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Was Shenmue really so destined to fail?
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Career fighting is good if you if you like experimenting with the fighting system. But the dividends for fights don't really pay off until you get to the walled ghetto city. And you can karate chop rocks for money in the Wan Chai mall.
After I posted that I remembered being able to gamble and arm wrestle, but I don't know. All I know is Lucky Hit makes me long for the forklift races of Shenmue 1.
Where's the career fighting?
I think that's in Kowloon. (Second section) Though I remember that there was a gambling house somewhere in hong kong where the odds and pay out were pretty good. And you could save nearby so it was simply a matter of "save, bet the farm: if win, continue. if lose, reload."
There are rings all over the place in Kowloon.
And yeah, I used the gambling save workaround whenever the game needed me to cough up a huge amount of money to progress. The jobs are great to earn spare cash to buy scrolls, capsules and go to the arcade.
It always freezes up in the first 15 minutes (not always at the same place). I took it back and got a new copy and it does the same thing. So there's nothing wrong with the disc and there's nothing wrong with my Dreamcast; it preforms on everything else like a champ. I'm sad that I'll never get to search for Sailors.
Anyone else ever heard of this problem?
Or buy as many drinks as possible to go back to the apartment and spend all day playing the Sega Saturn, THROUGH THE DREAMCAST !!!
ok , that is ridiculous, but so is watching a person play an arcade machine for 4 hours in GTA 4. I don't understand why that is considered fun, but Shenmue is considered boring.
I still think the last section in II is gorgeous looking.
I'm surprised there hasn't been a lot of QTE discussion. I will say that I believe Shenmue is one of the few series to get QTEs right. No random button presses. Each button corresponds to what Ryo does in actual gameplay. If the QTE asks for X (on the X-box version at least) Ryo does a punch. If it asks for Y, then Ryo is usually doing a dodge movement. And even the "Simon says" QTEs are usually the motions for his actual moves.
Also, out of curiosity, are we spoiler tagging things here? It's an older game, but I want to be sure before I start talking about the plot or anything.
It did so much shit in a such a small time, when really nothing's happening, and still managed to be pretty badass. (I'm referring to chapter 4(?), with the forest and the girl)
There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
It's one dark and stormy night. Big, black limo comes to dojo. It is full of sinister looking mens in black suits. Only exception is their boss who is badass kung fu fighter and has this low, growling voice. In the dojo they beat crap out from helpless old man, and steal his mirror. After doing their dastardly deed, they escape from the scene, and drive over helpless, poor kitten with big black limo (which is of american brand, if I remember correctly).
These guys were practically parody of typical Hollywood bad guy.
Ahh, but it says the 5 approved sequals... Yu Suzuki did want to do more back then. I believe this quote was from an interview before the whiteboard picture
XBL/PSN/Steam: APZonerunner
I have never played this game, doesn't look all that riveting.
o_O
Bad graphics? Really?
If you didn't like the controls and found the game boring, hey, cool, taste is taste, no sweat there, but bad graphics? On what planet were Shenmue's graphics bad? They were as cutting edge and realistic as anything we had ever seen up until that point. Mind-blowingly so. Hugely influential and innovative. Garnered raves from all corners, and did so for a reason. Because for their time they were AMAZING.
Bad graphics?
For one, QTEs. For two, GTA4 is always in combat mode, whereas Fahrenheit: IP was always in "interactive" mode.
The crushingly short dev time on that one still hurts me. About 2/3s of the way through the game, the content cuts they made are so deep I almost sliced my finger open trying to figure out where all the plot went.
One thing I really dislike is the controls, one of the most frustrating aspect of the games. Ryo controls like a frikkin' tank!
There were definitely some bad textures, in the first game at least. Muddy and undefined, they were probably left over from Saturn development, or the time it took to develop the game on the Dreamcast. Like Ocarina of Time had dated textures on release due to it's three years in development. People looked fantastic, though, I remember being wowed over something as simple as the way lips would stretch over open mouths, things like that. And overall both games did look great.
As for myself, I never liked the controls much, the voices were terrible and the QTE's could be a real pain, but I enjoyed the games. I never finished the second one - I had to get together money to join some underground fighting club if I remember correctly, a sum vastly higher than I could seemingly make at the time, and I just gave up. I would like to see a continuation of the series, but seeing as I don't have a 360 and have no inclination to get one, I'm not too bothered. A compilation of the two Dreamcast games on Wii would be nice... but otherwise, meh.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
aren't the Yakuza games supposed to be kinda spiritual successors? I've always wanted to try them.
dream a little dream or you could live a little dream
sleep forever if you wish to be a dreamer
I need to find Wan Chai now.
I was one of those Dreamcast fanboys that bought games for the thing up until the time when I couldn't find them anymore. While the PS2, Xbox, and GCN reigned supreme, I was the only guy going into EB picking up a used copy of, say, Wild Metal, just to help fill out my collection.
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
One thing I believe that Shenmue does better even than Yakuza is the sense of being part of the world. In Yakuza, the camera following Kazuma sometimes pulls far away, making me feel detached from everything going on. Meanwhile, in Shenmue, the camera is always focused behind Ryo, and it moves in when you talk to people so you can see their mouths move and their facial expressions change. It feels like you're having a conversation with a person, and it feels like you're actually walking through the crowds of Hong Kong, where everyone is doing something, and not just being part of the scenery.
EDIT: And despite the awkward voice acting, I love the interaction between Ryo and Joy.
Just get the PAL DC version. No terrible dub, and you can import Shenmue 1 data(I think).
An import adapter couldn't be more than $10, tops.
I've been meaning to replay Shenmue 1, because I'm not as fond of 2.
Up to that part, probably going to continue after work tonight. Also, Xiuying's been introduced. Whenever there's a discussion about strong female video game characters, I always think of her first.
EDIT: Jianman is awesome. One tap on the tree, and bam, a whole bunch of leaves drop.
So with fresh eyes over the game, I have to say, looking back, you can see at times how they struggled with budget issues. They ultimately skimped out on Wan Chai. All the building textures there look awful, while they look much better in Kowloon. But the game's reach exceeds its grasp- it's almost as though the game has an ideal that goes beyond the hardware and sometimes it feels like we're only getting a fragment of what was envisioned.
The best example of this for me is the views. The game makes a pretty huge effort to give you these panoramic views from high windows, and I'm not talking about the obvious ones like the top floors of Kowloon. In Wan Chai, there's a view from the old lady's apartment building, and when you look through, you see the entire quarter, but it looks a lot like a bunch of bad, empty textures and then the sky. But the fact that they tried to put in dynamic panoramic views of an environment that size back then is pretty mind boggling to me.
Still, in my mind the fact that this game *didn't* feel like a game from effectively 2 and a half generations ago (it wasn't designed for the Xbox and was basically early shovelware for that console in 2002, but was developed 1999-2000 and came out in 2001.
It in fact seems to resemble various current games more than counterparts from its time. Games like Kotor, Oblivion, Assassin's Creed...
The game also has more detail than any other ever made. On ten year old hardware, using design concepts from 1999. And yet no one has matched the sheer level of detail. Of course that's more because no one wants to design a bunch of stuff that won't affect the gameplay and most people don't notice.
Shenmue II definitely feels way less polished than the first. There's obviously a lot more going on and the financial constraints, but even then it feels like something's missing...part of it is that it's harder to achieve the same level of immersion. The first game benefited from the fact that pretty much everyone knew you, while in this one it feels like you've only just met all these people who are so key to the plot.
Where the aging shows really badly (apart from the aforementioned wholesale textures) is gameplay aspects typical of games at the time in general. The game is pretty firmly rooted in the linear train tracks school of design, and even when there seem to be pretty obvious opportunities to at least partially deviate, in ways that many games today would, it doesn't. (although it does let you fail some stuff and have the plot go on exactly the same way) Tank controls are another relic from back then, although having a camera thumbstick you can use while walking (woah 2 sticks) alleviates this a lot an enables much better exploration of the environment.
The game also seems to show the collective immaturity of the medium at the time. For all its cinematic qualities, the game has Ryo endlessly repeat information to himself over and over again out loud. To the point where you wonder if the designers pictured it looking stupid.
Overall it can be hard to love II the same way. The first definitely had way more of a timeless feel to it. And there was the context of you having grown up around that place and those people, and now you had to leave (and so did Nozomi)
And let's face it, the walled city of Kowloon is awesome, but you can grow sick of spending too much time there when you're not caught up in the plot. That doesn't really happen with the first game.
The second was like an epic traveller's adventure, so it sort of lost that aspect universally relatable/timeless aspect during the Hong Kong/Kowloon parts. Somewhat regained it in the Guilin chapter.
I'm still more impressed with II though. Apart from the achievements in creating environments/level design (pretty fucking ingenious level design in terms of organization if you think about it) it also had the courage to have that entire Guilin chapter.
It's definitely the most experimental game to ever come out, all things considered.
I do agree that there are a lot of signs of aging. The translation of the dialogue seems very literal from the original Japanese. I can picture the dialogue to seem natural in Japanese, but it just comes off as awkward and redundant in English. The linearity is also apparent. I'm up to the book airing part (guh), and there's pretty much nothing you can do but carry those damn books. I couldn't even leave the Wiseman's Quarter because I had to "Find information on Zhu" even after I found what I was looking for.
If the Shenmue series was created today, I wonder how different it would be.
I don't know if I would've been as huge a fan if I had started playing from the 2nd game. What made you care so much about the story was A) the fact that you were literally living it, you had your own house, own neighborhood etc. and B)The universality of the sentiment (Who doesn't remember when they first graduated high school, were getting ready to leave, etc.) pervading the first game...if the theme of the second game is the morality of revenge/pureness of heart, the theme of the first was adulthood encroaching upon your idealized/sacred life, the way it does for everyone.
anyway
the book airing needn't last more than a couple days. Did you get the Wulinshu (rare book) in the library yet? Once you've gotten to read it you probably only have to work once more before you're free of it.
As for the book airing, I've started to look at it somewhat differently after I read some interviews with Yu Suzuki. One of his biggest motivations for doing Shenmue was wanting to make an ode to China and Chinese culture, and the book airing minigame seems to encapsulate this.
First there's the fact that the books are being aired to begin with. Hong Kong is a very humid place, so books that aren't opened often (i.e books in a temple library) collect mold easily. Of course they had air conditioned libraries in Hong Kong in 1987, but the game presented the book moving as part of the daily chores you get when you live in a temple/with temple people- and the music they use during these parts seems to almost celebrate that sort of life. Why should you care? You shouldn't. But I guess Yu Suzuki did.
Edit- If Shenmue came out today...who knows. The story would definitely be of a much higher standard (Look at Yakuza) there would be less technical hurdles, more branching paths, more action, more jobs (some of which might actually be fun)
Honestly it's just crying out for a remake. But at the same time I could also see how the game is sort of a time capsule for gaming as a medium up until that point. There are a lot of subtle little things that date the game to turn of the century. The voice acting is one of them. Also, the one track, or one string for you to follow the entire time. One the one hand they've done an amazing job of covering up the fact that you're pulling on one string the entire game. On the other hand...you're just pulling on one string, and Ryo's mind is always where the string deems it to be (i.e where you need to go, or who you need to talk to, etc.)
It involved me talking to NPC A, who told me that I needed to go see NPC B.
NPC B only hung around a certain area at night, so I had to dick around for awhile until night came.
NPC B then proceeded to direct me to a new NPC, we'll call this one C. NPC C was only around in the daytime at another area. No problem, go to sleep and it's day.
Talk to NPC C. What? NPC D is only around at night? Fine, wait around playing with capsule machines and shit for awhile until I can actually do something.
NPC D? Directs me to a new NPC who is around during the day, who points me towards someone who is around at night, and GRFAAAGGH I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE.