Endurance Run: Shenmue - Part 23

ER lives

Forget Lan Di. Let's just hang out with Mark.

Drowning is terrible and painful yes, but there is often a brief moment of euphoria the body experiences right before you lose consciousness due to the lack of oxygen.
So I don't think it has anything to do with drowning specifically.

Why would Vinny think the game is resolved when there's a Shenmue 2 and eventually 3? Shenmue 2 doesn't even barely resolves anything and feature Lan Di for about 10 seconds.

I have completely done a 180 on this game. I hated it back when it came out. I hated it at the start of this feature. Now I am suddenly in love with it. What the hell?

Yeahhhhhhhhhh dawwwwwwwwg!

@hidden81: That's just what Shenmue does to you if you stick with it. :)

Kind of enjoying whenever Alex or Vinny suggest the sequel might have revised, improved, or expanded gameplay and Dan gets oddly quiet.

Vinny only lost the race because he didn't raise his lift during.

...so really NONE of them can read a map...or remember where they were 40 seconds ago.

Dan calling Ine-san "Innie-san" has me cracking the fuck up.

@bocckob: The sequel DID improve and expand a lot of things. Dan is quiet because he doesn't know, because he never played it.

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. :D

@hidden81: The transformation is complete!

@dudelongcouch: Innie and Outie-san

If drowning wasn't so bad what about waterboarding torture? Damn terrifying.

What's groovin bro?!

The forklift stuff is great, and the lunch break is tolerable, but the after work sections are the most bullshit part of this game so far. There has been almost nothing of importance that has happened during that time, and you don't even have the early game distractions like the cat, the arcade, and capsules to pass the time. just a bunch of people who don't want to talk to you. Why do they lock you there when there is nothing to do?

The 'drowning is peaceful' thing comes from two different things. The first is that to an untrained eye the instinctive drowning response, basically the "I'm out of strength and about to sink under the waves for good"-response, does not look like the victim is in distress, even though they very much are.

The second is that lack of oxygen to the brain makes you feel kinda giddy and lighthearted, at least for the few seconds you're still conscious.

Aside from those it's literally the worst thing, wouldn't recommend trying.

I assume the old lady waiting at the park in the beginning of the game also died as they didn't go tell her where the house is.

"You're gonna pay for beating up Goro!"
"You his girlfriend??"

"I DON'T HAVE A GIRLFRIEND"

I peed my pants. Vinny is the best

I gotta say, Vinny might have the worst sense of direction I've ever seen in a person.

Talking about death and someone says they'd ideally be "surrounded by family, mid 80's", there's no way to interpret that other than age, Alex is a crazy person.

@paulunga: Yeah, God save me if I'm ever lost in the woods with him hahaha.

That's one of the main reasons it is imperative that they do an ER for Shenmue II. It's a larger game and some of the areas can be maze-like. If they can't even handle the 3 roads that comprise each area in 1, then 2 is going to be like a blackhole for them.

Having spoiled myself on the Shenmue story (because the pace of the game + Endurance Run daily upload is like molasses), I'm actually kinda jazzed for what's coming up next. Also knowing that they finished this ER before PAX, they don't have a ton of game hours left.

Actually, they could hang out inside the harbor Tomato store buying capsules, playing darts or getting raffle tickets. I also think it's kinda bullshit that the game locks you in, but there you go.

Wow, Alex finally basically says what I've been saying in the comments all along, that one's enjoyment of Shenmue is entirely a subjective thing. For some people, Shenmue is boring, for others it's a unique and immersive experience.

I think the game is the most bullshit part of the game so far, I wouldn't narrow it down to just disc 3.

No matter what side of the fence you're on with Shenmue, you gotta love Mark. He's just the best.

@hidden81: The Shenmue Curse

Vinnie always tries to turn right at that last left turn and I'm just so confused. I think he's also never cut that corner right before that turn.

To me shrugging critique off as subjective just comes off like trying to mute the opposition. Obviously everybody has their perspective of any artwork, the value in that perspective comes from the discourse. I invite somebody to tell me I'm wrong about something because that leads to a conversation that I can actually learn from.

Also the subjectivity thing is getting to be a little too "Kumbaya" for my blood. You can absolutely, definitely be fucking wrong about your perspective on something. People misread shit all the time. When somebody walks away from Fight Club thinking it's about kicking their friend's ass, sure that's their opinion, but like the folks who think the earth is flat, it's a wrong one.

Enjoy a thing if you want to, but just placidly letting art wash over you and dismissing any critical thought with "this is all subjective, man" seems really limiting.

@mrcraggle: tbh when I played Shenmue 1 originally I thought Hong Kong was in there.

@hatking: Dismissing anyone's enjoyment of Shenmue as being 'the wrong perspective' also 'seems really limiting'.

The important ingredient you're missing is the discourse. I'm not advocating for dismissing anything.

"There's Master Chen's place, but there's no phone, so we're definitely not missing out on anything there..."

They run past a phone booth at the entrance every time they try to leave the harbor, they've walked past it numerous times in this episode alone. It has always been there.

@hatking: I like to think of this as the difference between claiming something is your favorite movie/book/music/etc and claiming something is the best movie/book/music/etc. One is a statement of opinion and hey if your favorite movie is about a bunch of space wizards with magic swords good luck to you, mines about giant sand monsters, but if you wanted to actually claim Star Wars is the best movie (or a good movie, or a bad movie, or the worst movie) you need to be able to articulate why and respond to counterarguments. Your subjective reaction to a piece of art and it's objective quality are (hopefully) related but they're not interchangeable and separating the two at all let alone doing so in a way that you can analyse and communicate to others is what makes someone a critic as opposed to the rest of us.

Which is a long winded way of saying you may enjoy Shenmue but that doesn't make it a good game, and you may hate Shenmue but that doesn't make it a bad one either.

@poperamone: hahah!

I feel like I've watched this episode 4 times already....

@shtinky: yep!

@hatking: I think you're mixing up the the objective conclusion that Shenmue is a bad game with the fact that it is still possible to enjoy bad games. Patrick recently did an article defending bad games over on Vice Gaming that sprang to mind.

For what it's worth, though, I've stopped keeping up with the Shenmue ER due to lack of interest, and this is coming from someone who loved the Mario Party Parties for the interactions between the guys while they're playing. I'm just not feeling the same chemistry between the GBeast guys on this feature. Maybe that's just because it's not competitive, or maybe it's because Dan doesn't seem to like Shenmue the same way he loves Mario Party and neither Vinny nor Alex seem very invested at all.

It was nice to hear the bit at the end. I definitely don't expect most people to develop a genuine fondness for the game, but I do hope for people to recognize what's being latched onto.

Totally, I agree with this. I guess my point is how quickly discussions boil down to "imo". For instance, I see contrary reviews get hand waved as subjective a lot. I think that's sort of getting away from the point. I see reviews and critique as a valuable insight into ways of thinking or observing something I might have missed. I've often come around to a different way of receiving a piece of media by opening myself up to these "opinions".

I think part of what makes me uncomfortable with this is the notion that opinions aren't valid or invalid, they just sort of exist in this thought ether. I would argue however that there absolutely is an anatomy of art, a system based on a creation's themes and ideas. If you're trying to tell a personal story about a son's revenge but dilute it with thematically incongruous living world side bullshit, you're absolutely making a worse thing.

The valuable discussion there is no longer about opinions of how "fun" the side bullshit is, but whether or not there might be reasoning behind the side bullshit that is actually serving the themes of the larger world. And that's the conversation I think that gets lost when we focus too much on subjectivity.

@hatking: If you wanna dive deeper, let's go. The living world side stuff isn't pointless bullshit, it's the most important part of the game thematically. Iwao's dying words to his son are to keep your friends and loved ones close to you. And what does Ryo do? He becomes obsessed with revenge and withdraws from everyone. You could say the overarching theme of Shenmue I is Ryo's detachment from everyone and the violently abrupt end of his childhood. The picture of him in his room with all his friends? He barely talks to them anymore. He drops out of school and starts getting into fights. Rumors swirl that he's joined a gang and hangs out in seedy bars. He pushes his almost girlfriend away repeatedly and ignores her feelings. His fathers murder is just eating him up inside. He later finds an old picture of his father with an old friend hidden away, and you put together that's the man he murdered in China and the reason Lan Di killed him. Was Lan Di getting revenge too? Iwao's final words suddenly seem filled with regret. Now the cycle continues. Even though Master Chen and several others of his friends and elders advise him not to waste his life on revenge he can't let it go, even though facing Lan Di would mean certain death for him, a man who easily bested his father.

This type of world building is certainly obtuse in the same way Dark Souls is and some will love it, others will hate it. Sure you could argue you could do all those things without the open world stuff but personally I don't think that would be as effective. That would be more akin to a straight up movie (which they actually did release before Shenmue 2) than a video game in which the player shares some agency, and some of the tragedy, of Ryo's story. You experience every day of his increasingly sad life with him, his fathers dying wish going over your head just as it goes over Ryo's. It's not an action movie story as many were wrongly led to believe. No spoilers but Shenmue II definitely doubles down on this aspect, and tries to teach Ryo, and thus the player, that there is more to life than revenge and there are many people who care about him.

Now for the subjective part. Whether or not this experience is fun is gonna be different for each player. Yu Suzuki himself questioned whether what they were making was really a "game" in the traditional sense of the word. I think there's definitely an audience for this type of thing, especially moreso nowadays that the definition of gaming has been expanded with stuff like Gone Home, Life is Strange, etc.

"The guy who killed my father is around here and a gang of murderers just threatened my family and friends. Well, let's go back to driving my forklift!"

Another entertaining video in this series near the last part of the game.

You'd have thought the Mad Angels would have realized by this point that messing with Ryo was a bad idea. I mean he's only 18 and yet he's taken out like more than a dozen of their goons.

Wonder how many more days of forkliftin' we got left...

Hoping they don't split up tomorrow's episode and it's a good two hours.

This is fantastic, thanks. I wasn't trying to specifically target Shenmue in my example, it just seemed contextually appropriate. I haven't really formed strong feelings for the game myself, having only played it partially many, many years ago and now only seeing the Endurance Run. I love what you bring up though. It's exactly the sort of analytical discourse I was referring to earlier.

I've been thinking a lot about the "fun" of a game and how important that is lately. I'm a person who really appreciates some stuff that Virginia did, for example. I'll defend a game that presents ideas in a strong fashion, sacrificing fun for the sake of developing its themes.

Protip: Every time Alex gives a game related absolute answer he's completely wrong.

@smurf_in_a_blender: I love how confident they sound that there's no jobs in Shenmue 2, no need to earn money.