Jun 27

Jun 27 Shenmue 2

PlayStation, Backlog, Game Reviews, Dreamcast

Take me back to Birkenhead/Yokosuka

Oh Shenmue, I adore the first one, it blew my adolescent mind back around Christmas 2000. Rinsing it at my best friends house marvelling at the detail, day & night cycles & the novelty of QTEs. There’s something about the drab ‘Japanese Birkenhead on a overcast winter day’ feels of the first game that to this day I enjoy revisiting.

As a result, Shenmue 2 was a must purchase the following year, the Dreamcast was dying on it’s arse by then; PS2 was fully on the scene by this point and Sega at the start of the year had already announced that it was leaving the hardware business altogether. And here I was with my Dreamcast with a nice freshly minted copy of Shenmue 2 ready to go, a completed save from perhaps my favourite game on the system (either that or MSR) ready to pick back up Ryo Hazuki’s quest for revenge on the mean streets of Hong Kong. A last hurrah for the Dreamcast as 2001 drew to a close, the “War on Terror” was picking up apace, the Xbox & GameCube had just launched. Halo is a thing, Rogue Squadron was wowing folks with it’s movie-like visuals & Metal Gear Solid 2 was predicting the future of the internet...

... and here’s Ryo, stood upright and emotionlessly calling out into the void; “Who wants to play Lucky Dip?”.

Gaming had moved on, and so did I, I checked out fairly early on and didn’t return to Aberdeen, Hong Kong until 2019 and the PS4 port of Shenmue 1 & 2. Fresh off a happy nostalgia trip through Yokosuka in Shenmue PS4 (a game I platinumed in about a week) I resolved to actually finish the cliffhanger of all cliffhangers - around 18 years later it was time to finish Shenmue 2.

Unfortunately, I really didn’t enjoy it, in fact I may go as far to say that I hated my Shenmue 2 experience. First things first, these games were never made to be seen on anything other than a CRT TV. The lighting in particular is extremely flat and gives the second game a really odd, brightly lit and flat appearance generally. Shenmue 1’s dour winter palette held up better on my PS4 Pro whereas the bright blue skies and red brick of the opening areas of the sequel really don’t look great to my eyes, makes the sequel look less coherent and ‘solid’ than its forbearer. There’s a lot more going on in the sequel with bigger areas across the board, I just find the setting far less appealing than ol’ Dobuita street of the original, but nostalgia and personal preference are definitely factors here.

“It’s too late for me Ryo, they stretched my face with that facelift machine from Star Trek Insurrection… now go place some cups on a table and wait motionless for six hours waiting for a sign”

There is a clash of tone between the constituent parts of the Shenmue ‘saga’, for all it’s warts, stone mirrors and drunk sailors there’s a “realness” to the first game that I found wears away the further and further Ryo gets along in his quest for revenge, the dour Japanese port town feels gives way to romanticised Kung fu fantasy. It feels less and less real, and I feel more and more detached from this weird unblinking t-1000 of a Japanese Teenager.

One moment I’m airing books for days on end, or perhaps manning a lucky hit stand for the hopes of some Hong Kong dollar, or even being chased around a crumbling apartment building by an chainsaw wielding woman and hulking Kingpin like Chinese Gangster there is a consistent inescapable boredom of which I cannot escape. I just didn’t ‘buy-in’ to what’s going on, I don’t care. And fuck me, the “command QTE” mechanic introduced in this sequel can fuck right off, the last thing the QTE system needed was to be come more complex. Why should I have to press Down, Up, Down & CROSS to dodge a Watermelon? That said, it was pretty funny seeing a Chinese gangster pick up and throw a watermelon at another human being screaming “Die!”.

Perhaps playing Shenmue 2 has helped me understand the other perspective on Shenmue, what’s like to *not* like Shenmue, that it’s a weird, and often tedious exploration of what a video game could be at the end of the previous century. We as an industry certainly hadn’t figured everything out when this game came along when it came to 3D RPGs, and while we still haven’t really seen anything quite like Shenmue since (least as far as I’m aware), at least we’ve figured out that we should just let dialogue play out naturally instead of needing to press fucking ‘talk’ after each and every utterance.

***There are a few… erm, problematic aspects to this game even for a 2001 audience***

I still love the first one though, and if I somehow came across a bazillion pounds, I’d still like to have a crack at reimagining these games. Shenmue the third is now in my crosshairs, but firstly as I’m writing this I’m playing another game about revenge; The Last of Us 2 and to try and wrap this up quickly so I can go back to looking for Le Cigare Volant in TLOU2’s Seattle, would I recommend Shenmue 2 to someone who hasn’t played it before?

***Interesting take on Christianity in Hong Kong…***

I don’t think I could; I do think it’s worth your consideration if you are interested in retro video games and the history of ‘cinematic’ / ‘real life’ RPG history and in all seriousness, the ambition of the game especially for it’s time is still super impressive, even if some characters look like they were born in the wrong aspect ratio or are horrific looking stereotypes.

***Just think, someone was paid to make that face***

Unfortunately Ryo’s most enigmatic(?), charismatic(?) feature is the plaster on his cheek, and that doesn’t make for a captivating experience in the space year 2020. He was a bit of a blank space to begin with, but in this sequel he generally seems so disconnected, dispassionate and well, dumb that most events just generally happen to him. Scenes of what I believe were meant to be emotionally important for his character, his new master telling him not to seek revenge just fall flat, emotionless and blank. Why would these people care about Ryo? All that said, there is a bit of character expression and development in the excruciatingly long walk to the village right and the end of the game, but it’s slim pickings in fairness. I wish there was more of that in the main game.

Now this is a 20 year old game now and I don’t want to be too harsh on it, but I definitely passed up on this game back in 2001/2 for a reason, it just didn’t land for me. It was a weird time for the world, but certainly myself, I was finishing school, probably in sixth form at this point? Parents finally getting divorced and all that, was a difficult time & in fairness I don’t remember a whole lot from those years, but I do remember where I stopped with Shenmue 2 on the dreamcast. It was the lucky hit stand just down the road from the hostel you stay at, a drab sad corner of a video game world, would have been late at night, 10pm, I’m trying to make some dollar so I can make rent for the night & a person approaches down the street, they slowly walk towards my stand for what feels like an eternity.