Playing With Time By Oliver Staley

Playing With Time....

    The clever thing that made you believe Shenmue was a large game was the use of appointments and coming back to a person a lot later. I.E you might go to the tattoo parlour and be told to come back the next day which left you wondering what to do next which made you wait till 8.00 pm till you could go to sleep and wake up the next day with a few hours to waste till you could meet up with the person to interrogate, but with this going on with lots of different people it made the game longer. When people speak of it been open world there was only two different areas to explore but they were on a large scale so I see what they mean by been open but not to the extent on any of the scale like the games we've got today. But everything has to start somewhere I suppose so Shenmue taught developers to think big. I also believe that the oriental settings where tastefully chosen there's something about Japan that captivates people.

What A Lovely Man By Oliver Staley

What A Lovely Man....

    Ryo the character with a lovely calm personality is such a nice character to play his temperament calm and most polite towards the people he lives and loves most of the town folk know him and everyone is remorseful about his fathers death and Ryo is determined to seek revenge which will span three games and a lot of disc swapping, only the Xbox owners get Shenmue II on one CD lucky them but the three disc package makes the game feel big in size. Ys knew the perfect balance in character when he created Ryo. Anyone who's seen or played the game will know there's no one nicer than Ryo. He's one of the nicest characters you'll ever get to play, at every occasion he's polite and only shows his other side when been taunted by thugs or bad mouthed characters other than that he's always got time for the people in his life. Of course growing up with his father who was a martial arts teacher he knows moves to protect himself with and he'll fight when the time comes to get answers or defend himself but usually he's calm and collect.

Shenmue The Idea By Oliver Staley

Shenmue The Idea....

    When you play a game it's usually a shoot em up or sports game or a arcade conversion but when Ys and Am2 created the first mini open world game back in 1999/2000 it offered people the chance to interact with people and make choices of what they were told by the other character i.e clues to the next part of the game making you travel to Shenmue's town and look for a antique shop or somewhere and speak to the owner who would in turn give you a lead to the next part of the story, it just kept the game moving nicely and got you excited to see how the next turn of events would progress the game. Ys was known for his arcade hits of yesteryear Space Harrier/Super Hang On so with the power of the last decade been the Dreamcast he could really let his creative skills go, and he created a cult following of people wanting more so along came a even grandiose effort with the sequel Shenmue II which was about five times bigger than the original, the game was originally going to be a Virtua Fighter RPG but changed throughout development to what we have today Shenmue. It may be the first sandbox game as well with arcades to play in drink machines littered around the town a bedroom to rest even a dojo to practise in if you wanted to practise moves how about a park to go to as well if you've got the time. But atmosphere in the world of Shenmue really grabbed the grey side of Japan later on in the game you'll be working at the docks with a fork lift carrying crates over to specific areas. In those days there was nothing like what Ys had developed on any system that's why to this day we're waiting on the third instalment for PC and PlayStation 4 which should arrive by the end of 2018 hopefully. But I want to take some time to look at different aspects of the first two games we loved so much those years ago.

Enjoy the experience.

Olly Staley 19/02/18