| Product: |
Shenmue (DC) |
| Date: |
03/12/00 (156 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Absolutely breathtaking visuals, rendering and texture mapping. Unparalleled gameplay!
Disadvantages: Control system takes a while to get used to, acting is poor at times.
Ok, believe it or not, I haven’t had the time to play Shenmue for as much as I would have wanted, and so I must be about the only person to have got it on release day and not completed it yet! Anyway, it doesn’t really matter because I’ve played a bit more now, and my overall thoughts of the game haven’t really changed all that much – it’s still as amazing as I remember on the first day I played it, so I thought I’d try and write a bit more about the game in general. I hope you find my opinion good enough!
Here’s something I said earlier!
Day 1 of Shenmue:
Shenmue is in another dimension - literally. I have to thank Special Reserve for sending it to me, as I found it outside my house at 6.00pm today hidden behind a fence! (The game was too big to put through my letterbox)
I must admit that Shenmue is amazing. For the last 2 hours I've been taken into a whole new world, a Japanese world (set 14years ago) with some awful American voice-overs, but I love it. It's like a whole new life, well almost!
I wasn't expecting this, I truly wasn't, and I am absolutely awe-inspired. Nothing I have seen can compare to such a 'game', but it really didn't feel like a game to play! As you may well have heard people say - Shenmue is an experience, and an incredibly absorbing one at that.
I found myself drawn into the environment I actually thought for a split second that I was actually in the game. Sonic - move over, a new spiky haired chum is in town and his name is Ryo-san, and he's out for revenge (as a dragon robed chap just killed his dad.
I've only been 'playing' for a couple of hours, and already I've witnessed a sun-setting, I've bought far too many mini plastic egg toys contain all sorts of things (including Bark and Bean from Fighters Megamix/Sonic Fighters!), but Ryo said he loved them, and told himself to
keep on buying more!
I've had a Jet Soda to drink, and have mastered 4 new fighting moves in a local park! The old woman that lives with me (is she my…I mean Ryo's mum?) has already threatened to scorn me if I am reckless, and I've talked with a drunken Japanese bloke, been asked by about 10 little kids to play Baseball with them (did this sort of thing happen in Japan 14 years ago?), and I've fed a kitten (which is stuck in a box) some dried fish!
I simply could not believe how graphically amazing the game is. The texture mapping is fantastic, and the frame rate at 60hz is superb. The only faults that I have found so far, and I'm only on day 1, is that the control system will take a while to get used to (you can't jump, and the D-Pad is the only pad you can use) and the fact that some Japanese women have been assigned the most appalling American voiceovers.
I'll have to return back to the world of shenmue soon, but I'm glad that I can pause this world, and continue in my own, as I really need to catch up with a few things.
Shenmue is the work of Yu Suzuki and his team, and is spread out over 4 discs! I urge you to get this ‘game’ I was lucky enough to win it!!
Ok, here’s the new stuff, I can’t remember how much I’ve actually told you, but Shenmue is an achievement to be proud of. The storyline is so engrossing, but over the top in anyway – it’s believable, and that’s why everyone I know thinks it’s one of their best they’ve played. Since my early opinion, shown above somewhere, I have encountered numerous fights, some of which have been free fighting and some have been ‘quick - respond to the button on the screen or you’ll lose!’ kind of thing, but I have not been at all disappointed by Shenmue, had I have bought it would have definitely been worth the £40 I would have paid (I didn’t steal it
– remember I won it…).
I’m STILL on CD one, yep, you may find that hard to believe, but I have been so busy writing opinions for you lot here that I haven’t had the opportunity to play through the whole game yet. However, I’ve had discussions with lots of Shenmue owners, and they all agree that the game is over a bit too quickly, despite it being the most graphically amazing game they had ever played, ever, in their life. I suppose they had to expect it would seem to be over so quickly because they all played it non-stop for around a week, and ultimately must have thought it finished rather abruptly. I’ve been taking things a lot more slowly – I don’t care about the plot of the game, that’s just a tiny part of Shenmue! You don’t have to follow the instructions – you can do what you want, like I have done. I haven’t rushed through it, and so I haven’t even got to half time yet.
So why is everyone going on about Shenmue then? Why are the games sites claiming it to be one of the best Sega games of all time? Shenmue on Dreamcast is the beginning of a massive 16 yes sixteen game saga! This is just the first of many, and already Shenmue 2 is underway. I imagine Shenmue 3 and 4, all the way to 16 will be on other consoles like the XBox, and the PS3 or something, but as long as Ryo-San finds his fathers’ murder I will be playing on whatever platform it takes!
The in-game graphics are as good as the introduction, which is very pleasing indeed. The acting isn’t all that bad, and you don’t really notice it when you play in the arcades all day – incidentally, if you do incredibly well in the arcades, at either darts or hang on then you’ll be treated (this is all speculation, as I have no proof as yet), to a Sega Saturn game that you can then take home and play on the Saturn that’s underneath you’re television! An excellent idea, i
f only all the games were available to buy through Shenmue, that way we’d all be able to play the Saturn classics through the Dreamcast at no cost at all, and at the Japanese frequency of 60hz. Maybe they’ll do that with Shenmue 2!!
So, back to the real world now, or is it? It’s getting hard to remember which world is Shenmue, and which is real! The visuals are almost as good as in the ‘real world’, and that’s using just 30% of Dreamcast’s processing power (according to our good friend Mr Suzuki).
I can wait until the next game appears, and thankfully it won’t be a sequel – it’s a continuation, so we’ll be assure of something familiar and yet completely different – unlike a certain Eidos franchise and EA sports game collection.
To be fair, Shenmue never really had any critics, if it did, it would have silenced them in minutes. You can now get a Dreamcast and Shenmue for £139.98, which is astounding value! You won’t see anything this impressive on either the Playstation2, or anything currently available on any format.
Superb game that I’ll have to write about even more when I complete it!
Thanks
D1A1
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