Deadly Premonition Review

Art by Semsei, who made it onto the official box art for the director's cut.

It's been a while since I've dug into a video game, largely because this year has been a very busy one and my gaming hours have been extremely limited. Among the various games I have played however, none stuck out in my mind like this one. Masterminded by the....interesting Japanese director SWERY, Deadly Premonition is a genuinely unique experience. It's a game like very few others, and while it does have its flaws (oh boy does it have its flaws), I can genuinely say that every gamer who likes video games for their stories should give this a try. Obviously, because this is a primarily story based game, prepare for big, unmarked spoilers. Also, I was playing the director's cut for the game, which was recently released for PC on Steam, which I'm told makes the pretty jumbled mess of a story a bit more coherent. So without further ado, lets dig into Deadly Premonition.

Story

Our main character folks. Not pictured: his imaginary friend Zach.

Deadly Premonition's story is.....surreal. Let me start by saying that if you've seen Twin Peaks (another fantastic show in its own right), it's going to look very familiar. A weird, eccentric FBI agent comes to the small town of Greenvale, investigating the murder of a girl, Anna Graham. He meets up with a wide variety of quirky, bizarre townspeople. What those sentences fails to capture is the sheer, mind-boggling strangeness of the atmosphere that goes into the game. In an otherwise fairly cut and dry detective story, the main character is introduced speeding down a highway in the middle of a thunderstorm at night, laptop open in one hand, talking to his boss about Tom and Jerry's codependent sadomasochistic relationship on a cellphone with the other, and talking to his imaginary friend. Now, if that sounds like a strange way to introduce a character, you haven't seen anything yet, because the entire game is carried on the surreal, probably insane, but good-hearted FBI Agent Francis York Morgan (York for short).

Zach feels you man, zach feels you.

York is a character that would easily fall into the trap of being weird for the sake of being weird, and while I like characters like that in small portions, to have him as the main character might be pushing it a little bit. I never expected to like York this much, but from the first moment this loony opens his mouth, he's captured my heart. One of the main things he does is talk to 'Zach', his imaginary friend, who at first glance is almost certainly the player, which actually gave me a strange sense of connection with the character. York is a bit of an abrasive individual, but he confides his private thoughts and opinions with Zach, not just about the case at hand, but about his life in general. It gives the player an oddly intimate view into York's mind, and made me, at least feel a bit better about him annoying the locals.

York is a cool guy and he rambles on about his favorite movies and punk bands during car rides and speaks in hilariously surreal non-sequiturs, and has some very strange ideas about investigating a murder case, but as you get to know the guy, you find that every one of his odd quirks actually makes sense in the end. On top of that, it helps that while York can be a bit of an arrogant douchebag, he actually is totally right, and is pretty much the only guy in town who can keep on top of the situation. It's nice to see a character with reasonable flaws, like his arrogant city-slicker attitude and borderline insanity coupled with a genuine, compassionate desire to do good. He's strange, but he's unabashedly on the side of the angels and we get to spend the game as his best friend in his head.

Greenvale sure seems like a nice place to live, if not for all those serial murders.

The supporting cast is solid as well. Each one of the townsfolk has a clearly defined personality, and as an open-world game, they go about their own business, just like a real, living town. There's even a mechanic where you can spy on them through building windows and see what they're doing on their own time. Each one is pretty easy to get along with, but with one odd, defining quirk that makes them stand out. There's the weirdo rich dude in the wheelchair who wears a gas-mask everywhere, and his assistant who seems to speak only in rhyme. There's the hilariously named 'Raging Bull' who runs the gas station, and his incredibly sleazy wife, 'Rosy Lips' Gina. There's the ever insufferable sapling salesman and his adorable pet dalmatian. The range of these characters really make the story come to life and add to the paranoia that any one of these could be the mysterious Raincoat Killer. All of them even have their own personal sidequests and York can even get yelled at if he spends too much time doing fetch-jobs for the locals rather than focusing on the case. 

The story itself is a weird, not-quite-comedy, not-quite-horror thriller centering around the Raincoat Killer. Basically, without ruining too much, the people of Greenvale have an urban legend of a serial killer who only emerges when it's raining, and someone seems to be trying to make that a reality. As women drop left and right, York and his quirky sidekicks from the police team have to try and find this dickface and bring him to justice. The start of the story, as I mentioned before, draws heavily (some would say a bit too heavily) on Twin Peaks, but pretty quickly grows into its own identity. It plays out like a jigsaw puzzle, forcing the player to try and figure our what's real, who's guilty, and most important of all, how much of this is just York being a lunatic. 

The story progresses along with an odd kind of dream logic. The tone of the game jumps back and forth, from investigating a grisly murder to having lunch with your police buddies, but it all fits with together with this near indefinable charm. It's actually quite impressive how easily the game can turn a completely innocent scene into something horrifying, but when it comes to the writers, they are top notch. Despite the silliness, everything is foreshadowed well, and all comes into play like a chaotic puzzle that somehow fits together. 

Now, it's impossible to analyze the endgame without going into GAME RUINING SPOILERS, so if you plan to play the game, don't read beyond this sentence.

The end of the game basically crosses the border directly into science fiction. It's revealed that the murders were orchestrated by the aforementioned sapling salesman, who is apparently some kind of extradimensional tree demon (oh and also injured a young York and killed his parents.) Now, I liked that, because I thought it fit in with the game's very strange, dreamlike story, but how quickly it jumped into that can be a bit jarring. All of the above is only revealed in the last section before the final boss, and before that, everything is connected to the creepy cult George is leading and controlling with the Red Seeds. 

What makes all this worth it, however, is the reveal at the end, which I will not spoil, but rest assured, it puts all of York's oddities into perspective and makes the character from an amusing but ultimately shallow joke into something incredibly complex. It makes the player want to try the whole game over again, and that's something very few games have ever had me do. Top marks.

Gameplay

York, this is Zach your friend. TURN AROUND.

So, that was a long section, wasn't it? The reason for that is that Deadly Premonition's story is very much it's highest point. The gameplay is where the game shoots itself in the foot. Now, I'll start by saying that there are several kinds of bad games, games that are bad because they're lazy, and the developers didn't give a shit, and games that are bad because the developers tried to put too much stuff in, and Deadly Premonition is definitely in the latter category. I'll say, I'm a lot more forgiving of games like that. I like a game that tries to push itself, and even if the experiment doesn't work, it's still interesting to see where it can go. It cannot be helped though, that Deadly Premonition has a lot of dumb stuff that doesn't need to be there.

See that map? That's all the map you get, and it rotates with the damn car.

Now, let me start with the open world. Deadly Premonition's map is HUGE. Not quite Skyrim huge, but huge nonetheless. The primary way of traversing this enormous map is by car, which is simultaneously one of my favourite and most annoying parts of the game. The car trips have cool music, especially when you unlock the bonus cars that belong to characters. They're also a lot of fun because you can hear York babble on about his favourite movies like a madman. What makes them infuriating is the fact that cars have a life-bar and fuel, both of which run out really quickly. I don't know who's idea it was to implement this stupid feature in an open world game, where you will spend sizable amounts of time driving from place to place, but it's telling that any time you need to go somewhere storyline critical, the game just disables these features, like its admitting that they're a waste of time. 

The second major problem with this is the map. That map in the image up there? That's what you get for pressing the 'map' button. To look at the full map, you need to go into the pause menu, and select it, and when you're in a hurry, let me tell you that it's more frustrating than it sounds. The minimap up there is tiny, and both maps have this infuriating tendency to rotate in relation to the player. I have never seen a game who's map does that, but it's horrid, and makes the constant map checking and annoying music in Postal 2 look like a godsend.  

Get used to these enemies, because we see them for the entire game,
with absolutely ZERO explanation.

Combat is another glaring nail in the game's coffin, and, to be fair, it was never meant to be in the game in the first place. This might not be true, but I'm told SWERY was forced to put these silly sections in, but he really just made them the worst they possibly could be. Every time we get to a plot point, York remarks 'they're here, Zach,' and gets teleported to a totally-not-Silent-Hill dimension filled with incredibly tacky looking red-vine assets. The main enemies in these areas, confusingly unnamed and unacknowledged, even by York or any other character, are shambling, ghost-like beings with blacked-out eyes. Now, these would be kinda creepy if they weren't incredibly easy to kill. The game gives stronger enemies later, but all these sections just serve to pointlessly pad the game time. There's no challenge to them, and each of these sections are filled with insultingly easy puzzles and allow you (I shit you not) to actually sleep to regenerate your health and shave so you don't grow a hobo-beard while in another dimension. 

When these segments are done, York is teleported back to the real world with scarcely a word, and none of the characters mention it again, making these sections entirely pointless from a narrative standpoint. In fact, these raise more questions that don't need to be raised, as near the end of the game, you have a chance to play as some of the other characters, and they have to fight freaky zombie-ghosts as well, and even then none of them comment on it, and the game ends with no closure to it at all. Now, I don't care of SWERY was forced. This is downright lazy and a slap in the face to the player. It's literally like interrupting a really good movie every half hour to make you play a tedious Silent Hill tribute flash game. The assets looks amateurish even by the standards of this game (and that's saying something) and overall, it feels tacked on at the last minute.

Get ready to see screens like this a lot as well.

Because no shitty, forced action sequence in a horror game would be complete without obnoxious quick time events, and for the vast majority of the game, that's the closest we get to having a boss fight. At times in the netherworld, the Raincoat Killer (whether it's really him or some kind of projection in his form is unclear) will appear and you'll have to hide from him by holding your breath (for some reason). This will culminate in a scene where he chases you, and you have to pass several QTE's or die, and you'll have to start the whole segment again. These segments, unskippable cutscenes and all, can take up to a minute, and considering how annoying these QTE's are, and how many you have to succeed in a row, you'll be seeing those bits A LOT. That's not tense, it stops being tense after the first time, and it takes the player out of the flow of the action so they can memorize a series of keys. I shouldn't have to tell you why that's bad for a supposedly suspenseful moment. 

Conclusion

There's not a lot about Deadly Premonition that sits as a nice middle ground. The stuff it does (primarily the story, dialogue and characters) it does really, really well. The stuff it messes up (Combat and travel and lots of pointless shit) it messes up hard. Overall though, Deadly Premonition is an important game. You can tell that it's a labor of love for its creator, and there's so much heart and detail that gets put in that you can see that everyone involved had to have enjoyed making it. While it was buggy, the graphics weren't spectacular and some of the mechanics were frustrating to say the least, I came out of the game happy to have experienced it. It's a game that genuinely isn't like any other for better or for worse, and it is one of the few games I've played that really surprised me, and made me love each of the characters and made me sad to see them go. Without sounding too pretentious, Deadly Premonition really was a beautiful mess, rough around the edges but with more than enough heart and soul to make up for it, and should be seen as a milestone for story-driven games everywhere. 

Final Ratings

Storyline: 4/5 - Starts out very derivative but comes into its own in time.

Characters: 5/5 - Memorable, amusing, real, and most of all, likable.

Atmosphere: 4/5 - Manages to swerve between horror and slice-of-life comedy without cheapening either.

Level Design: 3/5 - Kinda samey and with very easy puzzles. 

Combat: 1/5 - Just. Awful. Should have been cut out of the game entirely. 

Fun Factor: 4/5 - Great story and characters more than make up for annoying mechanics.

Overall Rating: 4/5 - Definitely a must try for people interested in story-based games. 

- Kephn