Hello viewers! Welcome to the first in a regular series of columns. Now hurry up and get your black tie on, because we’re off to a funeral.

Except that sounds a bit depressing, so let’s call it a valediction instead. Last month saw the release in Japan of what will almost certainly be the last ever major Dreamcast game, Shenmue 2. As yet there’s no firm date for the game’s European release, but Sega better not be thinking about messing around with it, because with everyone a bit nervous about flying at the moment (even to the absurd extent of Sega putting back the release of the totally innocuous Propellor Arena), Shenmue 2 is the closest that this European is going to get to going on holiday for the next few months.

The first Shenmue was a distinctly muted success, never really standing a chance of living up to the hype that had accumulated around it in the many years since its initial genesis as the Saturn game Virtua Fighter RPG. A large part of the criticism that surrounded it was based on the fact that there was very little in Shenmue that you could, in all honesty, describe as gameplay. As long as you went where you were told to go, it was pretty much impossible NOT to complete the game in the first week of play. Of course, this kind of thinly-disguised linearity is hugely common in almost all RPGs – some, like The Legend Of Zelda, just do a slightly better job of concealing it than others.

But whereas the likes of Final Fantasy are, to any sane person, unimaginably tedious bouts of gruelling text-reading followed by monsters the size of houses suddenly teleporting right on top of your head as you innocently stroll down a harmless-looking country path, Shenmue was one of the most captivating games in the history of time. Now, a less perceptive and more idiotic columnist than your reporter would be at a loss to explain this apparently mystifying paradox. Luckily for you, though, I’m here to explain it for you in terms that even a Final Fantasy fan will be able to grasp with the minimum of adult help. Read on and prepare to be mildly enlightened.

The difference between Shenmue and Final Fantasy (and all its dull-witted orc-obsessed pals) is the difference between going to work in a manky factory or horrible airless office, and going on a lovely holiday to an exotic foreign land. Which is ironic, since in Shenmue you have to get a job in a manky dockside factory, whereas lands don’t come much more exotic than the fantasy worlds of the FF series, but bear with me for a minute. Whereas Final Fantasy doesn’t give you a moment’s peace, filling up every empty moment with either endless random battles or even-more-endless page after page of scrolling plot exposition, Shenmue chucks you into a small Japanese town and leaves you to get on with your life.

Often you’ll have hours to kill while you wait for a rendezvous, and rather than forcing you to battle Godzilla 17 times while you wait, Shenmue lets you explore the town, stroll around the shops, go to the arcade, admire the scenery, and just generally act like a tourist. By giving you that freedom, even though it’s essentially pointless, meaningless freedom (no matter how good you get at Space Harrier in Shenmue’s arcade, it won’t help your quest one iota), Shenmue immediately turns playing the game into a nice relaxing holiday which just happens to have an exciting adventure tacked onto it as a bonus. Compare that to the endless hours you have to spend building up your characters in tedious battles in FF, and what does the latter suddenly sound like? Yep, it sounds like work.

There’s far too much of this in games at the moment. Whether it be the mindless performing of repetitive tasks as in Final Fantasy, or the ludicrous vogue in racing games for having practically the entire game “locked” when you buy it, with all its exciting features not opened up to you until you’ve put in hours of labour driving the boring cars on the dullest tracks, I’m sick of games that force you to work instead of trying to entertain you. Nobody likes working, it’s something we have to do to get money, to buy games with, to entertain ourselves. So as the Dreamcast, the most entertaining and fun console of the last decade, sinks below the waves for one last time, let’s look back wistfully from the lifeboats, then lose ourselves in the streets of Shenmue 2 and spend some time thinking about just what it is we want from our games. Personally, I’d like a bit of fun. I have a job already.