Endurance Run: Shenmue - Part 12

first! =] So looking forward to this next few episodes!

spoielrs

More Shenmue! Thats how I like to start my week!

I hope roofman shows up again

lets do this

One hour of Vinny not understanding you press A to examine things. It's nothing to do with the level of zoom. The only way to not examine something is to press B when looking at it instead of A.

Man, it is devastating to know that they reach the item they need 17 minutes in, but don't think to press A.

I get that a prompt would help (and Shenmue II does add a better HUD like that), but they spent the entire episode interacting with items without a prompt and already established that the prompt doesn't always show on smaller objects.

Even without a prompt, what's the harm in just pressing A? Have modern games made us entirely unwilling to just try buttons out to see what they do?

Wow they couldn't have gotten candles any more wrong.

The wax is the fuel. The flame melts the wax, the wick draws up the liquid, it vaporizes at the top and the vapor burns.

"I was staring at a candle recently..."

- Dan Ryckert, 2016

Ominisk is a good accidental word!

HOMEAL BUM

Turns out Ryo was living in the House of Leaves all this time!

17:22

GOD DAMNT DAN

A notable plot element for this game is that Ryo does not speak Chinese. In Shenmue 2, he spends most of his time in Hong Kong where he has no problem communicating with everyone...

Breaking Vinny: Finding a key.

I know they think that blaming the game for every time they hit a snag is funny, but when it involves missing very obvious stuff because they never read the manual or don't care to pay attention, it's extremely grating and their fault. Yeah, the game has aged, and can be clunky, but if they knew the controls and paid attention to the flow of conversation/quest progression, they'd would know how to interact with everything, and would also know how to save time when asking people for clues.

All of these items they've found recently could have been acquired on the first disc, and they could have saved time by not asking people the same thing over and over once they got a clue that moved things along.

@vlaphor: He also spent a month on the ship between Japan and Hong Kong with (I assume) multi-lingual passengers. Ultimately, it's a plot convenience/contrivance and shouldn't be looked into much more than Solid Snake not using CQC until MGS4.

4:24 "Have we been missing collectibles this whole time?" Yep, and it's your fault, not the game's. Game provides the player with 3 forms of tutorial: Manual, Help Button and Shenmue Passport. In addition to that, is your own predefined expectations and misconceptions of what you thought Shenmue would be. Shenmue is a game which dares the player to be bored and just stop and look around the environment, if Vinny had known that, perhaps he wouldn't have got so frustrated about the game's slow parts. It's a bit like playing Dark Souls, knowing you're going to die a lot, and not getting too annoyed when you do.

so this was the fusing episode right?

Even I'll admit that the prompt action for that little box was OVERLY fussy. Then again MOST people had looked around the house first when the game starts. Its possible to find the key very early and at that point you cannot take it. Also, that letter on the father's desk only works in the early game. There are a lot of object props in the house that only work early on for story bits.

@monkeyking1969: Incorrect. You can take the key from day one, and the letter also works through the whole game. They just didn't press A.

At what point did they find "The Shemue"?

is finding the key the new 'pick up the purse'? XD great episode XD

I can't read Chinese

That is the most amazing game marketing tag I've ever read.

I just beat Shenmue last night, so I no longer have to worry about staying ahead of the crew here. Then again, based on the comments so far, maybe I didn't have much to worry about with their current pace.

Going into Ryo's desk drawer was one of the first things I did in the game. Maybe I'm just more of an exploratory gamer? Then again, I feel like with most of these long playthroughs, the Giant Bomb crew does miss things, unless it's Dan with MGS1. It's probably just out of a concern for time, being recorded, and/or trying to be interesting. I don't think it's a lack of skill or willful ignorance. Maybe they just need to go into these things with more planning/research?

As for the game itself, I think it definitely holds up. I enjoyed my time with the game. There are some flaws and issues, most of which being the controls. The movement and fighting just don't feel good to me. Other than that though, it's a good game. It's a shame it never got an HD remaster on the 360.

I am beginning to think Shenmue is a game made by someone who was described what an adventure game is in overly simple terms such as "You walk around, you find things, you ask people things" and didn't actually know anything else about why people liked them.

Also I can't believe Dan still says this is a good game. It is ok to like something and it be a bad game, but man even for its time this game just seems soo bad. I also can appreciate neat things it did for its time, but I see it as a bad game as well.

@vlaphor said:

Maybe he learned it during the time I dunno lol. Also it should be noted that written Chinese written vs spoken is a more complex situation than how say English is for us in how you define a language vs a writing system. But yeah I haven't seen Shenmue 2, so probably it is a plot hole if he magically can read and speak perfectly both, or he just studied really really hard lol.

I'm really glad to see that they spent an episode searching for stuff. I'm actually really glad they missed the key the first time so they could go find scrolls and all sorts of crazy stuff. I hope the "collectables bug" gets into vinny and it gets him to explore a bit more.

Their reactions are totally within line for a group of friends/coworkers playing a game together and overlooking something obvious, I really don't know why people here are get offended. It's better then if they got all mopey and self-flagellating about it. The lesson is learned and they'll try pushing A on more things. All in all a great episode!

"If you fail the warehouse stealth section too many times Lan Di shows up and kills you."

I'm... I'm not sure that thats entirely true. Thats just what happens if you drag your feet and don't get shit done by a certain time.

I mean, are we assuming everyone in this game is speaking Japanese, including the Chinese ex-pats? I guess that makes sense, but maybe we're not meant to think so hard about it.

I love the argument that this game is good if you play it like LSD: Dream Emulator. The problem is that Vinny has producer mind where everything has to be moving forward, Alex has negative nancy mind where his first instinct is to dismiss everything, and they also had a time limit playing this game. And to all people talking about the manual and other external resources, yeah sure. But how much outside searching do you expect them to do? Maybe Shenmue isn't the best game to entertainingly LP in a reasonable time AND get the intended experience?

Ooh, goody!

EDIT: "What does Shenmue Jones keep in his drawers?"

Considering they looked at the object they needed to pick up at the 17 minute mark and went nope because the game doesn't prompt them to (which hasn't other times they've picked things up) I think is very telling that this is not the play through one should be watching to judge the game on. Just watch it for the GBeast crew saying dumb shit and having a laugh.

There are enough movies where everyone magically speaks English, I suppose we can let it slide.

Maybe he can speak English and is getting by that way in Hong Kong? A lot of people there can speak at least some English since it used to be a colony.

rip shenmue

Even if they had already found what they were searching for early on, at least they were forced to look around the house in this episode. Isn't that what some of you guys have been clamoring for up until now?

Actually you can since I started playing it again recently and I got the key and unlocked the sword chest and put it in the slot before even heading out to Yamanose and those places for the first time.

Dan's never seen an oil lamp...yet has seen Bray Wyatt matches for God knows when. Dan Ryckert everyone!

I feel the thing missing from Shenmue is more Shenmue. It should go full Inception so you can start playing a new game of Shenmue on the Saturn whilst playing Shenmue.

I now feel like I have full knowledge of the layout and drawer contents of the Hazuki household. I love when they find the key the first time, they put it back. I'm sure this episode irritated Shenmue players to no end but I found it hilarious.

So, they finally did one of the things Shenmue people were demanding to properly show of the game: looking around the house...and boy that sure was much more exciting than everything else before.

Shenmue let me go on an adventure in Japan when I was a kid, and I'll always remember it with love.

That being said, Shenmue is obtuse, strangely designed, and most of the voice acting is terrible. It's not fair to expect Alex or Vinny to be able to engage with it the way a teen did sixteen years ago, so I think folks should take a deep breath and try to enjoy this play-through for what it is -- a chance to spend time with these goofy boys.

It was all worth it for the reaction at the end. Keep it coming.

This was a funny episode.