The Epic Games Store Holiday Sale started today, with lots of discounts and that but more importantly: 15 days of free video games. They're starting with one that I'm certainly curious enough to play for free but not buy: Shenmue 3. Yeah gwan, I'll grab that. Epic are also going wild with coupons again, giving a £10 (or $10) coupon on every game you buy which costs at least £13.99 (or $14.99). Given Epic's habit of paying for timed exclusives, they do have discounts on some games you'll not get elsewhere, or at least not with those vouchers.
]]>Today, I invite you to go back in time and visit China to search for a little bit of vengeance. Specifically, back to spring 1987, to help a young Ryu Hazuki hunt for his father's killer. Of course, you could partake in a spot of tortoise-racing or chicken-chasing while you're it. That's right, I'm talking about the weird and wonderful world of Shenmue 3, which sheds its Epic exclusivity and arrives on Steam today.
]]>It might've taken a whopping 18 years for Shenmue III pick up where the last game left off, but it may not take quite so long for Ryo's next adventure to show up. Sort of. While no new game's been formally announced, this week Crunchyroll and Adult Swim announced an animated adaptation of the slow-burn revenge quest.
]]>Koch Media have announced the very first DLC for Shenmue 3, Battle Rally, will be released on Tuesday 21st January. By the looks of things it's inviting players to take part in a race (on foot I think?), and you'll even be able to play as different characters for the first time. Sorry Ryo.
"Battle Rally offers fresh gaming activities in a race unlike any other, as contestants engage in head-to-head battles whilst racing their way through the course," they tweeted.
]]>Nothing better captures the magic of Shenmue III than its save files. On one line, the current date and time; above it, the date and time this particular save will whisk you back to. Because that’s what Shenmue is: time travel. The opportunity to visit a very specific moment in history. In the case of Shenmue III, China in the spring of 1987. Of course, it’s time travel that doesn’t fret about the butterfly effect - you spend most of your trip kicking in groins in a way that will surely curtail a few family lineages.
But this sequel is time travel of a second kind, too: a design throwback to 1999, when Shenmue was the cutting edge of blockbuster game development; then the most expensive game of all time, and one that remained so cherished that it raised 6.3 million dollars in a Kickstarter campaign. That's 6.3 million dollars worth of permission to not change a thing, and so it has largely turned out. Does the ageing design hold up and can it make converts 20 years on? Here's wot I think.
]]>Minigames are the coffee Revel of videogames. They are harmless, infrequent and unpleasant to think about. We accept their presence, yet no one has ever eaten a pack of Revels and wished for more coffee nuggets. Nobody completed Final Fantasy X and thought: “Needs more Blitzball”. That minigames exist as a mild distraction inside the glowing guts of other games is itself ridiculous. Imagine you were on a golf course, and hole 12 turned out to be its own 8-hole pitch ‘n’ putt. “This is stupid,” you’d think, and then you would play pitch ‘n’ putt for the rest of the day in a mindless stupor.
Here are the 7 most gratuitous minigames - but do they all deserve to be here?
]]>It's only gone and come out, hasn't it? Four years after its controversial, record-breaking $6 million Kickstarter campaign, Shenmue 3 is finally a game you can pick up and play. Blimey, it's only been 18 years since the last one. Shenmue's had a rough road to release, full of publisher scandals and delay after delay after delay. But it's finally time to pick up where Shenmue 2 left off in 2001, with teen martial artist Ryo Hazuki traipsing around rural China looking for the folks who killed his dear old dad.
]]>A lot of Shenmue happens in the spaces between the game. I remember my time in Yu Suziki's sprawling RPGs not as some grand unveiling of my destiny, but as a dude collecting capsule toys, getting a job as a forklift driver, and hanging out at the arcade. I lived a rich little life playing it, though because of it I horribly failed my forklift driver exams in the real-world.
Shenmue 3 has time to fill as well, and here’s how you’ll do it.
]]>Remember that thing you like from 10 years ago? It’s probably getting a sequel. Shenmue 3. Evil Genius 2. Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2. The calendar of upcoming games is packed with throwbacks that will revisit the worlds we left behind over a decade ago. Oddworld: Soulstorm is heading back to the strange homeland of Abe the skinny green freedom farter. Mechwarrior 5 is booting up a bipedal destruct-o-bot that was powered down in the year 2000. If your favourite childhood game is not getting a sequel, it's probably getting a glittering remake.
Reviving forgotten entertainment relics is nothing new (hi, George Lucas) but the recent glut of resurrections has made me wonder: why are developers and publishers so keen to go back to old ground? Why do they want to chase this sense of nostalgia? So, I asked them.
]]>Epic Games are continuing to slap on a thick coat of cash to smooth over problems with their substandard store, now announcing money is their solution to discontent over crowdfunded games such as Shenmue III becoming Epic exclusives. For games whose crowdfunding campaigns offered keys for the game on a specific store before the game became a timed Epic exclusive, Epic now say, they'll either arrange keys for the promised store or pay for refunds. I do think people are making mountains out of molehills, but I'm told that's what the Internet is for. And goodness me, have Epic bought the Thompson Hillsquisher XR300, the 'Silver Sentinel'? Complete with the optional racing stripes, saddlebags, and pewter bell?
]]>Let’s get it out of the way: I have not played the Shenmues. For some this admission will immediately disqualify me from having a valid opinion on one of the most eagerly awaited (and expensive) Kickstarter throwbacks in history. I know how this will go. I will tell you I have played a bit, that the characters feel wooden, that the English voice acting is laughably bad, that the translation seems questionable, that the whole game appears only to be a big old walkabout with lots of minigames. And then you will tell me to shut the flip up. What does this Shenoob know, you’ll spit. Who does he think he is? Coming into this beloved world of kung fu and forklift driving decades late and kicking the village dust in our eyes.
But wait, don’t roundhouse kick me yet. Because I just raced some turtles in Shenmue III, that game you are determined to like, and it made me happy, too. We’re not so different, you and I.
]]>The will-mue, won't-mue of Shenmue will continue for a while longer, as Shenmue III is delayed once again. Previously due on August 27th, the open-world brawl-o-RPG is now expected on November 19th. It's the usual reason: they want more time to finish and make it better. Almost three months might seem a fair while longer to wait but sheesh, it's been 18 years since Shenmue II so what's your hurry? Heck, given that the first two only came to PC in 2018, maybe now you'll finish 'em first. Who's had time for all that when the Sega series Shenmue inspired, Yakuza, has also started coming to PC?
]]>While Sega are busy blowing up balloons and filling bowls with Hula Hoops for the launch of their remastered rereleases of Shenmue I & II in only a few hours, the makers of Shenmue III have kicked in the door yelling about their own Shennues: a release date for their crowdfunded sequel. Shenmue III will launch on August 27th, 2019, Ys Net and Deep Silver have announced. Yes, August next year - so far out that you don't even have a 2019 calendar hanging above your desk to add this to. And yes, I'd be astonished if a date announced over a year in advance does not change. But for now, here's a new trailer.
]]>You've been waiting 17 years for Shenmue III - what's one more year between friends? Sure, a delay until until 2019 makes the time between the wildly successful Kickstarter for Yu Suzuki's white whale and its eventual reality jump to four years, but I think we all knew this was inevitable.
]]>In a move that feels long overdue, Shenmue and its sequel Shenmue 2 are getting their first official releases on PC. The action-adventure game series from Yu Suzuki was supposed to launch a franchise in 1999 and 2001, respectively, and has amassed a cult following in the intervening decades. The third game in the series took to Kickstarter in 2015 and became the one of the fastest fundings in crowdfunding history. This new repackaging of the first two games lays the groundwork for folks to get excited about the (hopefully) incoming new chapter. Either way, this marks the first opportunity for PC owners to finally enter Suzuki's clockwork world of forklifts and crime.
]]>With the development saga of Shenmue 3 [official site] now creeping up on sixteen years, hey, here's another little bit of good news. After getting the ball rolling with crowdfunding, the RPG has now secured a publisher. Developers Ys net today announced that they've signed up with Deep Silver, the folks who publish such series as Saints Row and Metro. Having the technical and financial support of a publisher will surely be helpful for such a big life-sim-o-fight-a-RPG, especially considering the crowdfunding has only raised a fraction of the amount the first game reportedly cost - supposedly it was, in its day, the most expensive game ever made.
]]>As Old Father Time grabs his sickle and prepares to take ailing 2016 around the back of the barn for a big sleep, we're looking to the future. The mewling pup that goes by the name 2017 will come into the world soon and we must prepare ourselves for its arrival. Here at RPS, our preparations come in the form of this enormous preview feature, which contains details on more than a hundred of the exciting games that are coming our way over the next twelve months. 2016 was a good one - in the world of games at least - but, ever the optimists, we're hoping next year will be even better.
]]>For many a Shenmue fanatic, the fact that Shenmue 3 [official site] is still actually happening is enough to overwhelm. By the time the third series entry lands next December, 16 years will have passed since the conclusion of the last, thus it's had an inordinate amount of time to stew in the cauldron of cult status. Can it live up to the hype? Who knows, but the latest screens showcased at the Monaco Anime Game International Conferences (MAGIC) at the weekend suggest it might be on the right track. Let's check them out together after the drop.
]]>And so the unassailable Kickstarter hall of fame receives another member. Perhaps this one will actually ever be released? Shenmue 3 [Kickstarter] has finished its monumental run on the crowdfunding service at $6,333,295, making it far and away the most-funded game project and the sixth most on the entire service. The next slot up is the mighty(?) Ouya at over eight million, so not exactly close. Now begins the long, slow process of getting disappointed development with release still planned for December 2017.
When Microsoft made the announcement that they'd be adopting some kind of Early Access process for the Xbone, I joked that one of the other major publishers would use their conference to announce a Kickstarter. And so..
Last night, while I was catching up on sleep after a frantic weekend, Sony invited Shenmue director Yu Suzuki onstage to announce that they would be funding and publishing Shenmue III on PS4 he would be Kickstarting the sequel and releasing it on PC and PS4. The campaign has already raised almost $1.8m of a $2m target.
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