Kickstarter - Current Overview

Everything is looking good on the Kickstarter RPG front...
 
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Backed "Bards Tale IV" and "We Happy few" actually looks very interesting. The trailer was great. But 30$ is too much of a "risk investment" for such a game for me. The Game reminded me of "Sir, you are being hunted!" and Bioshock. "Sir, you are being hunted" was also a kickstarter title which extremely under-delivered though.
It's a game I'd gladly take for 10-15€, so I'll probably wait for a sale.

I absolutely don't get the hype around Shenmue. The kickstarter trailer is just horrible, the game scene looks stiff and boring, and somewhat cheap while at the same time glittered by AAA production values (like when you see a remake of a successful trash movie like Blairwitch project).
I didn't play the previous games as I never owned a console.
So can anyone explain what is so good about this series?
 
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Kordanor said:
Backed "Bards Tale IV" and "We Happy few" actually looks very interesting. The trailer was great. But 30$ is too much of a "risk investment" for such a game for me. The Game reminded me of "Sir, you are being hunted!" and Bioshock. "Sir, you are being hunted" was also a kickstarter title which extremely under-delivered though.
It's a game I'd gladly take for 10-15€, so I'll probably wait for a sale.
Click to expand...
I backed We Happy Few because I liked the concept, and execution, and because I really enjoyed the awesome style, and audio/visual design, of the first title by this team (Contrast), even though the gameplay was a bit on the poor side. I'm hoping they can match the gameplay side with the artistic side for this second title.
Also, my name is in an easter egg on their first title, so I'm almost obliged to do so. :biggrin:

Kordanor said:
I absolutely don't get the hype around Shenmue. The kickstarter trailer is just horrible, the game scene looks stiff and boring, and somewhat cheap while at the same time glittered by AAA production values (like when you see a remake of a successful trash movie like Blairwitch project).
I didn't play the previous games as I never owned a console.
So can anyone explain what is so good about this series?
Click to expand...
It's easy to understand why you wouldn't get the hype, if you didn't play it. It's the kind of game you had to experience.
Personally, I would go as far as to consider the game(s) (technically, both Shenmue I and II are different chapters of the same game, and were worked on at the same time) as my all-time favorite.

Basically, the game was a huge pile of different gameplay mechanics, and different genres, with a scale and production values that was completely insane and unparalleled at the time. It even went on the Guinness Book of Records as the most expensive video game of all time (at the time).
The story was quite generic, a typical 70's/80's kung-fu revenge storyline, but the actual game was an open world title before the term was commonly used, you had locations that replicated the real life locations, the weather in the game actually replicated the weather from the forecasts of the time, the NPC's had schedules and daily routines (if you waited, you would see them go home, and I mean actually go home: leave work, walk all the way through town, and go inside the building), you had an insane number of items to interact, and the amount of content, the huge majority optional, and sometimes very unlikely to encounter, was just crazy. For example, you could knock on random doors in buildings (say, in Shenmue II you go to floor 4 of building "x"), and you would find things, or someone would kick you out (on a building miles away from any plot device; you had no reason to go there, but if you did, something was there); or you could go inside an arcade, and play actual real-life, Sega arcade games (the director of Shenmue made many well known arcade titles, and you could play many in the actual game).
On the gameplay side, you had quests, like an RPG. You fought using the Virtua Fighter engine, so you had an unusual depth to the fights. You could have jobs, and would work doing meaningless tasks, drive forklifts, and many more things. You could do useless things like feed a cat (she became orphan at the same time as the protagonist of the game), go and buy things to eat/drink, collect toy capsules, so many bits and pieces.
Add to that great graphics, for the time, and an incredible soundtrack (done by many "legendary" Japanese video game composers, including Yuzo Koshiro, a personal favorite), and it was a game unlike pretty much anything you had at the time. Even today, I would struggle to find a similar game that has such attention to detail.

There are a few gameplay elements that have dated not too well, but I still replay the games periodically, and still enjoy myself.
Like I said on a previous post about Shenmue, I think I would actually rather prefer a PC re-release of Shenmue I and II, than the new game, which will have a very hard time matching the scale of the previous titles. I think it will be pretty much impossible, considering the budget and means they have at their disposal. The previous game(s) had SEGA in full force over the game, meaning a huge budget, a huge, talented staff, it was made in different times.
 
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