Let me tell you all about a small little game that's currently 50% off...
Deadly Premonition: Director's Cut released on Steam almost a couple of months ago now, and its not a perfect port. While a patch has been released since launch, and
Durante has fixed some stuff about the game, it still has problems, and the solutions are often weird things like changing compatibility mode. I want to get this out of the way as the port has its problems. Much like the game in question, it is in no way some sort of technical beauty and has a lot of flaws. On a personal level during the 18 hours I have played the PC Port, the only issue I have run into is the game crashing on me twice, but I digress.
From the get-go, Deadly Premonition is a game one has to ask how it exists. Its a 2010 game, and the graphics look worse than some PS2 games. The animation is laughably jankey. The game was in development hell for several years, with a super small studio behind it, so its surprising to hear it even eventually came out. It doesn't feel like a game that came out this generation at all, and in many ways it seems like an amateurish effort at making a game.
But that's just it, because Deadly Premonition is actually not a bad game. It sometimes treads on a thin line of being so bad it's good, but it's not just a good game because its bad, if that makes any sense. It's a game that does some things wonderfully, and other things terribly.
At its heart, Deadly Premonition is like some strange blend of Resident Evil 4 meets Shenmue, with huge Twin Peaks, Silent Hill, and Harvest Moon overtones. But with 10x more jank. While it is pretty obvious that this game pulls inspirations from elsewhere, it also is in a unique position is is unlike any other game you'll ever play. The game at its heart is an open-world set in the pacific northwest of the USA, in a small town called Greenvale. You play as Agent Francis York Morgan, who is an FBI Agent coming to check in on a murder of a local girl, Anna Graham, who was a local beauty. Fans of Twin Peaks will sense this all sounds very familiar. Around town, there are various townsfolk who go about their daily lives, even having their own day-by-day cycles that you can track if you so desire. They go to work, eat out, go home, sometimes visit neighbors, etc. Sometimes they offer side-quests, which offer various tasks (really, they're pretty varied) that have side-stories (cutscenes and all) and rewards (some pretty useful, like quick travel or new cars or new side areas can now be accessed). There's a total of 50 side-quests, and they are completely worth your time. Between doing side-quests, you can also do a variety of things around town, varying from strange checkpoint car races, sleeping in sheds down by the river, going out to eat, driving around aimlessly while you listen to York talk about movie trivia, go fishing in a QTE minigame, and a variety of other activities.
At its heart, this is what draws all of Deadly Premonition together. It builds a strange but enjoyable world you can experience at your leisure. There's odd things in every corner of this world, with a variety of quirky characters to meet and get to know.
But if you stay out after midnight, or follow the story path or do some certain side-quests, you'll come to another element of the game, which is these otherworld nightmare sequences.
These sequences control somewhat like a poor-man's Resident Evil 4, set in something very akin to Silent Hill's Otherworld segments. The sky goes orange and starts moving very rapidly. Blood, flesh, red vegetation, and just a lot of red and purple begins to get smudged on everywhere. You fight off enemies, collect puzzles, witness strange and often surrealistic sights, while looking for your escape out of here (often found by collecting clues towards the case, or if out past midnight, finding saftey and letting time fly by or sleeping). While on majority these sections aren't quite as enjoyable as the main game, they have their own janky charm to them that makes Deadly Premonition what it is. And it should be noted that the nightmare sequences actually get more enjoyable later in the game in my opinion, as more elements (like puzzles) get introduced in them. While combat is better in the Director's Cut version of the, its nothing to write home about (again, poor-man's Resident Evil 4), and the enemy selection isn't super huge.
And occasionally, there are sections with the Raincoat Killer. An ambiguous figure draped in a red raincoat and killing people around town, you occasionally encounter the Killer in these nightmare scenarios, either in a quick QTE run-by, in a section where you have to find a hiding spot before the Killer comes to get you, or in a chase sequence. There's other mixes to the nightmare scenarios in the game as well, but won't spoil them.
But all I have mentioned doesn't explain all the elements of why Deadly Premonition is amazing, as some of what it lacks in budget and sometimes shanty gameplay it makes up for spades in some of the game's other elements.
Firstly, if you have not heard the music in this game, it definitely deserves to be heard. It is probably not what you're expecting.
Deadly Premonition has a story to tell. At its heart, the story is very Twin Peaks-inspired, but it goes in a completely different direction. The story is sometimes ridiculous, the game ends up being somehow both intentionally and unintentionally hilarious at the same time. How you could watch a cutscene like
this or
this without smiling is beyond me. But its not just funny. The game has quirky characters with flaws, and who develop over the course of the game. They're all a bit off-beat, and possibly none more so than our own agent, but its hard not to fall in love with them over the 15-20 hours it takes to complete the game's story campaign (with an additional 20 hours easily if you take on the sidequests, which will get you even more familiar with the characters). A lot of people on GAF say that Agent York is one of the best protagonists to ever exist in a game, and I tend to agree (it's okay if we say that, right Zach?)
And the story actually packs quite a punch until the very end. The last three hours of the game are unforgettable, and having to come to a close one's time in Greenvale and saying goodbye may be one of the hardest things I've had to swallow in a game. Its hardly ever a game makes me so attached to its characters and world so much that its hard to leave it for me.
And somehow, between going lazily about town, growing beards and investigating rumored haunted mines around town, to watching characters like York grow, to how many times the game will make you laugh, roll your eyes, and even touch you emotionally, and somehow through its jank that becomes oddly charming, you may end up coming to love Deadly Premonition too.
That or think its a messy, overpraised piece of garbage, but its definitely a game you need to try for yourself to see if you love it or not. But just know it gets better after the initial nightmare sequence at the beginning.
So yeah, Deadly Premonition.
