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Shenmue - Weltall - 26th May 2005
Shenmue is perhaps one of the most ambitious projects in videogame history. The brainchild of Sega genius Yu Suzuki, Shenmue is the story of Ryo Hazuki, a teenager in the town of Yokosuka in Japan. The Hazukis are a long line of martial arts experts, and Ryo's father in particular has been particularly adventurous. One snowy day in December of 1986, a group of men led by the Chinese terrorist Lan Di attacked and murdered Iwao Hazuki. Ryo tried to intercede, but neither was he a match for Lan Di's incredible power. As Ryo watched his father die in his arms, he swore revenge upon Lan Di and his associates.
It is your duty as Ryo to begin the hunt in Yokosuka. Though Ryo is thirsty for blood, he quickly realizes he is up against something larger than he thought, and he knows next to nothing about his nemesis. This game is the first of what is expected to be a series of several games, and in this first game, you are attempting to learn about Lan Di's activities in and around town.
Gameplay: 10/10
At the very heart of it, Shenmue is little more than a standard detective story, with a few fights and fetch-quests thrown in for variety. To leave it at that would do a great disservice to this game, however, because Shenmue's greatness lies not in the overall story concept, but in the technological manner in which the story progresses.
A majority of the game is spent in what is called the FREE system, which essentially places you in a third-person perspective in which you guide Ryo around the environments of Yokosuka. There are dozens of people to talk to and dozens of places to see. Almost every object in the game can be examined or manipulated, and a good half of Shenmue is collecting items.
Several times in the game you are forced into action sequences, which have two different and distinct flavors. The first, and more common, is the QTE, or Quick Time Event. To successfully complete a QTE, you must have exceptional reflexes, for the whole idea is to press a button, or a series of buttons, within a very short period of time as you are prompted on screen. QTEs can vary in their application, though they are most often implemented while Ryo is fighting enemies or during various chase/escape scenes. You are given one or two chances to fail and continue, more than this will result in you being forced to begin the event again.
The other type of action sequence is the Free Battle, in which you control Ryo freely in combat with one or several enemies. You have the ability to move and to use literally dozens of martial arts moves against your foes, with various kicks, punches, grabs and throws, blocks and counters. The combat system is rather deep, and your skill improves with practice. Ryo has the ability to practice his moves in various areas of the game. Your special moves become more effective with use and practice, so the practice mode helps you by not only allowing you familiarity with the control scheme, but by learning the button combinations that trigger Ryo's many special moves, and making those moves stronger and more effective with use. Ryo begins the game already knowing several moves, and throught the game, you will come across many scrolls that will teach you newer and more devastating attacks. Mastering these attacks and defenses is crucial to surviving later combats, and the combo system is so varied and deep that it allows you to basically create your own style of combat, utilizing whichever moves you personally find to be the most effective.
When you are not fighting or running, there's still tons and tons to do. There is a lot of territory available to explore. You have an entire town and several neighborhoods to see, each filled with buildings and people and objects. You can talk to anyone you want, and in fact will spend quite a lot of time doing so to learn about Lan Di, by learning developments from some characters, and using these clues to help you continue. You will probably also spend a lot of time searching the various environments, both because the story requires it, and because there's just simply so much to see. The scale on which this game was developed blows everything else away, and nothing even since has come as close to creating a convincing facade of a living, breathing community. Almost every building in the game can be entered, and almost every one of them has something interesting to see or do. In the commercial district of Dobuita, for instance, there are a myriad of shops and games Ryo can see, and you will certainly find yourself distracted from the quest for Lan Di possibly for several entire gameplay-days immersed in this virtual playground. There is an arcade in which you can play several classic Sega games, a house of slots where you play slot machines to earn tokens that can be exchanged for prizes, a fortune teller who directs you when you lose your way, several different convenience stores that sell all sorts of trinkets and items, a dojo to train your moves with a partner, and many more.
Several of these attractions require money, of course. You start with a goodly amount of money, more than you will likely ever need, and at the beginning of each day, you are given a little more as an allowance. Eventually, you find yourself in the position of needing a great deal of money in one particular story event, and this necessitates the second major part of the game, in which Ryo finds employment as a forklift driver in Yokosuka Harbor.
Graphics: 10/10
Shenmue is a thing of sheer beauty, even despite graphical imperfections. The sheer scale of everything, the meticulous attention to detail, all of it leads to the graphics of Shenmue being far more than the sum of its parts. Speaking to characters usually places you in a close-up view of their face, where you can see great detail in play. Character faces are full of detail, and have very realistic movement. The environmental graphics will simply stun you stupid, even if you've played it before and are coming back to it after years of inactivity, you will be amazed at what AM2 was able to pull off. The detail is amazing, even more when you consider just how many hundreds of aspects of the environment are important for you to find and examine. More than anything else, it is the graphics that force your attention, and immerse you completely in this fantasy world. You may often find yourself wanting to do nothing but walk around and look at things, just for the hell of it. Hell, you might just want to see the sun go down or the weathe change from rain to snow. It's that good.
Sound: 6/10
If Shenmue has a shortfall, it is in the sound department. The music of Shenmue is actually rather great, and there are dozens of tracks, many of which are playable either on various jukeboxes around town, or on cassettes that you find or buy, and play either in your portable cassette player, or in your friend Tom's boombox. Walking around town is usually accompanied by serene, low-key tunes. Most places indoors have distinct themes, and of course cut-scenes and fight scenes also have their own as well. These are all very well-done and fun to listen to.
The problem with the sound category is in the voice-acting. Quite simply, it's atrocious. Lines are delivered with all the subtlely of a tank firing shells at a nitroglycerin plant. Scenes that should be full of emotion come across sounding funny or stupid. Some characters have a tendency to scream and yell their lines, whether they are warning you of an imminent threat to your life, or if they're simply commenting on the weather. The game probably would have fared better here if there had been no English dubbing, or if you had the option of leaving the Japanese voices with English subtitles. Unfortunately, you do not, and this sorely detracts from the immersion of the story when all of these Japanese people sound like bit-actors in American horror movies.
Control: 7/10
The reason I score this so high is that when control counts most, notably QTEs and fight scenes, the control is crisp and responsive. Mistakes that occur will almost always be your own fault, though understandable and forgivable since this game is very demanding on your reflexes. The reason I score this so low is because the control scheme for simply walking around is slow and clunky. Ryo steers like a Mack truck, sadly. There is no way to quickly turn, and it is easy to get stuck by objects or people. It requires a bit of precision, and after about a half-hour of play you'll find yourself used to its quirks, but nevertheless, it could have been far more fluid than it is.
Final Score: 9/10
With an interesting story, sheer fascinating environments, so much to do and so much to see, there is absolutely no reason that any of us who still own Dreamcasts should not have this game in our collections. In fact, I would suggest purchasing a Dreamcast for this game alone. It is so easy to get lost in this world, so easy to waste hours and hours of your own life here, that you owe it to yourself to track down a copy. If you can overlook its flaws, you will find one of the most unique and fun videogames ever created.