And I really hated the ending, which seemed to come completely out of nowhere in a game that, up to that point, had been at pains to emphasise how grounded and realistic it was.
Wellllllll, IIRC Shenmue 3 Spoiler - click to showbasically completely ignored all that, I cetainly don't remember Floating Magical Daggers coming up once at least. If I'm being honest, even if it was for the best…I waited a damn long time to see how they were going to address that part so that kinda hurt :p
Shenmue 1 and 2 are very different beasts - I'd say Shenmue 2 is the better game, but Shenmue 1 has the better atmosphere. There's something really magical about the small town setting and it has such a vivid sense of time and place, just really because it consists of a single street that you traverse over and over again as the seasons change around you and people go about their daily business.
It is, however, a weird prequel in that a lot of its systems don't really go anywhere. You collect capsule toys for no reason other than collecting capsule toys. It's got a really detailed fighting system and virtually no need to use it (in fact the only way to level up most of the moves is to practise kicks and punches in an empty parking lot for hours, which is very true to life but also absolutely no fun at all). The second half of the game is mostly menial tasks and then it ends just as it's getting going.
Shenmue 2 is a much more game-like environment (Hong Kong doesn't really feel like a real city at all, although Kowloon is quite atmospheric) but there's more reason to actually do stuff, the main story takes you to a lot of different places, the battle system gets fully utilised and the final ascent of the Yellowhead building is genuinely thrilling. I'm not wild about the Magic Cave either but it's certainly a twist.
For what it's worth, I like Shenmue 3 too, though you can see exactly where they ran out of money. The first half in the village is genuinely great, I think, and the actual design of the city in the second half is really good, but the plot runs out of steam very quickly and the ending, which is really the only bit where the plot moves on, looks like it should have been a whole section in its own right but has been truncated to effectively a sequence of cut-scenes. I doubt we'll ever see a Shenmue 4.
Shenmue 3 is currently on sale for £3.74 on PSN; I've never gotten around to finishing fhe first two, though.
DC Sonic and Shenmue were low points for me. This is from the person who believes the DC was the last good console.
No particular order:
Chu Chu Rocket
Crazy Taxi
Power Stone (1/2)
The Typing of the Dead
Ikaruga
Soul Calibur
NFL Blitz 2000 (the only way American Handegg is good is to dumb it down to an arcade-style game, like NBA Jam to basketball)
Marvel vs. Capcom 2
Quake Arena
Unreal Tournament
Last two are best with the broadband adapter, which I was probably one of maybe four people that owned one. Guess most people still had the beep beep boop dialup internet back then that I knew of.
Surely Outrigger was a better shooter on the Dreamcast than either Quake or Unreal Tourny? Solid list though, all great games, although I strongly disagree with you about Shenmue. 😁
Skies of Arcadia, Metropolis Street Racer, and Rez would be in there for me, too.
That list is largely comprised of games I didn’t even realise existed. Clearly I wasn’t enough of a gaming hipster back then.
As soon as you get to the top 25-30 it’s wall-to-wall bangers though. I absolutely adored my Dreamcast, and would snap up remasters of the Power Stone games in a heartbeat. Chu Chu Rocket is the one I really can’t believe has never really been revisited though. Was there just a DS version since, or something?
Surely Outrigger was a better shooter on the Dreamcast than either Quake or Unreal Tourny?
Yeah, I never played that. Missed that one, I suppose. One to add to the pile. Thing is, Quake Arena and UT99 are absolute PC classics and worked great on DC with a proper control scheme so they are high on my list. Rez and maybe MSR would be there in an expanded (top 15/20) list.
That list is largely comprised of games I didn’t even realise existed. Clearly I wasn’t enough of a gaming hipster back then.
As soon as you get to the top 25-30 it’s wall-to-wall bangers though. I absolutely adored my Dreamcast, and would snap up remasters of the Power Stone games in a heartbeat. Chu Chu Rocket is the one I really can’t believe has never really been revisited though. Was there just a DS version since, or something?
There was a GBA game and then an Apple Arcade version and that's been it.
Will someone please explain why Space Channel 5 had to be so fucking hard??? Having no on screen indicators is hard as it is but it means I don't even know how off my timing actually is, am I rushing? or am I dragging, there is no timing indicators so I'll never know 🙃
Maybe I'm just bad, people said the sequel is way more lenient and I haven't found that to be true at all. Someone help me like this game.
Part 2 is great, one of my all-time favourites. It’s especially good in Japanese because you get the original soundtrack and it doesn’t matter if you don’t understand it because it’s not like the game made any fucking sense in the first place. The bit where Michael Jackson (sorry, Space Michael) shows up in an all-over silver jumpsuit and proceeds to hee-hee his way through the second half of the game like an oven-ready turkey is one of gaming’s all-time WTF moments.
I never got on with the first one though.
There is a big feature coming up in Retro Gamer on the DC this month btw all. Just in case anyone every grabs the occasional issue of that.