Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

@RogerRoger Great post! Still never played this game, but the focus on realism and the mundane is interesting. I really like the line about "bravery in the face of technological limitations," because often what's so charming about games like this is that dissonance between the vision of the developers and the tools at their disposal.

Will you be playing the sequels?

@RogerRoger
I really enjoyed reading your Shenmue review. Chalk another one up to ‘the end experience is greater than the sum of its granular parts.’

Despite the recurrently thinly veiled adoration for the series, I haven’t plans to play it. Maybe that will change some day.

I didn't even see you'd posted a review for Shenmue til ten minutes ago @RogerRoger!

Interesting stuff, especially as I'd heard quite a bit about the Shenmue series thanks to Gremio, Sammy and others... But only in the recent months.

Beyond joining Push Square in fact I'd never heard of it, especially as I never knew anyone with a dreamcast or even knew it was remastered... til I joined Push Square 😂

The review really reminds me of my Soul Reaver one... which is apt seeing as they're both first time playthroughs of a twenty year old game... Just you seem a smidge more positive about Shenmue

I don't think I could say the same as you did though to my Soul Reaver review and say you've convinced me to try it... Shenmue doesn't seem to even have an interesting protagonist or voicework to carry me through it like Soul Reaver did through it's dated gameplay... But... It is still on my radar and something very different so... who knows?

Enjoyable read once again! 😊

Great review @RogerRoger. Poor gormless Ryo. 😂 Did his romance with Nozomi work out, or did she run off with a a charismatic tarantula? Maybe these are these questions for the sequel.

I've recently been nostalgic for the '90's - I guess because it was when I was growing up - so I can certainly see the appeal of something like Shenmue. Not just as the piece of gaming history it is, but for the era it represents. It was no doubt an influential title and so seeing the genesis of that is kinda cool. I'm not sure the monotony of many elements you describe are for me necessarily, but the game as a whole seems something that every thirty-something gamer should perhaps experience.

@RogerRoger I've only just noticed your Shenmue review, excellent stuff. Ryo and Nozomi must surely be one of the worst 'couples' in gaming history (if you can call them that)

When defending Shenmue, a lot of people tend to talk about how it was "good for the time", which isn't actually true. I played it in 2000, right on the back of Metal Gear Solid, and boy did it not wear that comparison well. It's hard to say what the appeal is, to be honest. But somehow it just hooks you in.

I'm looking forward to your Shenmue II write up, which I guarantee will include a word or two about wooden planks (and not as a description of Ryo, although it would be accurate)

@RogerRoger I couldn't play the Shenmue "remasters" back to back, even as a longtime fan. I bookended 2019 with them, that was enough for me. I'm enjoying Shenmue III for the most part. I was about to go on a rant about it, but I'll take my moaning over to the 'currently playing' thread

@RogerRoger I’ll be curious to hear about Life is Strange 2. It hasn’t really set the gaming world on fire, so I’m worried it’s just not any good. I really liked the first two LiS games, so I’m prone to support the game on series loyalty alone, but I couldn’t bring myself to buy it on the recent sale. But I came very close. I thought that The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit was pretty mediocre too, which has further bolstered my hesitation.

@RogerRoger Please allow me to give my tardy thanks for the Shenmue review. It's a game I've always known about but never played myself and I can see why it was held in such high regard at the times but is known for being equally frustrating as it was innovative

And did you know when you completed the game that there was the option to play the game with the exact same weather conditions from the actual date you're playing?

https://www.cracked.com/article_21648_6-video-games-that-put-...

Also (separate post made because of the spoilers), isn't Shenmue 2 the game that infamously ends with a literal trek through the mountains?

@Thrillho That's a truly impressive and insane picture (and entertaining article overall, back from a mythic time when Cracked didn't suck). Until just reading this, I'd forgotten all of the hours I'd poured into trying to scrutinize pixels on a 240p display to figure out if the paintings in New Leaf were forgeries or not.

@Ralizah Yeah, Cracked used to be great. I mean, I can still remember random articles like that almost five years on. But I stopped using it regularly and most of the “names” have all left.

The gaming articles are still normally a good read on one of my very infrequent visits.

@RogerRoger Another fabulous review, my friend. I appreciate your insight and clarity. It’s the perfect amount of information to give me a solid understanding about the game. Yet despite this, I am undecided about whether to play it. Your adoration for the journey and connection to the characters is clear, and that really makes me want to experience it. But as an American who tires of being exposed to the constant political bickering and partisan mud-slinging in the media I am certainly hesitant to trudge through something that sounds this overtly socio-political. I’m pretty open-minded and I am fully in favor of the use of art and entertainment to increase social awareness and promote noteworthy causes, but.. well, I do live here. And I don’t necessarily want to feel like I’m being preached to from an outside party that doesn’t have first hand knowledge of the situation. I would never dare tell someone in the UK how to feel about Brexit, for example. Obviously human rights are universal, so it’s not the same, but as a member of a minority class in America, I’m not sure I can stomach how an outsider is telling the world of my plight. The handling of social justice in a game like Detroit Become Human or Red Dead Redemption 2 is done tastefully abstract, but I’m worried that Life is Strange 2 is coming across as an attack on the cracks in American social constructs. No doubt we have a long way to go as a society, but the average European who only sees the hyped-up and sensationalized headlines will no doubt feel tempted to portray life in the U.S. to be much worse than it actually is.

My reluctance to jump in has basically made the decision for me, as the PSN sale is now over and the price has ballooned back to $40, so at the very least I’m going to wait until it drops back down to $20. Alternatively the physical version (although likely to be only the first episode with a key to download the other episodes digitally) comes out in a few weeks and so I might try to wait and pick that up instead due to its resalability.

How would you compare the choice and consequence type of options to Detroit Become Human? Obviously it won’t be nearly as fleshed out, but does the game promote replaying it in order to see the alternate narrative threads that one might miss out on in a first playthrough? It sounds closer to Telltale than to Quantic Dream, but the presence of different endings seems like a definite evolution past the Telltale genre that inspired the LiS series.

@RogerRoger You are a machine, my friend. Great review. The cloying indie-tinted romanticizing of modern teen culture seemed sort of insufferable in the original, and this sounds even worse, so I think I'll pass on it.

Honestly, with all the violence and confusion we've inflicted on the rest of the world these last couple of decades, I'm not inclined to complain about how foreigners depict us.

@RogerRoger I do think I’ll probably pick it up later since I like mixing in story driven palate-cleanser “choice” games every so often and there’s not a huge number of these out there until we get The Wolf Among Us 2.
And I would be hypocritical to, on one hand be reluctant about a team making a piece of art that speaks on a subject they have no first hand experience with, yet be prejudiced about a game without having first hand experience with it. If I play the game and it drastically offends my American sensibilities, then I will be in a position to pass judgment. “The Man in the Arena” and all that jazz. 😉

So do you recommend I go back and complete Captain Spirit? I played it for a couple hours and got bogged down in all the minutiae and grew bored of the character, so I never saw how it concludes. It sounds like he’s not that important to the actual game.

@RogerRoger that was a stellar review I'll definitely check it out, sounds like it has a few niggles but nothing that would put me off of seeing it through to the end. Thanks for giving us your opinion!

Hmm, interesting. You've made me want to re-download Captain Spirit at the very least. That's all my backlog will allow for now, but that was a good read.

Another excellent review @RogerRoger. I recently watched the game be played, rather than playing it myself, and thoroughly enjoyed the passive experience. The relationship between the brothers is excellent and the core of the game. I felt quite emotionally invested in their journey, more so than when I watched the first Life is Strange be played. It's interesting because given the things that happen to the brothers, some of the more instinctive, reactionary player choices are the ones that lead to Daniel becoming "bad". Player choice in games like this always irritates me because the games almost always view it as a binary choice. Hopefully this is something that will evolve as we move into the next generation. Issues with the writing are perhaps a lack of subtlety and as you noted a veritable horde of one-dimensional stereotypical characters.

Life is Strange 2's politics are sometimes a little clumsy but the game has the right to explore them (whether the developers are French or not). Although it may be inspired by US current affairs, it's nonetheless fictitious and an artistic representation of the real world. The lines are blurrier when it comes to depicting the lived experience of minorities and I feel that this requires sensitivity and proper research - which is something I would hope dontnod did.

Stellar review @RogerRoger 👍

... I don't actually have a whole lot to say as besides Until Dawn (Or watching Detroit: Become Human) I haven't actually experienced any of these types of games! 😅

No Life Is Strange 1 or Before the Storm or even any of the telltale-y ones. Never even played a demo for them. I'm generally not a fan of the episodic release format (and in my eyes they seriously took the mick with how long the other 4 episodes for this took to release and it's not something I'd want to reward as such)

I could give Captain Spirit or maybe the first episode of the first LiS a whirl though (mainly as they're free) and see what I think though it doesn't particularly sound like my cup of tea (Or at least I need to be in the right mood for it) but I owe you and this review to give them a chance at least!

My first review is going to be on Horizon Zero Dawn or Death Stranding, which would be more interesting?

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy I didn't think the first Life Is Strange would be my cuppa either, bit once I played it I loved it. I bought the special edition once all the episodes which came with a CD of the soundtrack and some other bits and bobs.

I played the Captain Spirit demo and was totally bored by it and found the boy annoying, so I think I've moved on from those type of games.