If you love the sacred ritual of videogames- pushing buttons and seeing lights flash before you- there is much to love in Shenmue, a slow, cinematic game, a recreation of the archetypal martial arts revenge thriller, created with the tool kit of the Arcade Daimyo- Yu Suzuki. Every single cutscene, whatever it depicts, from treacherous murder to drinking a can of refreshing coca-cola (dewey condensation implied but not rendered with limited capabilities of the Dreamcast hardware) flies, twirls, zooms and pans with the flair of an Arcade attract screen, a cinematic language born of videogames. Ironically, later videogames would shamefully and shyly try to simulate real cameras, to limit their language to real world possibility, only for the modern drone to make that cinematic language born of videogames suddenly feasible in reality! This style of Drone cinema is currently being explored by directors such as the stalwart and unfairly demeaned misanthrope-auteur Michael Bay, and no doubt videogames bearing cinematic pretensions will soon find themselves reintegrating the attract scene language, wholly ignorant of it's shameful origins (to creators of cinematic videogames) within the medium of videogames, but here we see no such shame, Yu Suzuki uses his full palette.
(One must also herein express appreciation for Hideo Kojima's still under-appreciated masterwork, Metal Gear Solid V, which explores the tension of its concepts of deceit and double-think via a style of camerawork that will whiplash from a simulated second-person camera crew to impossible digital movements, [for example the scene in which Big Boss ascends a Helipad, followed by a furtive 'camera man' {who does not exist either in reality or the fictional reality of the game} only to come face to skull with his shadow archetype and object of hate- Skull Face- and for the camera to suddenly shoot across the Helipad, no longer held by simulated hand, and stabilize on Skull Face's skullface keeping his head dead center while he gives a speech, only to become retreat and become a simulated camera man once again as he concludes.] in this way Kojima is playing with the digital heart of videogames and drawing it in compliment to the physical world of cinema, much like Shenmue itself.)
And so it is in this way, with the joy of the videogame, that Shenmue creates cinema, the controls are strange, but responsive, the repetition and iteration intrinsic to games, that which would be elided in film or television (but may find companionship in the brother medium of the videogame- literature) is here represented in full, The Revenge Thriller rendered in a slow burn form that can only be achieved with a videogame- hard skills of controls and input lightly tested, soft skills of memory and prioritization more deeply explored, each day driven by routine, different styles of gameplay with different controls for different contexts- the way a film maker might use different camera lenses and editing techniques for different situations.
Follow the clues, remember the names, ignore your friends, knock together heads, play arcade games, each action delivered with the kinaesthesis of the man who brought us virtua racer, and virtua fighter, the joy of buttons allowing you to inhabit, until you become lost yourself in Ryo Hazuki's quest of revenge.
At last though, the caveat must be declared: The Forklift part. I was sure, as a lover of pushing buttons, of the logistical, of the digital mundane, and above all as a trained operator of forklifts and other MHEs, I would rise above the grousing I see amongst others for this infamously tedious section of game, and see the beauty within. Imagine if you can, my horror when the game forced me to drive with a raised load- creating a dangerously high center of gravity and obstructing Ryo's view, no means to sound the horn to warn pedestrians, no organizational methodology for loading and stowing freight, the code of conduct by which those of my noble profession carry ourselves was being torn to pieces before my eyes! To spend 10 hours performing MHE labour for a mega corporation that does not respect my work, only to come home and pantomime a grotesque mockery of that very same labour was almost too much to bear, and I felt a damp, drizzly November growing in my soul.
Perhaps if I plied a different trade, I would award Shenmue full marks, but one cannot grade a game on 'if' or 'ought' and so I must leave this review on a sour note: it is a passionate masterwork, but it is not passionate about MHE safety...
(One must also herein express appreciation for Hideo Kojima's still under-appreciated masterwork, Metal Gear Solid V, which explores the tension of its concepts of deceit and double-think via a style of camerawork that will whiplash from a simulated second-person camera crew to impossible digital movements, [for example the scene in which Big Boss ascends a Helipad, followed by a furtive 'camera man' {who does not exist either in reality or the fictional reality of the game} only to come face to skull with his shadow archetype and object of hate- Skull Face- and for the camera to suddenly shoot across the Helipad, no longer held by simulated hand, and stabilize on Skull Face's skullface keeping his head dead center while he gives a speech, only to become retreat and become a simulated camera man once again as he concludes.] in this way Kojima is playing with the digital heart of videogames and drawing it in compliment to the physical world of cinema, much like Shenmue itself.)
And so it is in this way, with the joy of the videogame, that Shenmue creates cinema, the controls are strange, but responsive, the repetition and iteration intrinsic to games, that which would be elided in film or television (but may find companionship in the brother medium of the videogame- literature) is here represented in full, The Revenge Thriller rendered in a slow burn form that can only be achieved with a videogame- hard skills of controls and input lightly tested, soft skills of memory and prioritization more deeply explored, each day driven by routine, different styles of gameplay with different controls for different contexts- the way a film maker might use different camera lenses and editing techniques for different situations.
Follow the clues, remember the names, ignore your friends, knock together heads, play arcade games, each action delivered with the kinaesthesis of the man who brought us virtua racer, and virtua fighter, the joy of buttons allowing you to inhabit, until you become lost yourself in Ryo Hazuki's quest of revenge.
At last though, the caveat must be declared: The Forklift part. I was sure, as a lover of pushing buttons, of the logistical, of the digital mundane, and above all as a trained operator of forklifts and other MHEs, I would rise above the grousing I see amongst others for this infamously tedious section of game, and see the beauty within. Imagine if you can, my horror when the game forced me to drive with a raised load- creating a dangerously high center of gravity and obstructing Ryo's view, no means to sound the horn to warn pedestrians, no organizational methodology for loading and stowing freight, the code of conduct by which those of my noble profession carry ourselves was being torn to pieces before my eyes! To spend 10 hours performing MHE labour for a mega corporation that does not respect my work, only to come home and pantomime a grotesque mockery of that very same labour was almost too much to bear, and I felt a damp, drizzly November growing in my soul.
Perhaps if I plied a different trade, I would award Shenmue full marks, but one cannot grade a game on 'if' or 'ought' and so I must leave this review on a sour note: it is a passionate masterwork, but it is not passionate about MHE safety...
playing this in japanese is pretty neat to see the original and be able to take it at least a bit more seriously. i know everyone memes the crappy dub but i dont wanna deal with that. its fun just to walk around and explore the areas and talk to people but there is some 'what do i do' moments in this game
There are many mysteries in this world. What cosmic force put us here on this planet? How deep does the ocean go? And most importantly: Why do Shenmue fans hype their games up so damn much?
Shenmue is secretly a fusion of 20 Questions and the longest game of Telephone ever conceived. 80% of your time in Shenmue is spent doing two things: walking around and asking random people about your current objective. Rinse and repeat until you get lucky and talk to the correct person, granting you a new thing to ask the whole town about. There is damn near nothing else to do outside of these two things. Buy gachapons, practice punching air in an empty parking lot, play a couple arcade games, or gamble your life savings away at the slot machines. If you're not interested in these meager side activities, then too bad! Ryu's not gonna diverge from his unbreakable circadian rhythm, because you can't go to sleep and move on to the next day until 8:00 PM in-game. Ryu would rather stand motionless in his room, like a statue, than go to bed.
The next 10% is spent on combat. Of the 3D fighters I've dabbled in, I've managed to neglect Virtua Fighter. I'm going to guess that this game plays nothing like it though. It's extremely stiff, inputs feel inconsistent at best, and your worst enemy is the damn camera. You can't control it, nor can you control what enemy Ryo is facing, making the process of picking your fights feel nigh impossible. The game neglects having much combat at all until the last third, at which point it eventually hits you with the 70 Man Battle. This is a 15 minute long ordeal of nothing but fodder enemies, until you hit the very last one, a boss who will most likely kill you and make you experience the monotony again. I speak from experience. On the other hand, I beat Gollum using nothing but the low sweep kick move over and over, and that was pretty funny.
The last 10% is (and final third of the game) is spent on the god damn forklift. If there's one thing I can commend Shenmue on, it's how it perfectly depicts the 9-to-5 wagecuck grindset like nothing else I've ever experienced in a virtual medium. Your first time on the forklift will feel like magic, a sudden shift from your mundane lifestyle. Next morning, you'll even be greeted by the glorious forklift race! And then you start to do your work, and the magic fades, like it was never there to begin with. That's because it never was there, the forklift job is work. You wake up, go to your job, (do the damn race,) work your shift, get off at a time when nearly everywhere is closed, go home, and play Sega Saturn games far past your bedtime. That last sentence describes my personal lifestyle in a way that hits a bit too close to home, but that's how it feels ingame. When I come home from work, I play video games to de-stress and escape the mundanity of real life, but coming home to Shenmue has legitimately kept me trapped in my work mindset. That in itself is one hell of an achievement.
People talk of this game being "revolutionary" back in 1999, and I see where they're coming from. Detailed items you can pick up and observe, a town of NPCs with their own daily routines, voiced dialogue for anyone you can talk to, a full day/night cycle, in-game weather that could match the real-life weather by using an internet connection, the list goes on. It makes for a very impressive tech demo, but it never clicked with me as an engaging video game. Anyways, I can hear the Shenmue fanbase coming to run me down with their forklifts. I'm not certified, so excuse me while I run away from a potential OSHA violation.
Shenmue is secretly a fusion of 20 Questions and the longest game of Telephone ever conceived. 80% of your time in Shenmue is spent doing two things: walking around and asking random people about your current objective. Rinse and repeat until you get lucky and talk to the correct person, granting you a new thing to ask the whole town about. There is damn near nothing else to do outside of these two things. Buy gachapons, practice punching air in an empty parking lot, play a couple arcade games, or gamble your life savings away at the slot machines. If you're not interested in these meager side activities, then too bad! Ryu's not gonna diverge from his unbreakable circadian rhythm, because you can't go to sleep and move on to the next day until 8:00 PM in-game. Ryu would rather stand motionless in his room, like a statue, than go to bed.
The next 10% is spent on combat. Of the 3D fighters I've dabbled in, I've managed to neglect Virtua Fighter. I'm going to guess that this game plays nothing like it though. It's extremely stiff, inputs feel inconsistent at best, and your worst enemy is the damn camera. You can't control it, nor can you control what enemy Ryo is facing, making the process of picking your fights feel nigh impossible. The game neglects having much combat at all until the last third, at which point it eventually hits you with the 70 Man Battle. This is a 15 minute long ordeal of nothing but fodder enemies, until you hit the very last one, a boss who will most likely kill you and make you experience the monotony again. I speak from experience. On the other hand, I beat Gollum using nothing but the low sweep kick move over and over, and that was pretty funny.
The last 10% is (and final third of the game) is spent on the god damn forklift. If there's one thing I can commend Shenmue on, it's how it perfectly depicts the 9-to-5 wagecuck grindset like nothing else I've ever experienced in a virtual medium. Your first time on the forklift will feel like magic, a sudden shift from your mundane lifestyle. Next morning, you'll even be greeted by the glorious forklift race! And then you start to do your work, and the magic fades, like it was never there to begin with. That's because it never was there, the forklift job is work. You wake up, go to your job, (do the damn race,) work your shift, get off at a time when nearly everywhere is closed, go home, and play Sega Saturn games far past your bedtime. That last sentence describes my personal lifestyle in a way that hits a bit too close to home, but that's how it feels ingame. When I come home from work, I play video games to de-stress and escape the mundanity of real life, but coming home to Shenmue has legitimately kept me trapped in my work mindset. That in itself is one hell of an achievement.
People talk of this game being "revolutionary" back in 1999, and I see where they're coming from. Detailed items you can pick up and observe, a town of NPCs with their own daily routines, voiced dialogue for anyone you can talk to, a full day/night cycle, in-game weather that could match the real-life weather by using an internet connection, the list goes on. It makes for a very impressive tech demo, but it never clicked with me as an engaging video game. Anyways, I can hear the Shenmue fanbase coming to run me down with their forklifts. I'm not certified, so excuse me while I run away from a potential OSHA violation.
being a yakuza fan, ive tried playing shenmue a few times and it's never really successfully managed to "grab" me. usually i'd quit because i just got bored and barely got a taste of the combat even after maybe a couple hours, and what was there, i didnt care for
thinking combat was the appeal of the game and that it's essentially a proto-yakuza was my mistake. it does share elements with yakuza, namely in its overworld approach of being this "explore-japan-and-do-stuff simulator" but make no mistake, shenmue has more in common with point n click adventure games (just without the pointing and clicking), where you talk to everyone, use what you know to figure out what you need to do, and just explore the world in general, while experiencing the story at a leisurely pace. yes theres a time limit, but its not one that really matters.
now then, there is combat, but it's pretty rare and not great. it aims to be something inbetween streets of rage and tekken and to mixed results. like most of this game, i'm sure it was revolutionary at the time, but it comes off as very clunky and sometimes special moves can be really finnicky and just wont activate when you do them. the moves are direction-based and changes with the camera direction, and you do not control the camera, so fights usually end up being pretty sloppy when they do happen. its scarcity makes a big brawl feel very out of place as it barely prepares you to fight more than a few people at a time.
the real core of the game is going around and talking to people and everyone and everything having its own schedule, right down to the weather. going around and just talking to people all day and night might not seem very engaging, but frankly i find it fascinating and only makes it feel like even more of a "japan simulator". it's not without it's problems though. namely how often it just makes you wait. yeah i get it, it wants you to explore so you can stop and smell the roses. i get that. but i already do that at my own pace. let me give you an example of when this becomes a problem. very minor spoilers for the following paragraph.
so theres a point in the game where ryo needs to travel by plane, after gathering funds, i head to the travel agency at around 4pm or so. they tell me to come back in 4 hours. but they close at 7 so i need to come back tomorrow. the next day, i get up and wait till 10 to get inside, only to find different people there. they say they'll call me tomorrow. so i have nothing to do for the rest of the day and dont really have much money to do almost anything. and you can't even go to sleep and skip a day, you need to wait until night time before you can sleep. since i went into this game blind, i expected to be on the plane by this point and had everything i intended to already done by this point, so there wasn't really much i could do but wait... so i put my controller down, went to the bathroom, let my dog out, got a drink, made something to eat, let my dog out again because he's annoying, came back and it wasn't even night time yet. after more waiting, i can finally sleep and when i wake up, i'm told to go to the arcade and have to wait until noon for it to open, where i promptly get a cutscene that makes everything i did with the travel agency worthless. immediately after this i talk to some people that tell me to go to the harbor and find a job and then at the harbor im told to come back tomorrow. it's just filler.
which brings me to the game's story. i'll be brief on this as i want to avoid spoilers so anyone reading this can go in about as blind as i did, but the game's ambition is as much it's appeal as it is a detriment. the story is the best example of this, as it does grip you, especially if you arent playing with the atrocious dub, and i do wish to see how it plays out as i go through the game, but it takes itself so slowly and meanders so much that there's very little story actually being told. and i blame this on how overly ambitious it is as a franchise, as the amount of games that were planned is ludicrous, and being the first part of some big epic only means that things only feel like they're being built up, and there's not much resolution to be found. so much of this game is exploring the same 2 locations and talking to the same people with the actual story barely inching along, any progress made rarely feels like a step forward in the plot, it often feels like a side step. and by the time it ends, it feels like everything thats happened was just the first quarter of a story stretched out as much as possible. you never feel like the story is truly out of that first act until the game's over. but at the same time, i can kind of forgive that, as for a game this ambitious and for all the detail and care put into it, and just how outright innovative it is, scaling back the scope of the story so that more can be done in the sequel does make some sense.
with all that said, shenmue is a truly unique experience unlike any other, even today, it has its fair share of problems, and dated elements, but don't let that stop you from experiencing something like this. shenmue is a dreamcast classic for a reason.
also QTEs suck
thinking combat was the appeal of the game and that it's essentially a proto-yakuza was my mistake. it does share elements with yakuza, namely in its overworld approach of being this "explore-japan-and-do-stuff simulator" but make no mistake, shenmue has more in common with point n click adventure games (just without the pointing and clicking), where you talk to everyone, use what you know to figure out what you need to do, and just explore the world in general, while experiencing the story at a leisurely pace. yes theres a time limit, but its not one that really matters.
now then, there is combat, but it's pretty rare and not great. it aims to be something inbetween streets of rage and tekken and to mixed results. like most of this game, i'm sure it was revolutionary at the time, but it comes off as very clunky and sometimes special moves can be really finnicky and just wont activate when you do them. the moves are direction-based and changes with the camera direction, and you do not control the camera, so fights usually end up being pretty sloppy when they do happen. its scarcity makes a big brawl feel very out of place as it barely prepares you to fight more than a few people at a time.
the real core of the game is going around and talking to people and everyone and everything having its own schedule, right down to the weather. going around and just talking to people all day and night might not seem very engaging, but frankly i find it fascinating and only makes it feel like even more of a "japan simulator". it's not without it's problems though. namely how often it just makes you wait. yeah i get it, it wants you to explore so you can stop and smell the roses. i get that. but i already do that at my own pace. let me give you an example of when this becomes a problem. very minor spoilers for the following paragraph.
so theres a point in the game where ryo needs to travel by plane, after gathering funds, i head to the travel agency at around 4pm or so. they tell me to come back in 4 hours. but they close at 7 so i need to come back tomorrow. the next day, i get up and wait till 10 to get inside, only to find different people there. they say they'll call me tomorrow. so i have nothing to do for the rest of the day and dont really have much money to do almost anything. and you can't even go to sleep and skip a day, you need to wait until night time before you can sleep. since i went into this game blind, i expected to be on the plane by this point and had everything i intended to already done by this point, so there wasn't really much i could do but wait... so i put my controller down, went to the bathroom, let my dog out, got a drink, made something to eat, let my dog out again because he's annoying, came back and it wasn't even night time yet. after more waiting, i can finally sleep and when i wake up, i'm told to go to the arcade and have to wait until noon for it to open, where i promptly get a cutscene that makes everything i did with the travel agency worthless. immediately after this i talk to some people that tell me to go to the harbor and find a job and then at the harbor im told to come back tomorrow. it's just filler.
which brings me to the game's story. i'll be brief on this as i want to avoid spoilers so anyone reading this can go in about as blind as i did, but the game's ambition is as much it's appeal as it is a detriment. the story is the best example of this, as it does grip you, especially if you arent playing with the atrocious dub, and i do wish to see how it plays out as i go through the game, but it takes itself so slowly and meanders so much that there's very little story actually being told. and i blame this on how overly ambitious it is as a franchise, as the amount of games that were planned is ludicrous, and being the first part of some big epic only means that things only feel like they're being built up, and there's not much resolution to be found. so much of this game is exploring the same 2 locations and talking to the same people with the actual story barely inching along, any progress made rarely feels like a step forward in the plot, it often feels like a side step. and by the time it ends, it feels like everything thats happened was just the first quarter of a story stretched out as much as possible. you never feel like the story is truly out of that first act until the game's over. but at the same time, i can kind of forgive that, as for a game this ambitious and for all the detail and care put into it, and just how outright innovative it is, scaling back the scope of the story so that more can be done in the sequel does make some sense.
with all that said, shenmue is a truly unique experience unlike any other, even today, it has its fair share of problems, and dated elements, but don't let that stop you from experiencing something like this. shenmue is a dreamcast classic for a reason.
also QTEs suck