Well I suppose we are very different in this regard then, but I would argue that anybody who is happy for a critic to say whatever they like about a game or movie (regardless of whether or not it is true) simply wants to validate their own preconceptions about the media rather than be given the tools needed to make their own judgement.
You don't think that's overstating it a little? No one is saying "whatever they want" about a game or movie, it's all rooted in some kind of truth unless you get to the bonkers conspiracy stuff (ie: Stanley Kubrick and Room 237).
I think you're right that it is no longer being consumed as a review and is instead serving as either a puff or take-down piece (depending on which way the author is leaning).
It's more of a video essay imo, it starts with a thesis and essentially only argues that point for the duration. I would not watch/read anything that is that long or goes that in depth as a "review" because at a certain point it's impossible to talk about what worked and didn't work without spoiling the whole thing.
To that end, could I not say that 90% of Shenmue 1 was spent asking about sailors and driving around in a forklift and still have it be considered a good take on the game? Could I show clips from the fly episode of Breaking Bad and portray it as an eight season series about two men trying to catch a fly? Those things are present in their respective works, but to overstate their prevalence in such a way wouldn't give my audience an accurate representation.
But he's not misrepresenting things like that, he may have said "BB season 3 was ruined by the episode "The Fly" because it stops everything for a pointless filler episode that breaks all the tension" or something along those lines. Again, overstating the issue perhaps, but not outright
lying about the content in the way you suggest.
(EDIT) But this isn't a good comparison because he's saying S3 is terrible, not that it's terrible because a small part of it is terrible and he's not pretending that a small part is actually a big part. He levels valid complaints at every aspect of the game. So if he similarly complained about every episode of season 3 and then determined it was a terrible season, that would be more of an apt comparison.
I believe that Shenmue 3 is still a game laden with choices, but where those choices perhaps fall short is that most of them lack any real meaning. That said, I think it could quite easily be argued that many of the choices found in the original game are guilty of the same crime as ultimately the player ends up at the same conclusion regardless of the choices they make during their playthrough.
It's not a choice if you're
forced to go home early. It's not a choice if
not training means you basically can't win any fights. It's not a choice if not eating impedes your ability to explore the world and makes you lose fights in 1 hit. Compare that to S1 where you could either go home on time and not be a disappointment to Ine San or continue exploring and get scolded by her, or you could train and improve your moves and engage with the combat system or you might not know how to effectively perform moves during combat...
You actually had me doubting myself for a second there to the point where I had to go back and check, but yes; he completed the game twice. He mentions it at 1:52 in the video (thank the lord for the 'transcript' function on YouTube, as I don't think I could have brought myself to sit through the video a second time and would probably have just agreed with you to save myself the hassle).
I wasn't doubting you, I just didn't remember him saying it and I wasn't about to sit through the video again to check.
As you point out, Mr Yuan is missing and Ryo is in a town that he has never visited before (and thus, doesn't know his way around). Where exactly should Ryo be going if not the town's busiest area?
Sure, he should go there first but why can't he check the
entire town? Especially because, as it turns out,
the thugs are still there! That's the kind of thing that's maddening as a player because the player and the character are on completely different pages.
Again though, this is something we see in not only the original Shenmue games, but pretty much all open world games -whether modern or old. Ryo doesn't leave the village square until he has the answers that he needs in much the same way that he stays in the Aberdeen area until he has recovered his bag.
Yes and
he recovers his bag. It's the first thing he does. He doesn't have to play a game of lucky hit first, or spar with a street fighter or whatever, or wait several
days to find it. He's also in
Hong Kong, not a tiny rural village that takes 2 minutes to run around. Surely you can see how the story and setting do a far better job of gating the player in a way that makes sense in that instance.
Yu and the team could have allowed the player to ask around in other areas of Bailu, but it would have served as a massive waste of the player's time (something that the game has been heavily criticized for in other areas).
No he couldn't have, because the player would find the thugs without having to go through all the hoops and tutorial stuff first.
... just as we find out about the history of the mirrors, Lan Di's background and Iwao's travels through China all while the objective is "Find Yuan" (technically).
That's just it isn't it? You had to turn to the
entire game and I was able to list you things that happen in
the first act of S2.
Shenmue 3's story beats are punctuated with just as many informative data drops as the previous entries and I think on face value they are every bit as interesting and meaningful to the story. Where they arguably fal short is in their depth and the manner in which this information is given to the player, but I don't think that I ever felt like it was busy work nor did I ever feel as though the story wasn't progressing (to be clear here, I mean the 'story' of Shenmue 3 rather than the series' overarching plot)
I agree with this to a point but I can't say that I wasn't massively disappointed in Bailu village and the lack of development concerning the Shenmue tree, the mirrors, Iwao's time there, and the poem. What wasn't outright ignored raised several questions and not necessarily in a good way. We went to
Bailu Village, a place we never thought we'd see, and not much happened there.
"This happens every single morning" - this is false. There are at least three days that I can recall where Shenhua does not say anything to Ryo as he leaves the house (either because she is leaving with him or has already left). I haven't played Shenmue 3 in 6 months+ so there may very well be more.
If I say "I work every Monday to Friday from 9-5" and you come back with, "no you don't because every three weeks there's a holiday", you are being pedantic. I would barely consider this to be a slight exaggeration.
"You cannot skip it" - this is false. The ability to skip dialogue and cutscenes has been in the game since January.
This was true of my experience and the experience of nearly everyone who waited 20 years to play this game (which is the POV the video adopts) although I agree that he should have mentioned the patch, especially here.
"It does not change" - this is false. There are different variations of this scene and, unlike the 'wake-up' scene, they are not dependent on conversing with Shenhua.
Truthfully I can't say I noticed that anything changed during my play through and if the instances he cited were all the same then that's quite a lot of repetition. This is the most that he "misrepresents" the game and his argument hardly hinges on it. I mean if he pointed out that Shenhua says "have a good day Ryo" and sometimes says "have a great day Ryo" or whatever, do you think that becomes a point in the game's favor? Or if he removed this bit entirely, do you think his argument is weakened all that much?
These are not exaggerations.
Nothing here crosses the line into outright lying, as you appear to be suggesting.
If Plinkett tries to argue that the fight scene is 45 minutes long on the other hand, I can time it and tell him with some surety that he is wrong in much the same way that I can post
this link and say that SEPW is wrong when he states that the cutscene does not change.
If Shenhua saying "Hey Ryo! Have a good day. Be Safe." is so appreciably different from "Ryo... See you later" as to invalidate the point he's making then I don't know what to tell you. The overall point being made is that the game constantly interrupts the player for the same pointless cutscene every day. If you're going to tell me that he's misrepresenting the game because sometimes she alters her phrasing slightly then I would say that
you're the one pedantically nitpicking.
SEPW doesn't implicitly tell his viewers that everything they're seeing and being told is an accurate representation of the game because the assumption is that that is the case by virtue of it being a review.
You haven't pointed out anything that crosses the line, imo, of misrepresenting the game. At best you've said the fade to blacks aren't a big issue (which does not invalidate the point about the janky conversations) and said that Shenhua changes her phrasing in cutscenes that can be skipped (which does not invalidate the point about the game constantly yanking control away from the player, nor does it change the way most people who waited 20 years to play the game played it). At best you've pointed out that the video isn't
absolutely perfect in its arguments, which is obviously true (and true of every video).
I think the biggest problem here is the medium that he chooses to share his thoughts on the game and the impact that that medium has on his narrative. This may be a bit of a generalization (and there are obviously exceptions), but I think that we have been conditioned to associate reading with being informed and watching with being entertained. The primary purpose of a review is to inform and so by making a video he is expected to both inform and entertain - but these two things are often at odds with one another.
I mostly agree but I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with this. The same way I don't think there's anything wrong with biopics embellishing the lives of their subjects as long as the broad strokes are accurate.
"Most mornings, you'll need to watch or skip a cutscene with Shenhua saying goodbye to Ryo and there is very little variation in these scenes." is a lot less entertaining than "This happens every single morning. You cannot skip it and it doesn't change (I swear these are different recordings)" and so the reviewer is faced with the choice of either compromising the accuracy or the entertainment factor of his review.
No because the point of the review is to articulate how he felt about the game, not describe the game in exacting detail. This is
exactly how I played those scenes and if you asked me to recall exactly what Shenhua said during them, I couldn't tell you; but I
could tell you that I remember being interrupted by her every morning to say goodbye to Ryo. That's the "truth" of it. We're not robots here, I don't need him to be 100% accurate when he's only being 90% accurate to make a broader point that's true.
Analytics show that his negative Shenmue video is overwhelmingly more successful than his impartial one, so he likely knows that the more negative he is, the more viewers he stands to gain and this in turn effectively makes that earlier choice for him.
How would he know this before posting the video? And if you're talking about how analytics are reinforcing the negative opinion, then you'll have to wait to see if he chooses to capitalize on that with another negative video. He has plenty of positive videos though, so I don't see how you could make that claim one way or the other.
I understand that he doesn't like the game, why he doesn't like the game and why he put this video together in the way that he did, but I also think that by misrepresenting the game and misleading his audience (both through implication and in some cases, lies), he has failed to make a good review.
I don't see how you can say that without refuting the underlying points he is making. Do you think the conversations are actually
good? Or the fighting system? Food system? Story? etc. If not, then all it would take is him cutting out some clips and throwaway lines for you to have no issue with this video.
I also think that at some point he made a conscious choice to aim to make a good video rather than a good review. In that sense, I think most would agree that he succeeded (although as funny as it was in places, there is something about the way that this guy emotes that I really can't stand).
I agree with this but I don't put as much stock in being "a good review" as you do. I also agree that his faux-sincerity "serious actor" affectation is annoying. I don't begrudge Lindsay Ellis' Game of Thrones review because she generalizes because the overall point being made is sound. Similarly, I don't think Mauler's Last Jedi review is strengthened by the fact that he picks apart nearly every scene in the movie. In many ways I think the Plinkett reviews have changed online criticism for the better and for the worse; some people take the wrong lessons from it in an attempt to be similarly popular.