Jibby wrote: Popular streamer Joel from Vinesauce is currently streaming Shenmue with 1166 viewers:
https://www.twitch.tv/vargskelethorIt seems that he's enjoying himself and giving Shenmue a pretty good first impression to a lot of people.
I have to say, I am loving his videos on Shenmue! It's great to see a first-time player with a huge fanbase (he has 450k subscribers on YouTube and over 100k Twitch followers) who 'gets' Shenmue, in terms of its atmosphere and immersion. Sure, there are a few things here and there like him hating the combat and not bothering to go into how in-depth it is, but that's fine.
And he gets that the game isn't perfect; he specifically stated from the outset how the voice acting is bad, but unlike some other people who have played Shenmue on YouTube or Twitch, he doesn't make those negatives the emphasis of the streams, to make cheap jokes and to capitalise on the game by making fun of it (which, admittedly, can be easy to do).
But what I love the most about these streams is seeing the chat. It really goes to show how influential the person playing the game is; if they put the game in a bad light like Funhaus, of course you're going to get the majority of comments being like this game is shit. However, from watching these streams with chat on Twitch, they seem to be really enjoying Shenmue too. They make plenty of jokes, but those jokes aren't making fun of the game itself and they even agreed with Joel when he said he loves Shenmue more than Heavy Rain and Fahrenheit etc, because of how immersive it is.
Sorry if this post is a couple of months later than the initial post I am quoting, but the playthrough is currently ongoing, with the last stream being 3 days ago, so thought it was still relevant in case anyone wants to check it out.