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A Boring Premonition

I already espoused my difficult love for Deadly Premonition here, but now that I have played further in, I have to re-emphasize how shitty the game can be. I'm gonna break this down piecemeal so I don't drive myself cuh-razy!

(make sure you listen to this song while you read for maximum Deadly Premonition-ness)

The Open World

Driving around is such a chore. The cars I've driven max out at 50 MPH, which is to say that instead of any acceleration they just stop moving faster when they hit 50. This becomes a hassle when the distance to travel is quite long: I went from the police station to the crime scene in the woods, and it took almost 5 minutes to get there. Even going slow, it would have been more interesting if there was any scenery. Ancient driving games like Need for Speed II (one of my secret favs of all time) have much more to see. It doesn't help that the same goofy saxophone music loops the entire time you're driving and often drowns out any dialogue.

Speaking of which, I appreciate being able to listen to Agent York talk to Zach (am I Zach?) about cult 80's movies (The Spawn, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes) while driving. But it almost comes off like they producers are ramming quirkiness down the throat listing off these movies, their directors, the year they came out, etc.

I'm curious if there is any branching paths because I have already pissed off the Sheriff (by accidentally getting out of the car, which means the Sheriff has to go ahead to the crime scene) and has led to cutscenes talking about how annoying I am/York is.

Most annoying? The full screen map doesn't stay fixed. When you press the "Back" button to view the town, it looks different every time as the map rotates around the arrow (you), not the other way around. Match this with a zoom that doesn't zoom out far enough and it's impossible to become familiar with the town and its surrounding area.

The Missions

There is a sort of Silent Hill thing going on where the world turns "dark". There is almost no explanation for it, and no one else seems to notice any changes. I'm sure that York is crazy in the head.

When you're in these missions and you "kill" a "zombie" it takes them forever to disappear. This wouldn't be a problem if they weren't impassible until they disappear and if most of the mission area weren't very narrow hallways. Often I could not progress in an area until a "zombie" had finished it's slow, clunky death animation and disappeared.

The quick time events that ended the last mission I played found York being chased by the main killer of the game so far. I haven't played Heavy Rain, but I imagine the QTE's are much better implemented than this. Not only are Deadly Premonition's QTE's cheap and annoying, but the game can't seem to handle what is happening on screen. The framerate drops considerably even with the ultra-low-rent graphics.

The Investigation

I've never been one who is interested in murder mysteries. This game just grabs you so hard with it's quirkiness that it's hard to stop thinking about it. But every time I've played the game this past week, I've become so enraged by the game's crapiness, that I have turned it off to play something that is of AAA quality. I haven't felt this love/hate with a game in a lonnnnnng time, and I think I honestly have to say that the game is interfering with the investigation!

About Paul

Paul has been playing games since he cut his teeth on an old Atari 2600 in the early 1990s. He has played every console generation since, and currently jams on Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and DSi. He proudly does not own a Wii, and goes back and forth on whether he'd want a gaming PC (he did his fair share of Mac gaming back in the day though). Games-wise, Paul came up in the world a pretty big JRPG nerd, but now he's mellowed plays mostly anything good or weird. He does maintain a pretty impressive collection Playstation 1-era RPGs.