Recent reviews by Inkerlink

As a big Shenmue fan, this game really appeals to me. It's got a lot similar with it. I love mystery games, and games that let you explore a particular locale. The game lets you explore the town of Borgo Marina at your own pace, and it's packed with things to do and people to talk to. The fact it's an indie game is really impressive for what it's achieved in terms of scale and detail. The artsyle really appeals to me and it runs on basically anything including Steam Deck. I'll make sure to update this review with more info once I've gotten further in the game. There have been a few small bugs but nothing game breaking so far.

A really lovely little sailing game. Super relaxed and comforting.
Has a pleasing art style that really shines in it's colour presentation. Some really pretty sky and sea colour combinations!
The ship selection is pretty solid, and you can even capture ships you normally couldn't in other games. You can sail basically whatever you want!
I'm really glad they added an open world in an update, sailing is my favourite part of the game so I really don't feel the need to use fast travel.
Building your fleet and outfitting your ships is pretty robust, and I feel like there are a number of builds you can make and they are all valid.

No Man's Sky is a great game to relax with. I don't feel pressured into doing any one particular thing and that makes it great to just zone out with after a stressful day. The amount of content in the game is enormous after many years of free updates. It's one of those games that I usually pick up and play constantly for a week or two and then drop it for half a year until I get the urge to play it again, and that's fine. Sometimes it feels like I'm not really accomplishing anything meaningful though, even when pouring hours upon hours into an activity. It always seems like there is one more thing to craft or one more thing to collect, and it never really amounts to anything really meaningful. So as long as you go in knowing full well that this game is designed to just be a mindless dopamine trickle, you'll probably find something to like.

The best part about the game is going through the process of interviewing citizens and doing your best to be a good officer, they generally nail that down pretty good. If they expand on that in the future, I'll be happy. Thhe game environments look nice, but the character models looks stiff, and have hardly any variation. The citizens don't express their emotions very well, instead having to rely on popups to tell you how they are feeling instead. The game is fun, but it's WAY too buggy for a full release. Also I feel like the UI and controls could use some work, selecting different gestures and items shouldn't take so many button presses. For example, if I want to stop a vehicle while I'm on foot I have to take out my stop sign but by the time I open the item wheel, select it and bring it out, and hold it up, the car is usually long gone by then. I feel like it should be priced lower because of all the bugs, only grab this if it's on sale right now.

I love ATS! It's a great way to unwind after a hard day's work.

I've been a long time Shenmue fan and have played just about every version of both games, minus Shenmue II for the Dreamcast. I actually was introduced to the series starting with Shenmue II on the Xbox after renting it on a whim one day with a friend. Me and my friend played it together and my friend didn't seem too impressed with the game and wondered what the point of it was. I however, fell in love with it instantly. I played through that game a number of times, and eventually got Shenmue I for my Dreamcast a while later and completed that as well, also loving that one too.

So with all of that being said, coming from someone who is well versed in the series, I have to say that overall I am pretty pleased with this re-release for modern systems. Everything I loved about the original games is still mostly intact here, and also gives the games some fresh new options we never had before, and it is now by far the easiest way and best way to play through the games.

The game looks sharper than ever with new resolution options and also widescreen support during gameplay. Unfortunately most of the cut scenes are in 4:3, which can be a bit distracting but isn't that big of a deal for me. The game also gives you options to play the game at original resolution and aspect ratio's as well, which I thought was a nice touch. The textures in the game are pretty much unchanged from the original games, but look crisper and cleaner with the higher resolution. The game also now sports anti-aliasing which helps a lot with the original games issues with shimmering and unclean lines. Overall this is the graphically superior version of both games.

They also offer you the option to enable or disable bloom in both games, which was a positive for me. Originally bloom was only on the Xbox version of Shenmue II which I liked quite a bit. Shenmue I never had that option so it was nice to see it brought over to that game now as well to give both games a unified look whether you enable or disable it. The strange thing though is the bloom in Shenmue II for Xbox seemed to only come out during nighttime, but the bloom effect in these re-releases seems to be enabled for both night and day. It felt a bit strange to see the bloom present during the day at first but I got used to it after a while and feel that it adds to the look of the game quite nicely.

Sound wise, I'd say that both games are passable. The music is spot on for the most part, but some tracks (especially in Shenmue II) seem to sound... off somehow. The don't sound quite right. But if you are playing the game for the first time, you of course won't notice it at all. The voices though seem to have gotten a noticeable downgrade from the Dreamcast and Xbox versions of the games, which is dissapointing to me. I'm not sure what they did to them but they sound noticeably worse.

One awesome new feature is the ability to switch the voice between English and Japanese at will for the first time. So this was the first time I've heard the Japanese voice track and it was like being able to play the games for the first time all over again! As much as I love the English voice track for it's weirdness and cheesyness, the Japanese voice track sound much more natural and much more fitting. It's a real treat to be able to hear the characters in such different ways. It also brings to light some interesting differences between the two tracks such as Yuan's gender/sexuality in Shenmue II. I'd even say the games are worth multiple playthroughs just for the voice options alone.

This brings me to the point of mods, since this game is on PC now it is open to modding and I did end up using a couple during my playthrough. Namely, I used the 16:9 widescreen fix mod which modifies the cutscenes to display in 16:9 instead of 4:3 for both games, and also the enhanced audio restoration mod to bring the voice audio of the game up to Dreamcast and Xbox quality. While the game is completely playable without these mods, I felt my experience was better overall with these two mods specifically, the widescreen mod introduced some minor graphical problems during some cutscenes such as dissapearing objects/characters but wasn't nearly as distracting as the aspect ratio changing all the time in my opinion. And the increased quality of the voices helped a lot as well. That being said, with or without these mods, my rating of this game wouldn't change either way, I just preferred to fix the game up a little but would have enjoyed it just as much without them.

I'm still in love with the games story, and I feel that it still holds up today and is still just as enthralling. These two games offer so much detail in the world that it is supremely easy to lose yourself in it and just wander around and explore every nook and cranny. The game still even manages to surprise me after all these years since I still find new things I never knew about before.

I was able to squeeze out about 75 hours from the games, and I generally took it slow and took my time. Even if you rushed I think you'd be able to get at least 40-50 hours out of this game easily, so it's definitely got a lot to offer in terms of content.

I'm quite satisfied with what d3t has done with this re-release. That being said, I still feel like it could use a bit more polish since there are still some annoying bugs and the game did crash for me a handful of times as well. Could it have been better? Sure, but for what it is I still think it is hands-down the best way to play these games right now, and is a great way to prepare yourself for when Shenmue III comes out later this year.