8 Games That Radically Changed How You See The World

1. Like a Dragon

Journey Game
Sega

The Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise may be a deeply silly collection of melodramatic action games populated with hilariously cartoonish characters, but there's also a heart-on-sleeve earnestness to the character interactions throughout.

To take one look at the games, it'd be easy to dismiss them as uncritically hyper-masculine nonsense, yet especially in more recent entries, the franchise has offered up one of gaming's most potent meditations on masculinity itself.

Bromance and meaningful male friendships are ever-present throughout the series, with the central characters regularly dialoguing about their problems in healthy ways - in-between, y'know, beating street thugs to a pulp with a bicycle.

Beyond that, the series riffs powerfully on themes such as regret, self-improvement, second chances, and the power of forgiveness, inspiring players to take some of its ideas to heart in-between all the ridiculousness.

Nobody expected this franchise to do anything but entertain, yet like so much great media, it massages genuine life lessons into a superficially frothy, straight-forward framework.

 
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Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.