Shenmue revisited

I asked for Shenmue as a Christmas present the year it was released, 2000 to be precise. It was heavily hyped at the time because of its supposed innovation. I had only ever seen screenshots in magazines, and with no Youtube at the time I had little to go on in terms of its actual gameplay mechanics. But it still interested me nevertheless, it was also clear that martial arts would play a crucial role within the game, and I was heavily into all things martial arts at the time.

To make sure that my mum got me the game, a few days before the big day I found out where all the presents were hidden. So I looked through the big, black bag where it was being kept, and to my relief, it was there alongside one of the Harry Potter games.

Given the acronym, F.R.E.E (full reactive eyes entertainment), Shenmue was something of a revolution at the time, with its night and day weather cycle, its semi-open world, and non playable characters that seemed to live their own daily lives.

I instantly fell in love with the game once I got my hands on it, I was completely immersed in the world and the story that unfolds as you play, as well the combat and quick time events that were thrilling to take part in. I must have completed the game at least four or five times, even to this day it’s not often I come across a game that hooks me in such a way.

With the Dreamcast dead, I mistakenly got rid of my Shenmue disks, and I have always wanted to go back to the game. I genuinely thought it would never happen because buying a second hand Dreamcast with the game is fairly expensive. But my luck changed, with Shenmue 3 on the horizon, there was demand for a port of the first two games. A demand that became reality when it was announced that they were to be ported to the current generation of consoles.

I was obviously ecstatic but a little wary, I would once again get to replay one of my top 5 favourite games of all time. But, how well would the game hold up to my current standards of gaming? With all of my doubts and expectations out of the way, I recently bought the Shenmue bundle with both games for £22.49 on the PS store.

So have my expectations and doubts been met? Yes and no is the short answer. Shenmue is unquestionably still an immersive experience that brings back a lot of childhood nostalgia for me, but if I take my nostalgia glasses off, I have to admit that it has many problems that hold it back, problems that were far easier to ignore nearly two decades ago.

Despite being semi-open world, at heart Shenmue is an adventure game set in 1980s Japan, with a blend of other genres mixed in. The game is heavily driven by its investigative narrative as you go in search of Lan Di, the Chinese man who killed your father in front of you. So there is a lot of going here, going there, talk to this person, wait to go talk to this person. And in-between that you have some exploration and combat to get through, including a rather difficult but enjoyable forklift racing section.

Let’s begin with the positives, the game still hits me emotionally, the music is subtle but always engaging. While the world is small, and rather bland when you compare it to modern game settings, It still pulled me in and it made me feel like I was living in a real place, and one that I would want to visit. There are so many little nuances in the world that poke at your immersion, no matter how dull it can be.

While the lead character Ryo Hazuki has little in the way of personality, the supporting characters are really interesting, and elevate what is an engaging but otherwise lightweight story. There’s not too many of them, but the quick time events that the game pioneered at the time, are intense and cinematically choreographed. Every time you complete a sequence, you really do feel like you’ve accomplished something.

The voice acting and script writing is objectively bad, and it might be really off putting for some, but I actually think it’s funny and gives the game some charm. It has the impact of one of those badly dubbed Hong Kong movies from the 70s and 80s.

With everything said, even as a huge fan of the game, it has unquestionably dated in a lot of ways. This is to be expected for a game that was trying to do something that had never been attempted before, from both a technical and conceptual point of view. The game could be best seen as a prototype to other games that came after its release.   

Aside from the obviously dated graphics (which don’t take any heart away from the game), the combat is serviceable at best, the controls while given an update are still cumbersome. Although they aren’t terrible and you’ll eventually get used to them.

While the locations have their charm and character, they are rather mundane and you’ll quickly get to a point where you’ll have nothing left to discover.

But the biggest issue I had on replaying the game was the abundance of free time that you have from one plot progression to the next. There are points in the game where you’ll have to meet someone the following day at a certain time, leaving you with nothing to do of any great substance. You can lose yourself in the in game arcade where you can play darts or the classic Space Harrier, but that won’t keep you busy for too long.

This is just one example of where the game’s ambitious realism holds back its pace in a bad way. For first time players this might not be such a big issue, but it just made me feel disengaged.

After nearly two decades, I’m glad I went back to Shenmue, it is still one of my favourite games of all time, simply because of the wonderful first time experience I had with it. It leaves me excited for Shenmue 3, which has now been given an August 2019 release date.

If you have never played Shenmue 1 and 2, I’d recommend giving them a try for the price that it’s being retailed at. For a decent price you have two games with a hefty amount of content. However, make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into, so I’d recommend you watch snippets of an early walkthrough on the internet. Despite its glaring flaws, Shenmue will leave you with an experience like no other.

Reflecting back on Mad Max (the video game)

Back in April of this year, Mad Max was one of the games that was free with the PS Plus subscription. It was a title I'd always taken a look at but never went over the line to purchase, it wasn't the price because you can get it for under £10 in most places. I think it was the repetitive nature of its open world, a genre that I had briefly grown tired of at the time.

I like open world games as much as the next person, I certainly like them more than I would have if you asked me five years ago. But I'd become a bit bored of them, it was one of the reasons why I never warmed to Horizon Zero Dawn, and why I never completed Assassin's Creed Origins. But with the game still in my library at the beginning of June, and with nothing else to play, I finally jumped in, and boy am I glad I did.

I finished the game over a two week period, and I have been meaning to write this blog since, but I've been busy with other things in my life. But on reflection, the game is still fresh in my mind.

Mad Max is not too dissimilar to what you might expect in an Ubisoft game. There is a big map which is divided up into different sections, in these sections there are a truckload of collectables to chase, enemy bases to ransack and beat through, with the customary mini games included, such as racing.

In terms of its presentation, the open world in Mad Max is a bit of a deviation from the norm. This world is no urban sprawl full of skyscrapers and wonderful beaches, this is a post apocalyptic landscape that has been devastated by the remnants of nuclear bombs. The map is big and rather sparse of anything to really explore, what could be the game's weakness is actually its strength. This world is full of sandstorms, damaged terrain and abandoned signs of life that existed in a world that was long gone. One of the collectables you pick up are old photographs of places and people, these are littered around the map, and create a sense of depth to what is an otherwise threadbare plot.

To get across this barren world, you have a car that is essential to the game, you have to upgrade it to progress further in the story, and upgrading your car is by all accounts the focus of the game. At face value it isn't anything we haven't seen before, but the vehicle controls are probably the best I have ever played, nothing has quite come close to the thrill of blasting my way across the landscape in this game, or breaching an enemy camp while using a rocket launcher or a harpoon that is attached to your car. It really is bags of fun.

The combat is the other aspect to the game that I found myself completely immersed in. Although you get a shotgun, ammo is rare to come across, and the gunplay is secondary to the hand to hand fighting for the most part. The combat is based on the Arkham games, which I'm not a big fan of. But unlike the Batman games where the combat system is created to make the player feel powerful and the combos look cinematic, in Mad Max, while the combat has been designed to feel cinematic, it's nowhere near as floaty and derivative.

And unlike the Arkham games, the combat can be difficult to master, counter punching and blocking play a pivotal role. The enemies will generally try and surround you, and then attack in numbers. The camera has a tendency to not keep pace with the action, so you'll have plenty of moments where an enemy will suddenly appear from nowhere and get a cheap shot on you, It's only a minor negative nevertheless. Your combat skills can be upgraded just as your vehicle can be, this will involve the usual video game tropes of improving your hit power and health bar, but they do genuinely mix up the action for the better.

While you will be in the same fights with the same enemy types over and over, the combat was absolutely delightful.

The game does have its problems, as I stated earlier, the gameplay loop can be very tedious, the mechanics are pretty solid, but there's no doubt that some people might get bored or rather disengaged with the whole experience. It doesn't help that the story is threadbare, until the last stages of the game, the narrative is pretty much non-existent. Although I wish there could have been a better plot to drive the game, it didn't stop my overall enjoyment, the world was extremely immersive, and so much of the subtle details like the collectable photos nearly made up for it.

All of these are just little problems that I had with the game, but my biggest problem was the controls and the invisible walls. Controlling Max can at certain points feel like a real slog. I understand what the developers were going for with the realistic feel to the game, especially when you consider the kind of setting you're exploring. But I just wish that Max was just that little bit more agile, just so it didn't feel like I was getting a delayed response from my controller. 

In conclusion, Mad Max ended up being somewhat of a hidden gem for me, I generally think it's a little underrated. A game that was probably released at the wrong time, and one that didn't quite change up the formula for a lot of critics. If I were to score it, I'd give it a respectable 7/10, it's good game that really lacks a narrative foundation that could have lifted it higher.

If you missed the PS plus free copy, you can get a second hand one for real cheap. So I'd recommend giving it a try, especially if you're into your open world, Ubisoft type games.