Highly anticipated game

Shenmue has been in development for five years. When it finally came out, the expectations were huge. Yu Suzuki had said for many times that Shenmue is unlike any game you’ve ever seen before, and the only game that has tried to simulate life in some way.
When the release date came closer and closer, more details and screenshots were made public. People could only imagine what would the game be like. As the development process lasted, many were skeptical about Suzuki’s project, but when the game’s trailer was released, it blew away the criticism. Is Shenmue really something you’ve never seen before? A game which surpasses other games with creativity and originality? The best game ever?

Ryu does his own stunts

The answer is… yes…and no. While Shenmue is truly an unique game, it is not perfect and has flaws. It’s a bit hard to make opinions as this is just the first chapter of the saga. Shenmue consists of many chapters and shouldn’t be reviewed chapter by chapter, as that’s not truly a fair approach to the game.

Because of the reasons mentioned above, the story in Shenmue leaves many questions unanswered and this first chapter leaves you with an ending that raises new questions rather than answers any of the old ones.
The main character of the game is a young Japanese boy named Ryu Hazuki. At the beginning of the game, Ryu sees his father murdered by a mysterious man. The game begins as Ryu sets out to find out why his father was killed.

If we take a close look at the game, it’s easy to see that the designers have thought of almost everything. The graphics are remarkable and put most of other games in shame (Yes, even PS2 ones) and has amazing details in it, such as corporate logos in items and advertisements in the buildings’ walls.
Quality shines from Shenmue and it has so many features that are worth mentioning: e.g. the characters in the game have their own daily routines that resemble ones of our own. Weather changes dynamically based on weather charts form 1986′s Japan (the year the story happens on), lighting effects and sound effects are realistic, just to name few.

Learning the moves

Nothing’s perfect

No game is without flaws. While Shenmue doesn’t fail in any category, it’s controls would’ve needed more tuning. While I’ve seen many games with worse controls, Shenmue sometimes makes easy tasks more challenging than they should be. Turning can be annoying sometimes as Ryu often turns too much and it takes time turning to the right direction. Shenmue also shares one flaw with many 3D games: the camera angles. Usually they’re all right but there are times when you’d like to say a few chosen words to the cameramen.

Music is composed by Yuzo Koshiro. He’s done soundtracks for various Sega games, including Streets of Rage series, for example. Shenmue’s soundtrack is equally impressive to the game. Mostly the themes just stay on background, adding atmosphere to the game, but on various occasions the themes really shine.

Shenmue is not all about adventuring. Probably people who developed Virtua Fighter series were involved in making Shenmue, action is also a crucial part of the game. When an action event happens, the game switches to fighting mode where you can use combo attacks and throws, just like in VF series. In those scenes you just have to beat up every opponent that comes in your way. After that, the game continues, usually with a story event.
You can practice the moves for action events at certain places, like the dojo at Ryu’s house, for example. By practicing, the moves become more powerful and it is easier to settle your disputes with the evil ones.

Visiting the arcade

There are also quick time events (QTE for short), where you’ll have to push certain buttons fast enough to execute a certain move. (Like avoiding a knife stab, for example). In those a button symbol appears on the screen. If you managed to press the corresponding button on your control pad fast enough, Ryu succeeds in the move. If you fail, so does Ryu. Fortunately the game is very forgiving, and gives you another chance in most of the events in case you didn’t succeed.

Despite of the minor problems with content, controls and camera, Shenmue is clearly an exceptional game. It manages to fulfill most of the promises the designers made while still being a real game, instead of just an virtual tour in a Japanese city.
Shenmue has divided opinions among the critics, and has received ratings ranging from topnotch to below average. Therefore the best way to find out, if Shenmue is a good game or not, is by playing it. Each player experiences Shenmue differently, other may say it’s the greatest game ever while others say it’s an average game. Either way, Shenmue is a game that every Dreamcast owner should try out.

The story continued in Shenmue 2, where Ryu has tracked his fathers killer to Hong Kong. Shenmue 2 was released for Dreamcast only in Japan and Europe. XBox version of the game was released in all three major markets.The future of the series is still fairly uncertain, Sega hasn’t mentioned anything about the next parts of the saga and which consoles they’ll appear on.

Truck racing

Sky’s the limit

Skies of Arcadia (Titled Eternal Arcadia in Japan) is one of the few ‘big’ RPGs published for the Dreamcast. Dreamcast hasn’t exactly been the console for RPG lovers, there are a few quality titles like Shenmue and Grandia II that are worth of purchasing. Due to the change in Sega’s business plan that now involves developing for multiple consoles, GameCube owners also got their port of Skies, so the game’s not only for Dreamcast owners anymore.
Overworks’ Skies of Arcadia is produced by a member of team Phantasy Star (who are best known for the Phantasy Star RPG series for multiple Sega consoles). It’s set in a world filled with floating islands. As you can see from the images, the game world looks really beautiful and you can explore it in full 3D. People travel from one island to another with airships. And not surprisingly, where’s ships, there’s pirates. There are two different pirate sections, the good Blue rogues and the evil Black sky pirates. In addition to these two, the Valuan empire is also a major force in the skies.

The main character of the game, Vyse, is a member of the Blue rogues. Other characters include a mysterious girl named Fina and Vyses’ best friend, Aika. The game starts as the blue rogues attack on an imperial battleship in attempt to rob all the Valuan Valuablesâ„¢. Besides robbing the vessel, Vyse also rescues Fina who was held as a prisoner in the ship. This one event leads to many others and before you know it, you’ve got a crisis in your hands.

The battle system is a standard RPG one – turn based. It’s pretty standard in many ways: regular attacks, special attacks, magic, that sort of things. Special attacks consume action points of your party. Some action points are regained at the beginning of each turn, and by using the spirit-command your character uses his turn to build up additional action points for your party.
One difference to many games is that every weapon and magic has a color attribute. I think Chrono Cross is about the only game using similar system. Each color is vulnerable to some colors and strong against some colors. That means that you must also pay attention to this in battles, thus adding a bit strategy to the game. If you’ve played Chrono Cross, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

In addition to the normal battles, the game also features battles between airships which require more strategy than normal battles. In my opinion these are just about the coolest parts of the game. Huge airships flow through the air, circling each other just waiting for a chance to strike…
The airship battles are really really exiting, even though your strategic options are basically limited to attack, magic, defense and spirit. You can change your airships weaponry from cannons to various different torpedoes. Special cannons can be used only at certain points in battle, but deal insane amounts of damage when compared to regular weapons. At some points you are offered two different strategy choices that can either turn the battle to your favor or against you – depending on your selection.

Ever dreamed of owning an island?

The music in the game is generally very good, and I’ll have to give special mentions to some tracks. The music in the jungle village of Horteka fits the place perfectly. Battle themes are also excellent, in my opinion. Boss battle themes even change dynamically regarding your situation, e.g. if you’re losing, the song becomes more depressing and while you’re winning it brings up more valiant, upbeat melody. Also, the track that plays during the battles between airships is a really powerful piece and makes the battles feel even more dramatic.
The graphics are very nice and detailed, the developers have even paid attention to the facial expressions of the characters and lighting is used very well. Spell and special moves offer the best graphical effects in the game, and are generally impressive and very nice to watch.

Controls are standard RPG-type, and you really can’t go wrong with them. As for the difficulty, I’d say about medium. Skies is not a very difficult game, but there are some points that can be challenging. Length of the game is quite good. The two CDs offer a lot of gameplay and all the exploring you can do is fun. While exploring the world of Arcadia, you can make discoveries, which give you money. Discoveries vary from things like lost cities to new continents.

ne special thing worth mentioning is the Swashbuckler rating. During the game you’re faced with many questions with multiple answers to choose from. Answers to these affect the game and determine your swashbuckler rating. Brave and wise choices affect positively while stupid and cowardly answers lower your rating. You start as Vyse the Unimpressive and later on obtain nicknames such as Vyse the Valiant until eventually you become Vyse the Legend. The title isn’t just a show off, however, as your swashbuckler rating affects to things like item prices and how the people react to you. It’s a nice feature in the game, although not a very important one.

At certain point during the game Vyse gets his own airship you can start gathering a crew for it. You’ll also obtain your own headquarters (or an island to be exact) and you can spend money on decorating the place with things like fountains or animals and change the style of buildings. All these little things that you can do really add to the length of the game. You can waste hours on little optional tasks that have nothing to do with the plot. It makes the game feel less linear and more fun.

The best part of the game is the world of Arcadia. With every other RPG that I can think of having a very ‘ground-based’ feel, SOA offers a completely new area – the air. Some games may have had airships and floating continents or islands – Zeal in Chrono Trigger, Vane in Lunar, Shevat in Xenogears – (so if you liked those, you’ll love SOA) but Skies of Arcadia has no solid ground, just floating islands. This gives Skies of Arcadia a truly unique feel. In addition to being different, it manages to be a great game as well. In case you’re tired to those RPGs that are all alike, you might need a fresh breeze that Skies of Arcadia can offer.

The symbol of Sega

Sonic is to Sega what Mario is to Nintendo. A character Sega relies on when releasing new consoles and other products. Sonic’s career in video games started long ago, when Sega released its 16-bit Mega Drive (Genesis in USA) console, about 10 years ago. The world had never seen as fast game as Sonic the Hedgehog was and the game became world wide success. Afterwards Sega released sequels Sonic 2 & 3 for Mega Drive in addition to some other games featuring Sonic.

When Sega released its Saturn console, there was no Sonic game for it. And it had one, expect one translation from a Mega Drive one. Some people even speculated that it was one of the reasons why Saturn never was a big success. It’s like having a Nintendo console without a Mario game and Saturn never had the opportunity to boost its sales with a new game starring one of the most popular video game characters ever, Sonic.

When Sega released the Dreamcast, this was no longer the case. Sonic returned in his fastest adventure yet. With Dreamcast’s superb graphical technology, this is also the most beautiful one and perhaps the looking platformer so far. You can’t see the quality of Sonic Adventure’s graphics by just looking at pictures, you have to see it yourself as Sonic runs through beautifully detailed 3D fields with incredible speed.

When game is fast-paced, it always rises one question: how’s the playability? If it sucks and controlling character is frustratingly difficult, game becomes annoying and isn’t fun to play. Fortunately enough, Sonic Adventure doesn’t fall in this category. It’s surprisingly easy to control Sonic and the other characters even though sometimes speed is overwhelming. Of course, there are some annoying situations which require instant timing and precisely controlled jumps, but fortunately there aren’t too much of these.

Drunken cameramen

One area where Sonic Adventure doesn’t impress is voulume control. The songs are played too damn LOUD! This successfully spoils some moments that feature speech. Oh well, at least the subtitles are there. The voice acting isn’t the best one around, though, so it’s probably entirely a bad thing that the music is played loud..
Another flaw in SA is common to many 3D games with overhead perspective: camera angles. Some times the camera just gets jiggy with it and wanders wildly sometimes pointing to the wall while Sonic is somewhere else and makes it pain in the ass to play. However, this doesn’t happen too often, which is good.

Sonic Adventure’s good sides exceed its bad ones and the result is an excellent platform game. Despite some flaws, it’s the best DC platform game so far and one of the best ones for any console system. If you are a Dreamcast owner, this is one of THE games to get.
Recently Sonic Adventure was released for GameCube as well, as Sonic Adventure DX. Unfortunately the game’s almost a straight port, no mentionable upgrades visually and the game retains the same camera problems as the Dreamcast version does. Sega added some bonus features to the package though, so the game’s not a carbon copy of its DC predecessor.