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    Deadly Premonition

    Game » consists of 11 releases. Released Feb 23, 2010

    An open-world action-adventure game following an eccentric FBI agent as he investigates a series of bizarre murders in the small rural town of Greenvale.

    Better than the sum of its parts?: Deadly Premonition

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    shivermetimbers

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    #1  Edited By shivermetimbers

    I've decided to start up talking about video games for some reason (generally, I don't really talk much about them, especially on here). To start, I'm gonna post up a weekly blog-like series to see if a game is better than the sum of its parts or if the game is truly more flawed than gem. Today's game is Deadly Premonition.

    I have a bit of a confession to make. The first time playing Deadly Premonition, I knew that the black or white thinking we typically associate with games didn't apply. You were essentially witnessing a disaster of comic proportions. Ultimately it was a tragedy, but one that caused people to laugh at it, scorn at it, get freaked out by it, or all three. The best example I can think of is if a funny looking and ugly puppet monster bird on strings attacks a major city (I'm referencing the movie 'The Claw', by the way). No one was hurt by the abomination, but it did cause some damage nonetheless. I'm gonna try and make sense of this poorly explained metaphor later on, but keep with me.

    I loved the game the first time playing through it. I never got frustrated even when the game seemed at its most broken because I saw that as the point. It's broken! It's charming! And to its credit I don't think frustration is the right word to put it. No, that word implies anger. The right word would be annoying.

    But again, like a funny and ugly bird cawing and destroying buildings, it's funny, but it's also annoying to hear and somewhat painful and heart-aching to witness. It's also something special, you don't get to see that every day. So we forgive it (or at least I forgave it)...Right?

    Well, like I said, the first playthrough of this Twin Peaks inspired "open world" game gave me a ludicrously positive impression. Playing through it again with a more critical and serious mindset does reveal that the game can drift way more into the annoying side of things than charming, however.

    Those random and gotcha-like QTEs, those stick wiggling segments, the awful driving, the awful shooting segments, those not quite tank and not quite normal like controls, basically every interaction that doesn’t involve interacting with the funny and eccentric characters and world is awful….

    Not frustrating awful, just annoyingly awful. I think because the world has this off-kilter like quality to it where everything is laughably awful that even when it’s annoying, people love it.

    So if the actual interacting with the world is simply tedious, why is this a game?

    Because this game has some of the most organic and sandbox-like qualities I’ve ever seen in a game. Characters interact with the world along with you. They eat, sleep, entertain themselves, and go places. Quests have to be completed at certain times during the day and depending on which mission you’re on in the story, some missions cannot be completed and may not be able to be done after certain points. That actually sounds like a terrible design decision, but it’s actually quite brilliant. A typical open world game would have you accept a bunch of quests and allow you to do them in any order and at any time without having the player really care about the characters they interact with. This gives the game a sense of urgency in a way and because the characters and the world are so fun to interact with, you don’t really care much about the actual reward (although that fast travel radio is sweet) because the main rewards are the memorable moments you encounter during the quest.

    The rewards for doing the missions are required if you want to make the game less annoying. You get infinite ammo versions of weapons with higher damage along with the aforementioned fast travel radio. If you stuck with the regular weapons throughout the game and didn’t get the flamethrower, I feel bad for you.

    Along with side quests are those interactions that occur organically. Say for example, you get hungry and need to get a bite to eat, you can either choose to eat some of the food in your inventory, or you can go to Polly Oxford’s kitchen to get something to eat and chat with her, OR you can meet up with someone at the A&G diner. This gives the game a kinda semi-Sim game appeal that a lot of open world and so called sandbox games fail to deliver on. Characters have their own stories and personalities along with having a schedule and times you can interact with them. It really stands this game apart from other games.

    I wish the game encouraged their Sim-like sandbox more, however. It seems like a side thing tacked on to the main story, which is probably why I see some people miss it entirely. I’m not suggesting the game be Animal Crossing and have nothing but the sandbox, but the having a Sims-like design of balancing systems like hunger, social, and tiredness, which is what the game kinda was going for, would encourage more exploring in the world. As it stands you can live off coffee and turkey sandwiches and never have to do any of the side content.

    It makes me wonder how the game would be if there were no combat sections or QTEs and instead focused on investigating a crime in a sandbox environment with a Twin Peaks coat of paint. Listening to SWERY’s interviews, it seems like he was heading in that direction, but was forced to put combat in and make it more overall “appealing”.

    So Deadly Premonition deserves attention, in my opinion. At a cheap budget price, it earned its cult appeal. The story is a laugh of course and the game has a lot of fun surprises that make you overlook its more annoying qualities. It may not be as good as some (myself included) have praised it, but I feel there’s more gem here than rough. The initial sum of its parts would make it seem terrible, but the parts involving interacting with the characters adds up the overall package. Like a comically ugly bird attacking a large city, it looks terrible on paper, but its uniqueness makes it memorable.

    Just remember to get that flamethrower and fast travel radio. You’d thank me later.

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    NeoCalypso

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    I feel like GB is the last place where attention needs to be brought to Deadly Premonition.

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