| |
Shenmue Review
With all the recent events happening(the events of September 11th, 2001, if you're reading this at a point in the future where flying cars zoom around and Bill Gates is God), something happened to just click in me that made me want to dig through some of the titles that have laid dormant in my room for at least a half-year or more. And, somewhere along the line(within 30 minutes of playing Zelda: The Ocarina of Time for the 32nd time, to be exact), a sudden rush of Shenmue Withdrawl kicked in, and I decided to revive my interest. I had already played through it entirely and seen almost everything before, but there was something that still caught my interest-- a "bad ending" that I was never capable of getting. So obviously, it's time to write a review that could have been writen over 9 monthes ago, but wasn't!
Graphics. Based on your "New-Age Techno Video Game Visuals", not "Pixelized Super Deformed Sprites That You Can't Make Out That GMD Likes Better", Shenmue ranks up there amung the greatest. Lip movements match up nearly perfectly, which isn't too terrible considering they were originally synced to the Japanese VA's, not the English counterparts. So basically, the dubbing isn't on the same level with, say, every Godzilla or Police Force movie. "Emotion" is depicted pretty well with each character, and the graphics as a whole are the typical amazing fanfare. I would also like to add, Nozomi & Cathy Wilkins are hot. 9.5/10.
 Gameplay. This is the toss-up where gamers are strictly divided; you either love it or hate it. Shenmue's style allows for anyone to walk around, do as they please, and do tasks when they see fit. There aren't any "Magic Power Ups", no evil Turtles to slay with a fireball, just reality. So basically... you get to play life. You can freely do as you please with Ryo for basically as long as you want, if that's what you want(or until April 15th, 1987, actually...). The only fighting that's done is with Ryo's martial arts and QTE Events, which are basically a complete test at just how fast you are at the draw. Hit B before that drunk socks you in the jaw, or else it's all over!...until you try it again. Alright, so the difficulty department could use some work, but I'm not complaining. The only possible way to truely "lose" is to get the bad ending that I personally WANTED to see, so it's not exactly impossible to beat the game. Then again, I don't think Yu Suzuki wanted it to be that way. In a nutshell(albeit an extremely large, deformed one), I liked the style. 10/10.
Plot. Okay, here we go. Brace yourselves... Hazuki-Sensei, Ryo's father, apparently kept two ancient mirrors that had the power to blow up the world or something of that nature, so an Evil Chinese Man(who else?) by the name of Lan Di(or Souryu for you POLITICALLY CORRECT RPG FANATICS) comes down to Ryu's pad and decides to take after The Thing and start CLOBBERIN' TIME. He breaks into the Hazuki dojo, kills Hazuki-Sensei by completely overpowering him, steals the mirror, makes Ryo a very angry teenager, and successfully manages to start the game. What a guy, huh? So Ryo sets out to kill Lan Di, avenge his father's death, and successfully end the game. Poor Ryo could only succeed in doing one of those. Guess he should take a few notes from old Landy. What's interesting about the story is it's modeled after Yu Suzuki's writings, the guy that basically CREATED the game(his signature is on the darn thing), and "Shenmue" is actually the Prologue in that story. So basically, you work your arse off playing for at least 20+ hours to find out the first chapter hasn't even officially begun yet. The Japanese were probably honked off even more still, considering the title in the East was "Shenmue Chapter 1: Yokosuka". Mr.Suzuki is either a happy, kind man with an innovative story that can be shared in an even more innovative video game, or a cruel, demonic man who wants to turn his even more demonic story into a cashcrop series of video games. Perhaps a bit of both. Anyway, the plot's good. Yeah. 10/10.
 Sound. The soundtrack has it's high points, and it's lows. I'm not saying it's perfect or equally-perfect crap, just somewhere in between. Not every RPG can have the most amazing tracks known to man, and Shenmue makes up for it more than enough with practically everything else. The Voice Actors do a semi-good job at making the voices for every character sound believable. Sure, as I mentioned before the lips match up pretty well considering they weren't intended to, but the voices themselves were still borderline-silly at times. Don't think for second I'd let English VAs for anything off easily when they could easily do better. 7.5/10.
Replay Value. For anyone that doesn't cheat(ahem, err... I did it in moderation, and only after I completed the game), Shenmue can easily attract anyone back after one full sitting in an instant. The MASSIVE amount of things to do on the side of the basic adventure can become quite addicting, and make people sit around for hours trying to get every little toy and item they can(yes, toys). To complete the collection connecting online and trading in various things is necessary, and even then it can take forever to aquire some of the rarest items. And that is why Gamesharks are nice things. 9.5/10.
Final Thought/Overall Rating
Shenmue is just one of those games that you remember a few years down the road and say "I remember the first time I played that...". One of the few truely amazing games these days, Shenmue manages to not only become an official "EXPERIENCE", but it also manages to nab my rarely-seen Seal of Approval, and get a perfect 10/10. Screw the sound. Chai probably ate most of it.
I did actually manage to see the "bad ending". Ryo got what was coming to him, that slacker. Oh wait, I made him be like that...
-Grand Master Dragon
|
|
Articles 
