Well I finished Deadly Premonition earlier, it’s an odd one that’s for sure.
Make no mistake the game both plays and looks like arse, our currently absent friend Hot Coldman gave me the advice to just stick with it at first and while simple advice it’s understandable, the game has an incredibly weak first impression, getting past the visual hurdle is one thing but the frame rate on the PS3 version fumbles all over the place. The short gameplay segment at the start consists of awkward aiming mechanics, spongy enemies, block pushing and picking up a key item to use just down the path, the most damning thing here? This represents a good portion of this games gameplay output that you will repeat ad nasuem.
Talk about starting off on the wrong foot, if I wasn’t aware of the games cult classic status I doubt I’d ever have carried on, in fact it took me a while to even get back to it after finishing the prologue, I returned to be greeted with the games somewhat unwieldy driving controls and surprisingly huge map that’s a pain to route plan with since you can only zoom it out so far. So yeah it was still on the wrong foot, hopping onwards.
But at some point, beyond the lumber mill section (which was surprisingly combat heavy compared to the other areas of its kind considering how early in the game it was) the games bizarre style started sinking in, for all its failings on the gameplay front I started getting the impression that this was not something that lacked effort. There’s plenty of games out there that simply play poorly because they’re rushed out licensed titles or because it was clear the people behind it gave zero fucks yet Deadly Premonition comes across as having ambition, I may even use that cop out term of “charm”, well it’s not so bad when used positively. The quirkiness combined with an interesting "whodunit" kept me intrigued and before I knew it I was playing for hours at a time, even if I dreaded every moment where the loading screen signified I was about to be shooting at zombie things with the same 3 wailing sound bites heard over and over, even when the game had me taking a boring lengthy trip across the map with me having to plan out my route as to get there as fast as possible, basically the plot was carrying it along for me.
One of the most unintentionally hilarious things in this game has to be how limited the soundtrack is, there’s only a handful of tracks with wildly differing styles used all the time, often within the same cutscenes, you go from the cheerful whistling ear worm to end all ear worms straight into a warped saxophone, it’s oddly endearing much like the game itself.
Unfortunately the good times didn’t last, the last 2 or 3 chapters of the game completely fell flat with me for the most part, pacing was a bit off, the plot went in a direction that I just didn’t find at all as engaging as before which in turn highlighted the poor game mechanics once more which had stayed consistently crud for like the entire game, capped off with a pretty awful final boss battle I wasn’t left feeling as positive as I was during the mid game stretch.
It’s a game I’m glad to have played as it’s interesting to see just how plot and characters can rise above shoddy mechanics and technical flaws to make for an engaging experience but I can’t see myself ever playing it again, one of those rare cases of a game that could really have benefited from actually having less game in it, it’s not really strong survival horror anyway, to think the original version was even worse in this respect is certainly something. A marmite game in its truest form.
The best pro wrestler ever comes from Canada
I'll give you a hint: starts with "Chris" and doesn't end in Jericho
I remember one of my favourites being some variety of Chris from Canada.
