[Shenmue 2 - Sega Dreamcast]
I completed Shenmue 2 the other day, and it was an almighty anti-climax, more on that later. You arrive at Guilin in search of Bailu village. Soon after there’s a cool cut-scene with Shenhua (the woman from the cover), a stormy river and a white deer. Shenhua’s trying to save the deer and you save them both. Once that’s over it’s a long and eventually boring walk to Bailu village with Shenhua, you learn about her and her village, through a choice of what to talk about. There’s camping in a cave and a fetching firewood minigame.
A nice touch was where she asks you about your friends when you’re sitting round the fire in the cave. This is cool because it relates to your Shenmue 1 game save. So you get a show a picture of Nozomi, Ryo’s girlfriend from Shenmue 1. It’s like Psycho Mantis reading your game saves from MGS all over again, yay!
One thing that did annoy me a little is how un-interactive and full of cut-scenes disc 4 is. I found myself wanting to get to so much Bailu Village that I ended up skipping the optional conversations with Shenhua, walk on god damn it and no I don’t want to stop to take a detour to look at the butterflies!
I won’t give away the ending, but needless to say it’s very unexpected. It left me thinking “what the hell? That’s it!” Don’t get me wrong the lead up to it is still pretty cool. And it has left me wanting more so much so that I googled Shenmue 3, and found this really cool fan made trailer from the Shenmue Online footage (I think Shenmue Online was cancelled or something?). It has graphics you could easily see on the 360 or PS3, how amazingly awesome would that be!?!? Check it out…
[Posted by Robert Langley-Jones]
Filed under: Shenmue 2 | Tagged: am2, computer, Dreamcast, entertainment, Games, gaming, sega, shenmue, shenmue 2, shenmue 3, video
