Deadly Premonition (2010)

I hardly know where to begin with this game. And I think that's probably its strongest point, so I most as well get that out of the way now. It's fairly safe to say there's no other game like this, so if you highly value unique video game experiences above all else, then this is a title you can't afford to pass up.

When I first started playing this one, I admit my attention was definitely captured by the game's bizarre atmosphere, and I was really getting a kick out of the protagonist Agent Francis York Morgan. (But please, call him York. That's what everyone calls him.) York is without a doubt the highlight of this game in my opinion, and I must give kudos to Jeff Kramer, the character's voice actor. Seemingly every scene in the game's first chapter or so had at least one line from York that got a laugh out of me. His wacky mannerisms in turn are instantly memorable.

But what actually is this game? Well, it's... a lot. It's a mystery adventure game, and a survival horror, and an open-world life sim of sorts, and it's got crazy fantasy stuff going on, and trippy psychological stuff going on, and it's all extremely weird and silly and you're never quite sure where the "serious" parts begin and where the "tongue-in-cheek" parts end. A lot of the game's fans call this mish-mash of nonsense to be "quirky" and "charming," but I gotta be honest, I overall found it a convoluted mess that really wasn't fun at all to play through. (I played a dozen hours or so, then watched the rest on Youtube.)

In Deadly Premonition, you spend a lot of time exploring a large rural town that I didn't find all that interesting. The driving in this game is... different... to put it as nicely as humanly possible. (I think I literally said, "Is this a joke?" when I first tried driving in this, lol.) Traveling and even just moving around in general is a chore. One of the game's many oddities is how York talks to himself when you're out on the road for a long time (it's always a long time) -- this is a good idea on paper, but in practice all he seems to ever do is quote Wikipedia articles about random movies.

At times the place you're at turns spooky and fills up with zombies, and you have to shoot them. The controls are very clunky for this, but the game is so generous with bullets and healing items that to call this game survival horror at all feels silly. (Perhaps that's the point! Who knows!) The worst thing about these segments though is just that they last way too long. To spice things up, the game sometimes has QTE segments that either have you pressing a button that pops up on-screen for about a hundredth of a second, or making you waggle the joystick left and right like a lunatic for a few minutes (which somehow makes York run forward). All of this happens while you're chased by what feels like a parody of horror game villains -- the Raincoat Killer. I'm sorry, but he's just lame.

Setting aside all the bad gameplay, I guess it's worth talking about the story a bit... All in all, I'm just not impressed by it. I read people saying it's "so bad it's good," but I just find it bad. Again, the biggest issue is with the story's pacing. It takes so long for anything to happen, and the vast majority of the reveals are small and uninteresting. Things pick up toward the end, but the final act also felt pretty cliche to me -- like, it's definitely weird, but the whole game is weird. I guess it's half I just didn't care for the direction the story took, and half I was never going to get all that attached to a cast of characters who almost never act human in the first place.

Bottom line... Well, I think I'm glad I experienced this at least for the sake of being able to appreciate Agent York memes and other references to this truly oddball game. I think just as wild as the game itself, is the fact it's getting a sequel soon! Truly a strange year we're living in right now. To be honest I have no idea if I want to give the sequel a try, or if I'd even know what a """?"""good"""?""" Deadly Premonition sequel could possibly look like.

PROS

• Ambitious setting and structure communicate a compelling artistic vision
• Highly entertaining story, characters, and dialogue
• Great soundtrack full of catchy tunes
• Creepy enemy designs

CONS

• Extremely easy from beginning to end, absolutely zero challenge
• Amateurish, insultingly linear level designs
• The worst driving controls of any open world game ever
• Frequent, shoddily-implemented QTEs and hide-from-the-bad-guy sections
• A technical travesty, the game barely works

i have NO idea how to rate this game because its good parts are incredible and its bad parts are really unfortunate and there's a lot of just plain bizarre parts in the middle (and some of them just as part of the good).

trying to parse anything happening in this game is an experience in and of itself and is definitely part of the charm, but i really wish it had less weird and creepy and just plain fucked up thoughts on women.

super worth checking out if you like twin-peaks-inspired horror taken in a slightly different direction of Weird.