It may have taken me more than two months, but I’ve finally finished Deadly Premonition, the surefire shoe-in for cult-classic this generation. I’ve read every other review I could get my hands on and I have to say that very few get it right.
Deadly Premonition is a very BAD game — mechanically. The shooting is like Resident Evil 4 underwater, enemies take four times more shots than necessary to take down. Seriously, I have to emphasize this point because one recurring enemy (who cannot be dodged or skipped) takes something like forty pistol shots to kill. Ordinarily this would be a problem, since the game is presumably a survival horror experiment and those games are all about inventory conservation. Nope. Infinite pistol ammo. You still have to find ammo for other guns and guess how much you have left (the game will let you know how much remains in your current clip, but not overall ammo). You can use melee weapons, but they end up being a waste of time because enemies always get the upper hand in CQE.
As Sean noticed when he watched me play for a while, this is one of the ugliest games this generation, Wii games included. People animate stiffly and water effects have more in common with Turok 2 than Red Dead (the current king of water graphics). The soundtrack features something around four whole songs which get repeated at inappropriate times. There are obnoxious tasks (like fishing, which could have been left as a side-quest) and, honestly, the reason it took me so long to finish the game was that the thought of going back into one of the nightmare sections (where all the enemies are) sounded awful.
At the same time, Deadly Premonition does not leave me with the impression of being a bad game. Actually, for the most part, I liked the stuff that was going on around me. It is a GOOD story for its bold presentation, bizarre tonal shifts and memorable moments like sitting in a coffee shop at the end of a mystery-solving day. One of the prime things people do praise the game for is its development of Agent Francis York Morgan, who becomes entirely endearing. He talks to an old friend of his often, so that, while driving around the open world, you get to hear little conversations about their favorite movies and things of the past.
Speaking of which, I’m a big fan of the open-world setup. If this game has a close relative, it is not Resident Evil, but Shenmue. You start out each day in the morning and must go through the hours driving from place to place, visiting the local diner, meeting the local law enforcement for breakfast, etc. There are something like two dozen side quests. It is possible (and altogether likely) to go through the entire game without finding even one of them. Not that they are necessarily awesome, but I did get to do odd things like help out at the local grocer and forage at the junkyard. Driving around isn’t great — it shares the terrible mechanics of the entire game — but it does break up the pace from the nightmare sections. The highlight of the nightmare sections is a cool picture-in-picture chase sequence where you perform quick time events while the other camera shows you the killers POV.
In the end, after putting 20 hours into this hot mess, Deadly Premonition is not a bad game, but certainly not a good game. Instead, it is the awkward kid in its class. It fumbles and performs shakily, but it means well and, in the end, has an engaging story to tell.
LOOT games 