Shenmue Review

For Dreamcast

Rating: Good
   Shenmue has been hyped as the future of video games, but underneath all 
the glitz and glamour lies gameplay that is more ancient than it is 
innovative.  The story is set in the year 1986, and unfortunately, the 
gameplay mechanics are straight out of 1986 as well.
   Before I say anything else, I must say that the graphics are the best I 
have ever seen in any game.  Period.  They're better than any other 
Dreamcast game on the market, and they're also better than any PlayStation 2
game on the market.  The entire game looks like a cut-scene, and sadly, the 
entire game is a cut-scene in some ways.
   The recent news that Shenmue is being turned into a movie in Japan makes 
me think that it should have been a movie in the first place.  The game is 
just as linear as a movie, and only slightly more interactive.  You are 
essentially led from one place to the next throughout the entire game, with 
no real choices to be made.
   For example, if you're supposed to talk to the local barber, everyone in 
the game world will tell you to talk to the local barber.  The barber will 
then tell you to talk to the guy at the hamburger stand, at which point 
everyone else in the game world follows his lead and gives you the same 
advice.  The hamburger guy will tell you to speak with the tobacco store 
owner, who will tell you to speak with the Chinese restaurant owner, and so 
on.  This process is repeated dozens and dozens of times throughout the 
game.
   The game holds your virtual hand the whole way through as if you're 
incapable of doing anything for yourself.  No one in the game world ever 
wonders why you're asking them unusual and suspicious questions on such a 
frequent basis.  Instead, they treat your questions casually as if you're 
talking about the weather.  The plot links between objectives are thinly-
written and make it seem like the developers were grasping at straws.
   The supposedly epic story is demeaned by the hand-holding "journal," 
which lists everything you have done and everything you still have to do.  
What kind of guy writes a journal entry whose complete text consists of, 
"Must find sailors"?  What kind of guy lists "avenge father's death" as if 
it's a casual task like washing his laundry or taking out the trash?
   Even if there was no journal in the game to detract from the story, it 
still wouldn't be anything special.  Some of the so-called plot twists can 
be seen coming a mile away.  Also, how many video games are going to have 
the story of "characters who are in love with each other but can't express 
it" before developers realize that it has been done to death and is no 
longer entertaining?
   The story is full of illogical occurrences that remind you of Sega's 
failure to make a true virtual world.  For example, you're forced to spend 
hours trying to get into a warehouse in a stealthy manner.  Then, when you 
finally get in, your character knocks on a door and says, "Excuse me" in a 
loud voice.
   Dialogue can make or break a story just as much as anything else, and 
this is another area in which Shenmue falls flat on its face.  The tacky and
shallow dialogue is the very definition of a bare-bones Japanese-to-English 
translation.  The fact that every single word of dialogue in the game is 
voice-acted doesn't change the fact it sucks.
   Even the voice acting has been put together in a sloppy way, with 
embarrassing shortcuts taken throughout the development process.  The game 
re-uses sound files to the point of absurdity.  One example is the fact that'
the main character often says "I see..." in the same exact tone of voice 
whether you're witnessing a key plot moment or listening to the town drunk 
ask for his mommy. 
   It's sad that something as simple as basic sentence structure could be 
botched, but it has been.  The main character doesn't even ask legitimate 
questions most of the time.  For example, if he wants to ask the butcher 
about a guy named Charlie, he will simply say "About Charlie..." and the 
butcher will interrupt and finish the sentence.  You mean to tell me that
every single character in the game world has the same bad habit of 
interrupting others?
   All you have to do is say hello to someone and they might say, "I'm 
sorry... I just can't now..." as if you're asking them to have a 20-minute
conversation.  In the real word, every person is unique; while in Shenmue, 
everyone falls into one of three categories.
1. People who are always hostile towards you for no apparent reason.
2. People who almost always say that they don't have time to talk to you.
3. People who almost always provide you with clues about what to do next.
   Since the vast majority of the game is spent wandering around without 
really accomplishing much of anything, you would think that the "pay-offs" 
would make up for this shortcoming.  For some reason, the pay-offs aren't 
exciting moments when all of the aggression in the game comes to a head in 
climactic sequences.
   Instead, most of the action sequences are ill-conceived "Quick Time 
Events."  A button will pop up on the screen without warning, and you have 
to press the corresponding button on your controller as quickly as possible.
If you fail, the scene simply fades to black and starts over from the 
beginning, at which point you try again until you succeed.  In any case, 
it's all over in 30 seconds and will make you scratch your head as you 
think, "That's it?"
   The in-game clock initially seems like a nice idea that makes the game 
world seem more realistic, but you will eventually grow to hate it with 
every fiber in your being.  In a nutshell, certain characters can only be 
accessed at certain times of the day and at certain places.  Besides the 
gaps in logic (you mean to tell me that someone goes to the jacket shop 
every single day at 3:00 PM?), this also results in an annoying waiting 
game.
   There's usually only one task that you can do at any given time, so
there's nothing to do but kill time and twiddle your thumbs when you're 
waiting for a timed event.  Why not make eating, drinking, and bathroom 
usage necessary for survival?  I'll tell you why: These activities aren't 
fun and wouldn't really serve their purpose of immersing you in the game 
world.  Neither does waiting for certain times in the game world, or 
returning home to sleep every night, for that matter.
   I generally have a good sense of direction in video games, but I 
sometimes feel lost in Shenmue's world.  It's not a particularly big world, 
it's just laid out in a confusing manner that forces you to think about 
where you're going a lot more than you should have to.  Another tedious 
element of Shenmue is the fact that you have to sit through ten seconds of 
loading every single time you go into or out of any building.
   Much has been said about Shenmue's living world, and how the characters 
live their own lives regardless of what you're doing.  This is true, but 
only to a small extent.  Shenmue seems like a living, breathing world at 
first glance, but its true nature is revealed when you look just a little 
bit deeper under the surface.
   While characters do go to work in the morning and return home at night, 
that's about it.  I have spent a lot of time following individual characters
just to see what they do all day, and most of them simply walk back and 
forth between two specific points on the map for the vast majority of the 
day.
   I had to start over from the beginning of the game on more than one 
occasion because Sega decided to make some of the items that are required to
beat the game inaccessible after certain points.  So, if you don't get an 
item on one disc and you move on to the next, you won't be able to get the 
item anymore and you'll have to start over.  Yu Suzuki sure is a game design
genius, isn't he?
   So, why is this game worthy of a Good rating if it's so flawed?  I have 
no idea how this feat is accomplished, but Shenmue can be mind-numbingly 
un-exciting and strangely addictive at the same time.  It's one of those 
games that makes you wonder if there's any point in playing further, and yet
you still play further.
   Eventually, this unexplainable addiction wears off and you're left with 
a game that doesn't even come close to living up to its potential.  It's 
more like watching a car crash than playing a game, as you're often 
surrounded by things that went wrong somewhere in the development process.  
Flawed in concept and even more flawed in execution, Shenmue doesn't deserve
to be anything more than a weekend rental.

Send your thoughts on this review to ivan@mastergamer.com

    
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