Better Off Dead

Deadly Premonition, Or How I learned to stop worrying and just enjoy the ride.

Deadly Premonition is a game that is getting a lot of surprise buzz lately, mostly in part to Destructoid's bizarre 10/10 review. Believe it or not, based on that review and some positive word of mouth, I decided to take a chance on it.

I proudly plucked a copy off of the GameStop shelf and marched up to the counter, my $20 in hand. The Clerk looked at me funny and asked if I had heard anything about the game. I told him that I had heard it was "Really bad, but really fun." He just nodded and said, "Hmm...I guess there's much worse ways to spend $20..." He gestured towardss a clearance table with a used $19 copy of MGS4 and continued "... but there are much better ways too." What he didn't realize, is he couldn't have been more wrong.

I popped this baby in and from the opening moments of this FBI agent driving around talking to his split personality and smoking 'Police Brand' Cigarettes, I knew I was going to be right at home. That feeling just continued to grow as he ran some squirrels off the road and they chirped like monkeys; and by the time he procaimed, "There's something wrong with this town, my Coffee warned me of this," I was over the moon.

You play as Francis York Morgan (Just call him York. He claims everyone does) an FBI special agent who loves his coffee. He is on his way to the small town of Greenvale to investigate the strange murder of a young woman. There you must work to solve the murder, while also working your way through just the sheer absurdity of the whole game.

The game is pretty much a survival horror game, with a bit more emphasis on combat than most (think Silent Hill: Homecoming.) This results in several areas where you walk around picking up shiny objects and flipping switches, but there is much more to the game than just that. After the introductory segment, it unexpectedly becomes a sandbox game. You are given a clock and have certain hours where you can do certain things, and then you are just pretty much told 'have at it'. This allows for exploration, and then at the locations you go to, standard survival horror-type game play; which results in the game feeling actually somewhat fresh.

The graphics aren't very nice to look at. Yeah, it's not terrible, but aside from the character models, nothing is overly detailed and there is aliasing all over the place in the forest environments. Basically this looks like a launch 360 game at best.

Controls are pretty much standard for the genre, but slightly sloppy. The game controls quite a bit like the newer Resident Evils, with the nice addition of strafing mapped to the shoulder buttons. There is also a button that turns off and on your flashlight, ala Silent Hill. Unfortunately, steering your character can be difficult (especially while running) and shooting can be a little more complex than needed at times.

What really sells this game, is how bat shit insane it is. Any fans of David Lynch need to play this. For good reason too, because this thing comes off as basically Twin Peaks: The Game (In fact, the developer had to change a few aspects to avoid a lawsuit from Twin Peaks' producers). Plot line similarity aside, the game is full of strangeness, and the number of Twin Peaks and Lynch references are amazing. From layouts of settings (The Dinner and Police Station are almost replicas of the ones from the show) to the events and imagery (York has visions of twin girls with fairy wings speaking cryptically in a forest with levitating red leaves).
Also very interesting is that some of the character models seem referential themselves; like the one cop Emily Wyatt, who has an uncanny resemblance to actress Naomi Watts (who appeared in Lynch's Mulholland Drive)

Overall, this game is great and one huge mindfuck. It is very interesting and quite gripping from beginning to end. This might sound weird, but I would rank this similarally to Heavy Rain, in terms of story and entertainment value. If I had to rank this ignoring that, I would put it at about a 5.5-6/10...

But trust me, the story and entertainment value alone make up for it. 8/10