Review #154: Deadly Premonition - Director's Cut

 THIS GAME IS AWESOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOME.

 I like weird, I like quirky, I love insanity, there's a reason Suda 51 is my favorite Videogame Director. After playing Deadly Premonition, and seeing D4's trailer, I'm starting to really like this Swery 65 guy, guess people with numbers on their names are really cool!

 In Deadly Premonition you take the role of Francis York Morgan, an FBI agent with a nicotine addiction and a second personality of sorts whom he calls Zach. Hot on the trails of the "Red Seed" murders, Anna Graham is killed in the little town of Greenvale, and York is sent to investigate. The story is remarkably good, but what really makes the game are the numerous inhabitants and their quirky personalities. There's a ton of side activities, and you should do as many as you can, since they delve deeper into each of the townfolk and their uniqueness. The dialogue also tends to fall into the category of "So bad it's good", while a lot of the lines would, normally, be cringe worthy, in this game, under this context, they work oh so well.

  Deadly Premonition is a survival horror game, kinda. It adds an open-world for you to explore, alongside a clock-element. Y'see, townfolk have their own routines every day, and in order to progress with the story you might be tasked with getting to a certain location at a certain hour. Most of the time, you get plenty of time to explore before tackling the next objective, and if you miss the deadline, you can just attempt it the next day. If you don't want to explore and do the numerous sidequests or find collectibles, which you totally should as these characters are what makes the game so charming, you can go to sleep or smoke a cigarette to pass the time faster, but remember to keep an eye on your hunger meter, if it drains you health will start to lower! And there's more little details like that, York can actually grow a stubble... or you can shave it, and your suits will get dirty, so you must send them to the cleaner. And this might be the only Open-world game in which cars actually run out of fuel! One very minor complaint I had with how this works, is that if you get to an objective before the allocated time-frame, there's no way to instantly fast forward the time, so you have to smoke a cigarette or find somewhere to sleep.

 As for the horror elements, monsters only appear early in the morning or inside "corrupted" zones. Enemies are very dumb, slow and easy to kill, plus, the game gives you a gun with unlimited ammo, but combat can grow repetitive so might as well carry stronger weapons. There's not a whole lot of "surviving" to do. It doesn't really matter, the game wasn't supposed to have a "combat" element, and all in all, it doesn't really hinder the experience, and it's a nice break every now and then from the town. You can also hold R2 to hold your breath, so that enemies can't detect you, while it sounds superfluous, certain areas have zombies that respawn infinitely, so you can just hold your breath and avoid them. And it bears mentioning, the game has its fair share of glitches. One time, I opened a door and fell to nothingness, until the game killed me and forced me to restart. And Quint, whenever he is driving around town, hovers next to his car. Hilarious.

 The presentation is terrible. TERRIBLE. Textures are muddy and look horrible no matter where you look at them from, character models are fairly stiff, with a ton of reused animations that never manage to look quite right. And don't even let me get started on the hilariously bad facial expressions they have. And what's the best part about it? When you couple the graphics with the rest of the game... they actually add up to the charm of the game. What doesn't add up to the charm are the horrible framerate issues that plague the game, grabbing items on the open areas of the game will produces massive framerate drops that make you never want to pick up an item ever again. The music is phenomenal, for a change, and the voice acting... is decent. A lot of times the voices don't match the way characters are reacting or behaving, which is a bit jarring.

 Deadly Premonition is phenomenal, it's also proof that great ideas can triumph over production values. This is definitely not a game for anyone, some people won't "get it", and I can't really blame them. It's not a good game, from a technical standpoint, but it passes with flying colors in every way that matters. Except the framerate, damn the framerate!
 9.5 out of 10.