Endurance Run: Shenmue - Part 09

lol, spot on. The man that sounds like he swallowed a bottle brush!

Road trip!

@gregalor: But you can only attest to how easy and important it is because you have played the game.

How would they know that it's different from the outdoor trainingzones? They triggered those zones three times now, and didn't get anything out of it. Why would this trainingzone be any different? And what if it's like Persona, where time moves on if you pick one option? What if they can't go out anymore if they spend the night using the training option?

Once the game presents them with a fight that makes them rage, they might look into this training thing. As long as the fights are easy, there's no reason for them to not continue with the main quest.

@shaunk: Is it free? I pay for Giant Bomb, so I don't pay attention to what's what.

As for what I have to say about their abilities, we'll just have to disagree about that. I don't recall expecting them to be gods to gaming.

I will tell you multiple ways they could know.

Reading the manual, which covers the bedtime training very clearly.

or

Trying it ONCE. Try it, see what happens. Won't kill you. What if you can't go out anymore after doing it, you ask? It only pops up after 8:30 or so when you're about to end the day anyway. If you know you're about to sleep and save, there is literally no risk. Maybe something super cool happens! Maybe it summons a literal train that bursts through Ryo's wall to take him to Lan Di. You won't know unless you try it!

As someone who was in 100% agreement with Dan and Alex on Disney Theme Parks, my mind changed after taking my kids (then 2 and 4 years old) to the Magic Kingdom. For them it was 100% real. No one was wearing a suite, no one was playing a character. My oldest two years later talks about meeting Cinderella. It's insane. The first time I went to Disney I was 12, so I think I missed out on the magic.

So if you have kids HIGHLY recommend taking them before they age out.

YUP. If it helps, don't think of them as tips or complaints for the crew. Think of them as footnotes for the viewers who might want to know what they didn't see.

And if you think that's just noise that you don't want to see, let me direct you to the BLOCK button. You're the ones telling people to stop talking, I'm not shooting down anyone from speaking their mind here.

I like how you arbitrarily can't talk to Tom about Warehouse Number 8 because he actually works at the docks where the warehouses are, so you would just immediately circumvent this whole part of the search. So to solve this they just won't let Ryo ask him for zero reason. Good game design.

@TechnoSyndrome: That is devious and obviously deliberate, and even goes against the spirit of "everything in this game is excruciatingly as it would actually happen."

It's a strange choice, too, because all it would omit is the phone puzzle, but there are quite a few things in the game that have more than one solution. Someone must have really been in love with their phone puzzle.

(I'll bet you guys thought I was incapable of critiquing the game.)

@gregalor,

I think it would be interesting if GB did a feature on Shenmue's historical impact after the ER ended. Seriously, I've never seen someone write so many comments about something so off the radar that it's actually more interesting to me than the ER at this point. With what you've mentioned about Austin being the last person at GB to probably care about the historical significance of Shenmue, you seem genuinely concerned that the game is being sold short to a potentially massive audience through GBeast's inexperience.

I fall into a few "cult followings" myself (STALKER, Liero, Re-Volt) and also have the tendency to info-dump when those games come up in discussion, but you've probably written at least a few pages of information by now- if you continue through the entire ER you'll probably have a few dozen more.

My question to you (and anyone else who cares to answer): I've never played Shenmue and I find that this ER isn't convincing me that I'd like it at all. In an imaginary world where Vinny, Alex, and Dan were all Shenmue experts and played the game "the way it was meant to be played", do you think I'd get a different impression of it? I'm having trouble seeing what would make this game so appealing to someone who has zero nostaliga for the time in the games industry when Shenmue was released. I respect what the game did for the industry, but nothing about what I've seen so far has really grabbed me.

9 episodes in and they finally found out that you can press 'X' to open the damn journal... and Alex is yelling at Vinny to stop talking to random children. Progress!

@madbootsy: If they progress onto Shenmue II (please God let that happen) then Vinny's habit of only talking to kids will actually pay off. That's because in Shenmue II, when you ask directions from people, if they know where it is, they will actually lead you there, and the kids always run so you get there faster haha.

@flagsdev:

I think you might have a different impression of it, but that's not the same as me thinking you would want to play it or that you would even come away with a actual fondness for it. An appreciation, maybe, and even that is a big maybe.

If you asked me, "Would you recommend Shenmue to anyone?" I'd have to say No, or at least a very hesitant Yes if I thought it was the right kind of person. On a superficial level, I do personally enjoy puttering around a virtual 1980s Japanese town, but as time passes I think of it more and more academically.

The behind the scenes story is fascinating, an incredible display of hubris, at the time the most expensive game ever made, planned to be sixteen (!) installments. Then I think about how influential it was on today's games, for better or worse, introducing and popularizing QTEs (even coining the term). That's the most obvious influence off the top of my head, but there's probably more if I thought about it. And I like to look at all the things that it did that still haven't really been adopted, like high fidelity of interactivity -- the Gone Home comparison. But a lot of people didn't like Gone Home, either, even ignoring people who had issues with the narrative. So depending on your priorities when it comes to games, you just might not care about whether you can pick up and examine every object you see.

But I don't think most people are even interested in doing a "close reading" of video games yet. If they ever will. (Close readings of books is not exactly mainstream, and we've had centuries; it's something they make you do in college and then you stop. Well, I compare different drafts of Tolkien's books for fun, so that might clue you in on what I consider a good time and how I'm impervious to slow pacing.) It's easy to completely write off everything about a game if it doesn't personally appeal to you. It's hard to separate a finished product into distinct ideas, trying to ignore that it was all wrapped up in the story of a virtual guy asking for directions for 20 hours.

Bear with me as I make a Citizen Kane comparison; I am not saying that Shenmue is the Citizen Kane of video games. A lot of people lash out when they hear Citizen Kane touted as the "greatest film of all time." They say, "I watched that, and it was boring! Best movie ever made, my ass." But what critics and historians mean is not "best movie" but "most important" movie, and when you conflate personal taste with influence you end up with problems. Sure, time passes, it has aged, narrative structure is different now, pacing is different now, acting style is different now. But you can't talk about it if you don't divorce these two strata that are clinging together in your mind. Maybe you don't enjoy watching it for leisure, but there's a fascinating behind the scenes story, and there are ideas and techniques that are worth talking about, and can help you see later films differently. We should be able to do this with any game that made contributions to the medium, and Shenmue absolutely made ripples in the water.

Now I remember why I've only ever played this game once in my life.

I can see why the guys played this all in one go secretly. Shenmue fans fucking LOVE Shenmue, lol.

I feel like everyone that is enjoying this endurance run has either never played Shenmue or didn't like it. And everyone that finds this endurance run and how Vinny is playing it frustrating are the ones who really love Shenmue.

But I guess that's how the P4 and Chrono Trigger endurance runs were. People who's games they love get played how they didn't play it or get shit on because the crew doesn't like it frustrates them.

I never really got why that upsets people, though. Personally Majoras Mask is my second favorite game of all time. Jeff and Brad shit on it constantly, but it never bothers me one bit. And you know what? I'd kill to see a Brad and Jeff Majoras Mask endurance run. That'd be hilarious. I love it when the guys sound like they're dying on the inside, lol. That's what the entire Mario Party Party series is about.

Personally, I'm getting more of a Dr. Teeth vibe from Arcade Guy.

Hot Sauce challenge needs to happen, and it needs to happen on camera. Bring on Snacktaku.

I'm still somehow surprised that people are getting so intense over the way Vinny Fire Boylts his way around town

and also just getting intense over shenmue in general

(I can see why the game was influential, but I can also see why it's also sort of a bad video game because hoo boy I'd put this shit down immediately)

@onemanarmyy: This is a fair point. Based on what the game's shown them so far, combat has been a pushover, so it makes sense for the BEast crew to have been unconcerned by it at this stage.

@TechnoSyndrome: Good catch! I remembered Tom being around the docks so figured he'd point them straight there, seems unfair for the game to block that line of questioning.

@gregalor: Great post, makes me miss Austin as he added that kind of analysis to the site.

This game sucks...

So basically, the entirety of the game until getting the letter was pointless, right? I mean, if someone wants to argue she wouldn't have handed it over unless she heard these rumors about you that's a thing atleast, but the entire line of talking to this person and that person leads to beating up some thugs in a park and getting a letter that had nothing to do with them. Maybe it comes back later, but it feels like hours wasted on a side quest at this point that the game forces you to do.

The content is great to watch but the game is really awful.

Dan yet again surprised me.

@alwaysbebombing: I agree with this sentiment.

@vortextk: You could also argue that following dead end leads is a part of detectivr work.

Man, finding the warehouse district is a real "How do you get to Shell Beach" question for these people.

I can't believe I agree with Dan.

Disney sucks.

Game's quality aside, this series of ER is truly entertaining. Thank you guys I will continue watching this amazing series.

@gregalor: Yeah, but you aren't following detective leads. Your character has complete amnesia and forgot how to find a store that's like 5 feet away and other characters in the town are completely worthless. The entire game content up until this point was a dead end.

Um...

@alex@danryckert You're both objectively wrong about Disney parks. Just thought you should know that.

The real Shenmue starts here.

To answer @danryckert's question to Alex...

"HUNMHNHmmmnnnnnnnhhhunnnnnhhmmm... "

~13.2664991614216

Also, though I also like Aladdin and the Lion King, how can Dan not like the wonderful Disney film this song came from?

Weird thought: if they included the NPCs as actual people in the Shenmue amusement park, it would basically be a worse Sleep No More.

Even better:

Wow... I had no idea Jackie Chan was such a talented singer, too!

Episode 10

http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/endurance-run-shenmue-part-10/2300-11562/

In this episode, a stunning cliffhanger of taking a bus ride.

I'll admit: there's something oddly endearing about Ryo, who can kick the absolute shit out of 90% of this game's toughs, still gets tongue-tied anytime someone starts shouting at him.