This game was bestowed grace only by the good will of misguided 2010-era reviewers who, at the time, didn't know better. Deadly Premonition and its development team - Swery65 ahead of the rest - deserved to get much, much more shit for this game and especially its god-awful PC and PS3 port than they ever got.
The port first (PC): Game crashed 8 times. Lost my save file 3 times over 45 hours of playtime. Without a fan-patch, it looks worse than ass. Just an absolute piece of crap port, only topped in its awfulness by Dark Souls: Prepare to Die edition.
The story of this game is a patchwork of more or less memorable scenes, torn from each other square by square and then scattered with the wind on the deadest open world map you've ever seen. Yes, the team went to the Pacific Northwest for research and yes, large swaths of land there are legitimately just unused and not given sufficient purpose - but it is not as bad as it is in this game. The shoddy, unsatisfying collectibles barely do a thing to brighten up the piece, and sidequests are often laden with repeated lines or otherwise utterly banal filler-dialogue from characters. (I'm going to slap someone if I hear "A human bone...?" again I stg)
There's also a persistent sense that the happenings of the game were thought up fairly disconnected from each other, and then put in a very loose sequence. Threads fray and are abandoned, and many of the twists happen with very little discernible motivation or reason. Characters turn around to be villains and, in the process, shed their entire prior characterisation. And frankly, all Deadly Premonition had were its characters. Subverting them and breaking them in half is at best an exercise in aimless shock value and at worst a despicable product of a bigotry towards the people the story villainises.
Combat fucking sucks. It's slow, and the most frustrating and least responsive-feeling type of tank-controls. Tank controls aren't a priori bad, but here they feel like you're reversing a truck at all times - and the flash-stepping enemies without a clear silhouette don't do it any favours. Encounters are repetitive, weapons work nonsensically. No.
Deadly Premonition, like all work that Swery65 misdirected, is joylessly derivative and deeply despicable, rewarding any good you may see in it only with disappointment. This is among the games I wish I could unplay - get the ~2 days I sunk into it refunded back into my lifespan.
The port first (PC): Game crashed 8 times. Lost my save file 3 times over 45 hours of playtime. Without a fan-patch, it looks worse than ass. Just an absolute piece of crap port, only topped in its awfulness by Dark Souls: Prepare to Die edition.
The story of this game is a patchwork of more or less memorable scenes, torn from each other square by square and then scattered with the wind on the deadest open world map you've ever seen. Yes, the team went to the Pacific Northwest for research and yes, large swaths of land there are legitimately just unused and not given sufficient purpose - but it is not as bad as it is in this game. The shoddy, unsatisfying collectibles barely do a thing to brighten up the piece, and sidequests are often laden with repeated lines or otherwise utterly banal filler-dialogue from characters. (I'm going to slap someone if I hear "A human bone...?" again I stg)
There's also a persistent sense that the happenings of the game were thought up fairly disconnected from each other, and then put in a very loose sequence. Threads fray and are abandoned, and many of the twists happen with very little discernible motivation or reason. Characters turn around to be villains and, in the process, shed their entire prior characterisation. And frankly, all Deadly Premonition had were its characters. Subverting them and breaking them in half is at best an exercise in aimless shock value and at worst a despicable product of a bigotry towards the people the story villainises.
Combat fucking sucks. It's slow, and the most frustrating and least responsive-feeling type of tank-controls. Tank controls aren't a priori bad, but here they feel like you're reversing a truck at all times - and the flash-stepping enemies without a clear silhouette don't do it any favours. Encounters are repetitive, weapons work nonsensically. No.
Deadly Premonition, like all work that Swery65 misdirected, is joylessly derivative and deeply despicable, rewarding any good you may see in it only with disappointment. This is among the games I wish I could unplay - get the ~2 days I sunk into it refunded back into my lifespan.
ThinkingFella
5 months ago
Vicious stuff Quinn. you should be a writer or some shit like that