Endurance Run: Shenmue - Part 23

Briefcase Guy has a real bummer of a story.

He has been working at the General Affairs department for the Alpha Trading Office for 40 years, and will soon be retiring from the company. He has worked diligently all of these years and has been officially commended for his long service with the company. However, he was never able to advance in business, maybe because of his too good-natured personality, and ended up as a mere manager. To make matters worse, all of his children, a daughter and two sons, have no regular jobs, regardless of being graduates from prestigious universities. Although he has never admitted that he failed to raise them properly, he seems to feel sorry for neglecting them while he was too busy with his work. After retirement, he intends to devote himself to helping his family, but he is not sure whether he can regain their trust at this stage.

@gregalor: I was thinking more along the lines of

"Is that thing over there?"

Alex:"No, definitely not"

And then after checking it's definitely there.

If Vinny didn't T-bone that guy at the end of the race, he wouldve easily ended 3rd.

@onemanarmyy: He would have come in 3rd if not for a lot of things. Like not beelining for the barricades.

@danryckert should watch The Prestige if he's still uncertain about whether or not drowning is nice. Also it's a fucking brilliant movie

I had a near death experience with drowning. I was in a pretty deep part of the sea and I was just a kid and another kid was on my shoulders above the water, and instead of me just going deeper and swimming under him, I tried to throw him upwards from underneath and I lost all my strenght (he didn't know it was a serious situation). At that moment I sort of gave up because I couldn't move or think, my vision became intensely red and everything was kind of peaceful. I had a flashback to me buying a bicycle with my parents and was really enjoying the scene, but then it abruptly ended as my uncle noticed that I wasn't moving and threw the other kid away with one arm and hoisted me up with his other. When I got to the shoreline I tried to just continue walking normally but my leg just collapsed and I hit my head and went to the hospital for stitches. So....that's my drowning story, it was peaceful.

@gregalor:yeah true, i was just commenting while watching the race and despite those early mistakes, i still thought he would end up 3rd but then that T-boning happened.

@hatking: I agree, but I could equally flip your argument around on a Shenmue detractor. For example, your Fight Club analogy is like someone who assumes Shenmue is completely comparable to Yakuza, simply because they share some gameplay and setting similarities. Or someone who assumes Shenmue should be a certain way that the game's designer didn't intend it to be.

And aside from some movement stiffness, mainly due to the DC Controller, Shenmue isn't really a buggy mess of a game, so it's hard to call it objectively bad. The parts people call "boring" could be filled with doing other activities in the game, but that's where subjectivity comes in, because you might not find those activities fun, while others do.

Honestly, there aren't many better ways to spend your time than watching The Prestige. It is indeed a masterpiece.

On a somewhat less subjective note, I think we can all agree that Shenmue hasn't aged particularly well. Or am I wrong?

It's a game I probably would have loved when it came out (didn't have a chance to play it) but would absolutely have a terrible time with in 2016.

I'm starting to see why people call this game a forklift simulator.

@mrcraggle: Remember how pissed Jeff gets about the Halo 2 cliffhanger ending? That's why people assume that a game has a self-contained story arc with a climax.

At least Halo 2 had the decency to be a normal awkward trilogy mid-point. Shenmue didn't even manage that.

@ebinbraveheart: Well you're vicariously watching an inept person's playthrough of it; play it yourself and form your own opinion based on your experience.

@shtinky: Vinny may not be playing Shenmue to your high standards but he is not an "inept person".

I've been enjoying this stretch of the game. I think there might be a story that could be told around the fringes of a tedious day job. I find the small story bits with the crew of workers interesting. It's a shame there isn't more there.

At this point I'm literally only watching for when they run into Goro. That guy is the fucking best!

Edit: Also the fact that Mark calls you 'Dio' every time makes me laugh. I like to imagine that he misheard your name and Ryo just doesn't want to correct him.

@shtinky: I'm perfectly capable of assessing the level of enjoyment I would have with a game from watching somebody else play it. Even if they aren't playing it flawlessly.

I'm watching this ER for the banter and also out of curiosity for the game. That curiosity is now sated and I'm spared from having to play this myself. That being said, I indeed most likely would have loved this game when it came out. It's a shame I missed it.

My last post on this ER as it seems to be closing down.

At the end they talk about this game and why it might have been appealing at the time, and I find myself agreeing. This is such a wholly different thing than anything I've ever seen that I'm incredibly glad they are playing through it, showing some gaming history. I would have hated this effing thing when it came out and would loathe it now, and am quite happy watching someone else with a similar mindset is playing it rather than someone who thinks this game was God's Gift To Pixels.

@nasar7: Excellent points, and easily the best comment about this game's story I've read since this ER started. They do hammer you over the head with literally the whole town telling Ryo NOT to do what he's doing, and he keeps doing it anyway and getting screwed. The whole ticket to Hong Kong thing is a great example, where his obsession made him lose Fuku-San's money and he didn't give a damn, instead caring about nothing but that ticket. No apologies, no remorse, nothing (or maybe he would have if Vinny went there? No clue). Has he mentioned that working at the docks may let him pay that back? No, he just fights a gang every day. I have a terrible memory so I forgot his dad's dying words (I'm quite grateful your post reminded me) and didn't make that link, but this dude's downward spiral is certainly something to behold.

My gran is mid 90's. Still doing fine. Mentally all there. Uses a cane because her legs are a little unsteady but that's about it. Grandad had some dementia in his last couple years but she seems to have avoided that so far.

Stockholm syndrome kicking in for Dan and Alex near the end there.

My favorite part of the QTE fights is how apathetic Ryo seems about punching and flipping dudes. A core tenet of the Hazuki style is just not giving a fuck and being way more powerful than everyone you fight.

It's a really weird twist for the sailor who's just had the shit beaten out of him, and was literally begging for his life not 10 seconds ago, to now be threatening the family of the weird martial arts master that seems to beat up roughly 6 people a day.

Especially while said martial arts master has him pinned to the ground by his neck.

Wait until they get to Shenmue 2 and do that book moving job. Even as a Shenmue fan it was a tough go. Brutal.

Jurassic Park Trespasser! Some decisions were most definitely made in the development of that game. My very favorite video on the internet is ResearchIndicates's Letsplay of it, though.

"I don't think the fighting is that good!" I like how Alex constantly insists on this when he is the one person out of the three who hasn't really played the game at this point. Weird stuff....

Watching Ryo work is my new post-work routine and I don't know what I'm gonna do with myself when this ends.

@xeiphyer: A lot of instruction on Japanese pronunciation tells you that a Japanese R is "kind of like a D," so it's not that uncommon for people to go overboard.

PSA: Game Informer just started doing a play through of Shenmue 2. First episode is on Youtube, they get completely lost and lose the first fight 3 times in a row.

@convox: Maybe we'll have to wait for Shenmue 3 to see if it's the awkward mid-point (it won't be though seeing how Yu Sazuki envisioned Shenmue to be at least 4-5 games).

Hey! I was born in this day!

i've done the math and 400 yen per crate is like $4.30 in 2016 dollars

Greg Kasavin is a treasure.

I've never played Shenmue before or even seen it, but I've memorized the layout of this port area by now and it's really annoying that none of these 3 guys ever remember where they're going. Vinny especially seems to forget every 10 seconds.

I cant wait for Shenmue 3... I was obsessed with Virtua Fighter, and when VF RPG was announced I ate that shit up.. when it was finally turned into Shenmue I was a little bummed, but there's no denying Ryo's story is that of Akira's from VF.. and when he finally nailed that Signature move at the end of Shenmue2 I was almost in tears.. YAHHH BOOOOYEEE

As a former usher, I drastically question Dan's former usher experience if he thinks anyone could hide after any of the showings. Trust me I always scoured for the loose change and still wrapped edibles. BIG TIP: ushers won't care about cleaning up a big mess of wrappers if you leave us some still in the wrappers! We're on the clock we want to have a snack too, ya know!

I wonder if they actually have duplicate forklift toys in their inventory now.

@passivespiral: They do.

@hatking: I would just like to express my incredulity about Dan's weird insistence on hate-loving Fight Club, since you mention it in your comment. It's like the third time he's brought it up with the exact same point and I think someone needs to sit him down and try and explain to him that the movie is making fun of the exact attitude he's describing in his younger self. The movie ends with the personification of that mindset getting shot in the fucking face and if that doesn't get the point across, I'm not quite sure what else will.

@the_nubster: It's been a good long while since I've seen the movie, so maybe it was a weird example to use. I certainly seem to remember people misreading it back in high school and college, but that's any movie with themes more complex than good guy kill bad guy. I don't really follow the mindset of "people ruined this for me". Like, if a comedy is ruined by its jokes being repeated until they're not getting a laugh out of you, then that's probably a pretty good sign it wasn't a good movie to begin with, right?

This is a slow decent into madness.

I empathize with him on it, he is trying to talk and make jokes the whole time, and the warehouse area is very bland and samey looking.

I have a weird memory like that, where I can remember certain things like phone numbers I haven't used in many years and random facts about tons of things that I shouldn't need to know, but when I play a game, I don't absorb how to get around the maps very well unless I play through them a LOT - I don't concentrate or automatically create a very good memory map of most game environments.... unless they're very unique looking and well layed out, where you could use many cues to figure out where you are (Dark Souls was a good AND bad example of this - some areas I could navigate after the first time I've been through them, and others I can't remember for the life of me). Shenmue is definitely not that type of game either, where it's easy to get around via unique landmarks.

As I've said before a few times, Brad does have the issue pretty egregiously (generally with reading and critical thinking in the game he's playing while he's around others or has an audience at all, it seems)... but it IS hard for all of them to play at full capacity while talking or listening to the others.