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Jan 12th, 2008 at 19:48:32 - Shenmue (DC) |
Gameplay
As I got into the rhythm of receiving the instructions "Go here and talk to X," doing what I was told, rinsing and repeating, I almost looked forward to completing the tasks set before me, if only so I could get through this game and get it over with.
As much as I wanted to get into the story, I found myself caring more about the minigames than I did about the nuggets of plot advancement I was alotted in between sessions of timwasting waiting for NPCs to spawn or open shop.
The few actual action scenes I got to play through were short, remedial, and left me feeling completely disconnected from the, albeit occasionally awesome, kung-fu the main character executes.
Design
The central flaw is that this is a story driven, character based game with a boring, slow, story and flat, uninteresting characters, a fact not helped by their ridiculous voice over acting, terrible script, and often creepy graphical rendering. Shenmue does it's best to make the player feel immersed in a real life city where they have free roam, but if they actually look around, they'll realize that the world is as linear as the story they're torturously muddling through. Any sense of exploration, which itself is quickly followed by a sense of being lost and frustrated, is quickly killed as soon as the player learns where the dozen or so shops they're allowed to enter are located, and attempts to move on to a different part of the city are met with invisible walls and the main character reciting "I should look for more clues here first."
The "interactive" cutscenes amount to little more than button mashing, and are over too quickly to hold the player's attention. When not in cutscene mode, movement controls are cumbersome and clumsy, and the fighting techniques are too complex to execute with any sort of strategy.
I suppose it should be noted that the limited openness the game does allow was somewhat ahead of its time--things like a day/night cycle and NPC routines independent of the player. It's fortunate that games with better core-mechanics of gamepay would later adopt these features.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jan 12th, 2008 at 19:52:06.
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Jan 12th, 2008 at 16:11:22 - Shenmue (DC) |
Summary
This is a cinematic style adventure game. Gameplay takes place wandering through the town the protagonist lives in or through interactive cutscenes requiring timed pressing of sequences of buttons. The objective is apparently to uncover the details surrounding the main character's father's death, with the ultimate goal of avenging it.
Gameplay
Initially, the game set itself up to be an interactive form of a cheezy kung-fu movie. I was stoked as the first cutscene ended, as this is a genre of movie close to my heart. However, once control of the character was relinquished to me, the pace of the game itself quickly put me to sleep. The actual mechanics of moving and fighting were cumbersome and difficult to work with.
The story was relieved in agonizingly slow bits of dialogue, with people telling you who to get the next piece of information from. The redeeming parts of the game involved completely random bonuses. Of particular note involved prank calling directory assistance, looking at a cutely rendered cat in a box, and full playable versions of Space Harrier and Hang On, and joking with other people in the room about the terrible script, voice acting, and mundane gameplay.
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