THIS IS MY TOWN
NOT YOURS JUNGLE BUNNY, NOT YOURS
AND NOT YOURS EITHER YOU SLANTY-EYED FUCKER
MINE.
I WAS RUNNING THIS TOWN WHILE YOU WERE STILL BEING SLAPPED BY YOUR DAD FOR WETTING THE BED
I RAN THIS TOWN WITH REAL MEN
LIKE RONNIE AND REGGIE
WITH RESPECT
WE KNEW WHAT WAS WHAT
AND WHO WAS WHO
BUT NOW WHAT WE GOT?
FUCKIN' SPEAR CHUCKERS
BRINGING IN SHOOTERS WHERE NO ONE'S SAFE
TURNING LONDON INTO A MADHOUSE
SMACK HEADS CRACK HEADS
MIXING OF THE FUCKIN' RACES
WELL I'M SORRY
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
IT'S OUT OF FUCKING ORDER
YOU GIVE THESE PEOPLE A BIT OF SPACE
AND WHAT YOU GET
FUCKING DISORDER
WELL IT'S GONNA STOP
AND IT STARTS...
RIGHT NOW
IT'S TIME THAT ENGLISHMEN STOOD UP FOR WHAT IT IS TO BE ENGLISH
FUCK THE EURO
THE FOX AND THE HOUNDS
BOBBY MOORE AND THE HAMMERS
TWO WORLD WARS ONE WORLD CUP
FEET AND INCHES
POUNDS AND OUNCES
BEER AND COCKLES DOWN THE MILE END ROAD
LAND OF HOPE AND GLORY
MOTHER OF THE FREEEEEE
HOW SHALL WE EXTOL THEE
WHO ARE BORN TO THEE?

Have you ever tried to draw a hand or face? You try and try and it comes out seeming...off?

"It just doesn't look right..."

This is the problem with realism in art: we have hands, and we see hundreds of faces everyday. We know what they're supposed to look like, so we're more critical of their accuracy and the way they're illustrated.

Lies of P is a good game. It is extremely close to the quality of a FromSoft Souls-Borne game, and, if you squint your eyes juuuust right, it might seem like one. However, upon closer inspection, we've seen this painting before, and with tighter precision.

The combat of Lies of P is good. The level design is good. The characters are good. The voice actors are good. The lore is good. The enemy variety is good. And, the bosses are good.

But, with realism comes comparison. We know what it's supposed to look like, and, "Something just feels off..."

shenmue may require no introduction, but it's amusing for me to have played so many of suzuki's games beforehand...they're all these exceptionally spirited games preoccupied with total acceleration, scenic vistas, the simple pleasures of competition (whether inward or external). their pace and their fixations are romantic and idealized, representing a striking antithesis to shenmue's monotony. just about the only thing that matches shenmue's dreamy sense of melancholy is outrun's results screen.

while suzuki's prior obsessions & formal language might ironically seem entirely absent from shenmue, im not sure this is a completely accurate assessment. ryo might be a slave to time, but just as in outrun, super hang-on, space harrier, etc, his path is pre-determined, foretold by prophecy. he has no choice but to staunchly and pragmatically follow his compulsions. a discordant sense of urgency underscores and animates his every action, and you can see his internal frustrations with the mundane & lackadaisical rhythms of his neighbours. ryo's a shark, all he knows how to do is move forward. reality might suffocate him otherwise.

iwao hazuki's last words to his son are pleading with him to keep his friends and family close to him; the rest of shenmue is a quietly straining, slow-brewing tragedy as ryo does the exact opposite. he's alienated and alone; his family never quite knows how to effectively respond to and treat his grief; he distances himself from peers, structure, romantic interests. he is made painfully aware of every passing minute of every day, but he fails to truly understand or comprehend the weight of time and of his life in yokosuka as a whole. people care about him, but he's distant & removed, and eventually they figure it may be for the best to let such a headstrong young man go his own way. ryo's defining contradiction is a naïveté characteristic of his youth at odds with his relentless drive to make forward progress. he has this unspoken expectation that yokosuka is comprised of unchanging and permanent fixtures, that things will be the same as he left them upon his return, but everything around him explicitly and implicitly signals the obvious: people, locales, and contexts change. over the course of the game ryo runs into a hot dog vendor named tom constantly, someone whose vibrance and zest for life marks him as distinct and dissimilar from ryo. he's content and lively in a way that is alien to ryo. near the end of the game, he learns that tom a.) has surprising martial arts prowess and b.) has been planning to leave yokosuka for quite some time. ryo is taken aback by this information, but it was no secret - ryo simply never asked. by the time ryo makes his way to hong kong, so much has been left unsaid. even he, for a brief moment, just beginning to grasp the gravity of his decisions, wishes he had more time.

it's an excellent game, filled to the brim with quietly devastating scenes and working with subtlety that seems unmatched compared to contemporary AAA experiences... while many cite shenmue as a game that has aged, or only has value from an innovative perspective, its deliberate and measured inclinations reveal just the opposite: that games today have regressed, and have only taken the wrong lessons from shenmue.