan until later this month but we immediately jumped online to register our pre-order. While we remain hopeful of a localisation (buy Yakuza 4 and it will happen!), you can never be sure with this franchise. One noteworthy point: our time with the demo was not hindered by language barriers. The UI's pretty intuitive and we even found ourselves able to follow the rough beats of the storyline thanks to SEGA's brilliant CGI.

It's undeniably throw-back but fans of the franchise are going to find this essential. Despite our initial concerns, Of The End feels like a loving reimagining of the fiction with some much needed new ideas. The combat feels good, and we're eager to see where the story heads and how the game manages to marry its post-apocalyptic setting with the traditional sandbox staples of the series.

Yakuza: Of The End releases in Japan exclusively on PlayStation 3 on March 17th.