Epic is rumored to be doing two weeks of daily free games from Dec 16 to Dec 30, with Shenmue III possibly being one. Keep your eyes peeled!
Can’t wait to:
I continue to like the giveaways because I’m almost certainly not going to play them but I like knowing I could if I wanted to, which keeps me from spending any money on them at all.
So Shenmue 3 is up on epic.
But the way they do their sales is moronic.
“Here’s a 10 dollar coupon” … “BUT MYSTERY GIVEAWAYS”
So I would just go buy the Tony Hawk game I wanna play, but MAAAAYBE it’s free this week, so I wait.
snowrunner is down to like $10 with coupons at this point too and is great, might not stay on game pass forever, big snowrunner fan
Game Pass really needs a to-do list feature lmao
snowrunner might be the lone title that isn’t published by microsoft that I encountered on game pass and was a huge enough fan of to make sure I bought it regardless – a lot of the other things I’ve played on game pass are less compelling to me and not anything I’ll miss if I ever stop subscribing. though I guess they did add ck3 after I bought that too, I still haven’t put nearly as much time into that as I did ck2 and not sure if I ever will, though not for lack of interest
I learned last week that this button adds to a ‘Play later’ list
Gosh as a user of computer interfaces I love unlabeled minimalist icons
omg
Is Shenmue worth playing in the Year of Luigi 2021 beyond just as like, a historical curiosity? I’ve never played either of the first two games.
not to mention that the Epic games store has been having network errors all afternoon. i’ve tried to claim Shenmue III like three separate times in the last couple hours and gotten errors. at one point where most of my library wasn’t loading and because i’m paranoid i immediately became very worried that Epic just decided i didn’t own those games anymore.
“claim Shenmue III! …if you can get in during the small window of time where we’re not having constant network errors”
maybe this will just become part of the Epic ethos.
i find it’s hard to find the “play later” list when you want to though, lol
I played it for the first time recently and I thought it kinda sucks?
Like it has some great things going on (especially for the time) but 90% is filler and waiting around. The second one tightens things up a lot, but also the Kowloon section suucckkksss.
I found the controls and systems infuriating but it’s an entertaining Let’s Play in the right hands like most 3D adventure games.
Absolutely wonderful. The first one has this deep theme of “you don’t have to do this” and being a stupid teenager and having to do the stupid thing at all costs. Pushing away an entire support network you’ve known your whole life in pursuit of this bullshit idea of revenge.
Shenmue 2 is a lot more uneven with a lot of parts that suck (cycle is right about kowloon). The last disc is wonderful because it reinforces what we identified as the themes of 1.
3 is horrible and tedious and has no themes or ideas outside of “Shenmue Video Game.”
Here’s where we were probably more eloquent about my points.
I have played Shenmue like over 10 times and always stop 20 minutes in because I have a habit of highlighting all dialogue options in a video game before choosing one. But Shenmue assigns options to d-pad directions and automatically chooses one when you press its direction. I always forget this and have fed the cat the wrong food every single time, which makes me want to restart. But that happens so far into the beginning portions of the game that I always lose motivation to replay the beginning until months or years later. Where I forget about that whole problem and just do it again.
I guess one advantage of this is that I always imagine Shenmue as being super cool and I will never have to face reality.
I agree with Rudie that the themes are great, but standby my complaint of too much filler. If like a third was cut out, I think it would have been a way WAY better game.
Having said that, I did play through the whole game.
I played Shenmue for the first time (well beyond the first 45 minutes of it shortly after release) early last year and… it depends on what you want from it/games in general? In terms of small “micro level” touches it still offers stuff and a level of detail that most games since still can’t approach. In terms of all the macro “how does it actually work/play” stuff… it was likely rough then and even rougher now. The combat is fairly mediocre (just learn the one move that works and abuse it), the quest design is as basic as can be, probably the most well realized part of the gameplay portion of the game is the forklift driving which… well that its own topic. The story does have its positive points that I’d defer to others on but there is a lot of waiting around killing time in a world that doesn’t really offer a ton to options to kill said time with (definitely practice your fighting technique daily, but that and messing around in the arcade is most of what you can do beyond picking up stuff to look at).
I was cool with putting the time into it but I am also cool with checking stuff out as an oddball curiosity. I think you’d have to do the personal math on if the parts of it that work are worth putting up with the stuff that leaves one wanting.
activision is neeeeeeeeeeeeever gonna give you a free anything, so this one should be safe
Massive XBox sale on until January 2nd.