Of course, no matter where you play, it's still just 30 frames per second. As you'd expect, the HD re-release of Shenmue doesn't exhibit these problems - at least based on my experience so far. Frame-rate is improved too: while the Dreamcast game is steady in most scenes, busier streets tend to drop frames, and actually cause actual slow-down as the engine is tied to the 30fps update. Moving between shops and different areas is now almost seamless as a result of the speed increase. So what else has changed? Well, loading times are much faster in the HD version and this is perhaps one of the most significant changes. Regardless of which setting you opt for, there is a noticeable difference in general colour and tone compared to the Dreamcast original, with the HD version delivering a slightly warmer appearance in general. The HD remaster also adds a bloom effect (which can be disabled for purists) - it subtly boosts image vibrance and the luminosity of certain elements, such as neon signs at night-time. The HD version solves this by filtering the cloud texture. On Dreamcast, the sky texture is point-sampled and pixelated which is an odd choice considering that clouds should appear soft by their nature. While the assets may be the same, their usage is improved in certain areas. Looking further, all of the original models, textures and audio exist as they did on Dreamcast. The rest of the experience remains at 16:9, however, including normal dialogue sequences and QTEs. I'd imagine the selected camera angles simply introduced issues when displayed at a wider aspect ratio and the decision was made to stick with the original presentation. There's one caveat to this, however - the cinematic cut-scenes are still displayed at 4:3 regardless of your selected setting. Watch on YouTube Our full video breakdown of the Shenmue remasters, tested on all platforms.īeyond resolution, players now have the option of viewing the game in full 16:9 widescreen or its original 4:3 aspect ratio, while also toggling low resolution rendering if you want to experience the 'sensation' of 480p. There are no such issues with the new HD version, which retains full colour depth from start to finish, cleaning up the image signification. Internally, many Dreamcast games utilise a higher colour depth but render out to a 16-bit front buffer to save memory, resulting in stippled dithering when played using VGA. Thankfully, the new HD version handles this much more effectively, enabling clean surfaces devoid of shimmering and artefacts.īeyond that, the HD version also avoids the dithering artefacts inherent in the Dreamcast version. My guess is that AM2 felt that the side effects of utilising bilinear filtering in combination with mip-maps - which leads to blurred textures at oblique angles - took too great a toll on the perception of fine detail. That's because Shenmue is one of the few games on the system to completely eschew mip-maps - something it shares with AM2's arcade games. In its original format, Shenmue exhibits a lot of noticeable shimmering and aliasing - something atypical for the Dreamcast. More importantly, in comparison to Dreamcast, shimmering is kept to an absolute minimum with thin objects and fine details appearing temporally stable in the HD version. It's an extremely effective solution and it holds up well even when scaled on a 4K TV. Shenmue uses a form of anti-aliasing that manages to clean up edges to the point where it's nearly impossible to see individual pixel steps. The good news is that image quality is terrific. Across all Xbox and PlayStation consoles, Shenmue HD operates with a 1080p pixel-count - whether you're gaming on base or enhanced hardware. It should come as no surprise that Shenmue HD delivers a higher resolution experience. PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC releases are available, each delivering a remarkably close conversion of the Dreamcast originals, with one or two interesting tweaks. It may not be the full-on remaster/remake we might have hoped for, but Shenmue and its sequel are finally playable on modern hardware, courtesy of Sega and developer d3t.
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