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Review of Shenmue
Now, on to the review:
In my opinion, life is too ordinary. One goes to school, gets a job, ends up exactly as the parents you promised never to end up like(well, most of us do) and in the end, one dies. Ordinary does not have to mean that its boring, indeed The Sims(tm) have proven to be a big hit among people, especially females(It's not a cliché, it's the truth: In my English class all the girls seem to have played The Sims). To me, however, ordinary means boring. Many times have I wished for something dramatic to happen, something that would give my life purpose.
This is where Shenmue comes in.
Ryo Hazuki is our protagonist; A normal seventeen year old boy. He has probably felt like me some times. He goes to school and struggles to get good grades. As the main character, we expect Ryo to be a noteworthy character, and I think he is. Others complain that he is far too obsessed about honour, and I must concur. It is really easy to make him to something just to prove himself. Having trained martial arts doesn't seem to help his anger much. It doesn't seem as though having a father that is a sensei and has developed his own unique style, the "Hazuki style" is a guarantee against bad temper. It is the 29th of November, the year is 1986, the place Yokosuka, Japan. Ryo Hazuki's life is just about to be changed into something this jaded little gamer cares for.
So, what happens? To be blunt, he comes home and watches as his father gets killed, holding him in his arms and vowing to revenge his foul and most unnatural murder. Okay, then, he just screams a loud, clichéd, "NOOOOOOOOOO". My thoughts at this point were somewhat mixed. Though my mouth was wide agape at the cinematic execution of the opening scene, I could not shake away the feeling that it was all a little...bit...standard? That being said, it was beautiful, especially the fight between Ryo's father and his Nemesis, Lan Di. The actual game starts four days later, as Ryo's vacation starts. Armed only with a notebook and a training in martial arts our young bad-tempered hero sets out to find Lan Di. After all, Lan Di was wearing *very* odd clothes and followed by two thugs. Surely he must be easy to find?
Not quite, but in a way, yes. In other games, there would have been complex puzzles. In Shenmue, you go around and ask people questions. You almost never lose your way, and there are two reasons to that.
Reason one is the fact that this game follows the logical standards used by us mere mortals, instead of "game designer logic".
Reason two is the fact that this game is as linear as they get.
How Yu Suzuki and AM2 dared call the gaming system FREE(Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment) is a mystery to me. Sure, you can talk to every single person on the street if you want to. And you can feed, pet and talk to a little kitten. And buy cokes from vending machines. And collect little toys. And play arcade games(Darts, Out Run and Space Harrier). And win a Ghettoblaster. And consult a fortune-teller. But when you can do all these things, those things you *can't* do becomes all the more obvious.
You can, for instance, not *eat*. You cannot kiss Nozomi, a girl that definitely is in love with you. There is a *very* dubious woman standing outside a bar who asks you with a husky voice: "Wanna come in", but you can't answer yes. In fact, whenever Ryo says anything, you cannot decide what he says. Booh. But these things are perhaps too much to ask for. I can buy lots of candy, listen to cassette tapes, and drive a fork-lift. The system is pretty free. But *I* want, and you probably want that as well, to influence the plot and decide how to react to different people. The attention to detail is amazing, with people taking strolls in the park and time passing. So why isn't it more vital to the game? Some people are going to hate this game because the majority of the time is spent on activities that has nothing to do with the plot. After all, Shenmue is meant to be über-realistic and it has succeeded - far more than the previously-mentioned The Sims. As an example, if you spend to much time on the game, you'll automatically fail. Good. Very good.
As you proceed, you will find that Lan Di has far, far, FAR bigger plans than just killing daddy. Through some divine miracle, it never gets cheesy. This is helped by the characterisation, which is very good. I've already mentioned Ryo and Lan Di, but there are too many characters to mention, and none of them based on archetypes other than in the most rudimentary fashion. To someone who has been spending too much time on games, this is a relief from all the mass-produced "Grizzled masculinist icon" and "women who think like men but look like porn-stars"(Was that a cough, Heavy Metal and Lara Croft?). Ryo might be a masculinist icon, but a flawed one. The characters in Shenmue feel insecure, broken-hearted, they do not understand everything, and they can be scared. In my opinion, this is the single best thing about the game, and the reason I am restarting it. The way they interact is really nice and helps the storytelling greatly.
The story is sufficiently original and well-directed, and combined with the fighting scenes it almost feels as a long Hong Kong action movie. The cinematic style remains throughout the whole game and especially the camera angles are affected by this. Never once did the camera angle give any problems, which is quite unique. The music is also good, with a sufficiently mysterious and dramatic score. The sound effects are great, bar the voice acting.
Bar the voice acting, which is horrible. Given the fact that EVERY SINGLE LINE OF CONVERSATION IS VOICE ACTED, this is nothing short but a tragedy. The quality is unstable: There are some great voices out there(Lan Di, though he only talks once, is among the most menacing and cold voices I've heard, Ryo is also really good most of the time) and some that should be forced into becoming mute(The *vast* majority of characters, including some that you have to talk to regularly while Ryo himself can sound as flat as a voicebox).
But where the acting makes a chill go down your spine for all the wrong reasons, the graphics are a delight. Dreamcast manages such good graphics with Shenmue, it makes you wonder if it ever got to utilise its true potential. We'll never know. The only sources of irritation would be some of the textures and the fact that the game has a lot of jagged edges. Repeat that. Lots of jagged edges. The game screams for some proper anti-aliasing, but I guess they didn't have any resources left to play with. The real-time 3D-rendering surpasses what most computer games do by miles. To further emphasise this, enough things can be picked up and looked at closely that only someone who tried to copy the real world would care. But again, this draws your attention to those things that are "unpickable", like toilet paper.
There is one last thing to pick up on: The fighting style. And the fighting style is...well. Let me put it this way: Have you played Virtua Fighter?
The guys that made Shenmue are the same guys that made Virtua Fighter. In other words, we are talking about a really unique and well-developed real-time fighting system that I have only scratched at the surface of understanding. I don't know if it's realistic, but it feels very realistic and you'll *know* what it feels like when people get so fast that their limbs become shown as a blur. Very cool. In fact, the game would have been a challenge, had it not been for the fact that whenever you fail, you restart at the beginning of the fight/event sequence where you failed. I definitely do *not* like this.
All in all, it's easy to understand why Shenmue cost about 50 million dollars to make and became the most expensive video game ever. The game is so good that the large majority of us will be won over immediately, but because there is so much to it, and because the game strives to be as life-like as possible, the things that are left out becomes all the more obvious and irritating. Also, some people will not be enchanted by the every-day stuff going on, and these will be best advised to avoid it like the plague.
But if you are like me, you'll feel that it is the single reason to buy a dreamcast console, and that most trades, up to and beyond your eternal soul, will be worth it.
