Greetings, fellow citizens of Greenvale, to the second half of this series of "Deadly Observations": A group of 65 (sup Swery) observations, reactions, criticisms and general incredulity which I jotted down during my inaugural playthrough of Access Game's 2010 open-world horror banger Deadly Premonition. Of course, this game has a long and storied association with this site, with two huge Endurance Runs I'm eager to check out now that I've beaten the game and discovered all of its secrets. I would recommend reading Part One first.

As with part one, I'd encourage those who are still holding off on reading or watching anything that might spoil the game to continue doing so by avoiding the following list. It reveals many of the game's many twists and oddities that are definitely best experienced first-hand, or at least through the Giant Bomb ERs.

Stick around afterwards for my final thoughts on the game! (It's spoiler-free too, if you wanted something out of these blogs as a member of the uninitiated.)

W... T... F... In the Coffee! It Never Fails

1. NPCs are even worse drivers than I am. Lilly the store owner just span her minibus around on its axis 90 degrees and clipped through another car on the way out. (I say "worse" but that probably took a lot of skill to pull off.)
2. Driving to a certain character's house, and the chapter title's called "The Second Sacrifice". I guess I suspect foul play?
3. Actually, just looking at the trading cards, they all pretty much explain the whole plot and who dies. Better continue to ignore the things.
4. While I'm on this long, unskippable drive, just remembered I spotted Forrest at the art gallery. He must've been Kaysen the joint. Thank you, thank you, I'll be here for all 60+ more of these.
5. Forgot to mention: The game's "Black Lodge" music is fantastic. That saxophone is just dying in a room and no-one's helping it.
6. The Ames house interior looks worse than I remember. Someone throw a party in here?
7. A cherry pie, huh? Wanna get a little more overt, game? I still haven't picked up on what we're riffing on here.
8. Can we not? With the infinitely respawning enemies?
9. Damn, that's how you do a bathroom murder. Eat your heart out, Psycho. No, no, not literally, get away from Janet Leigh. She's suffered enough.
10. "What a Hell. Even Becky has been killed." I can't tell if this is Engrish or not. It certainly is a Hell of some sort.
11. Oh cool, I can open the toilet that Thomas puked in. Better leave no stone unturned, right Zach? You wanna field this one, buddy?
12. These Sigourney missions are not good, I'm losing more and more of my warmth for them. Driving Miss Crazy is not what I signed up for.
13. Though I am getting free cars and suits out of it, so I suppose there are worse paying jobs. I do like that Sigourney's missing a shoe every time you talk to her, and that said shoe is on her driveway.
14. The talking twin is rocking back and forth, while the non-talker rocks side-to-side. Notable? Probably not. Creepy? Probably redundant to say that with these two.
15. For that matter, why is everyone using a pair of six year olds as their courier service? I gotta commend Swery for somehow combining Children of the Corn with the twins from the Shining, by the way.
16. Y'know, I'm not entirely certain that they aren't the Raincoat Killer, with one sitting on the shoulders of the other under the coat...
17. Tailing mission. Will the game let me vote this "one star"? At least it had a twist ending.
18. If you set the shadows on fire, sometimes they freak the fuck out and teleport right at you. I guess I don't want to do that then.
19. Holy moley, do I not care for these crawling shadow/Sadako/Sudoku ladies.
20. Oh man, I know art can be risqué, but check out the fellow in this portrait. Like a baby holding an apple. Yowzer. (Here's the portrait.)
21. I like how these rest areas in the Other World zones all have shaving stations. Like I'm going to trust a razor near my face here. Or a mirror for that matter, given what happens in Silent Hill 3.
22. Favorite thing to do with the flamethrower? Besides burning those wall-crawlers? Melting padlocks off locked doors.
23. "George! Catch us!" Yeah, okay, I'm cool with where this is going.
24. All right, I didn't expect this impromptu insane museum tour. Well played Swery.
25. And now I'm following Kaysen's dog around for more clues, despite it having the worst pathfinding. While the upbeat driving music plays.
26. Maybe a Scooby Doo ending isn't out of the question...
27. Ah, that's why I'm following Kaysen's dog. Because Kaysen was locked in the victim's sex dungeon. TMI.
28. Hey, drinking with George, sounds like fu- oh, branch whipping domestic abuse story.
29. Carol's singing voice is... interesting. An interesting approach to saying words. The Cobain school of vocals has a lot to answer for.
30. York's hotrod is even faster and harder to handle. Looks like my CITPM just got another boost.
31. Origins of Zach! He's an invisible friend who lives inside York's head. Mystery... still open.
32. Oh, and we're fighting over the same girl. Hope she's into threesomes.
33. These ghost stories from Keith each time you buy a "psychic spot" map are really good. York flinches to the lighting change every time.
34. "How's my cooking?" "...I went into a sewer once-" "All right, stop."
35. We're going fishing! Because that's where the stolen police documents about the original Raincoat Killer case went! I guess! Did York figure it out because the spot next to the archives was wet? You know it's raining in this town almost constantly, right?
36. Growing less fond of Mr. Stewart and his dumb Resident Evil puzzles. Who am I kidding? I love Mr. Stewart.
37. Whoa. this flashback is intense. Some Umbrella shit was going down in this town back in the 50s. And Kaysen was there, somehow. Gee, I wonder if he's behind everything?
38. Going through Thomas's apartment. I hate it when I'm right. I'm lying, I actually like it a lot.
39. I swear this dead blonde in the red dress is leading me around in circles. In the rain. It's like a Chris Isaaks music video.
40. I didn't realise bars had so many storage rooms. This Other World dungeon is 80% storage rooms.
41. QTE Killer just teleported in front of me. I hit the correct prompt in time and instantly died. I don't like these parts much, gotta say.
42. I can see in his little picture-in-picture often he gets stuck in the geometry. These chases are the dumbest.
43. Just found a stuffed deer head with a prompt that says "stick into". I dunno if I'm into that kind of thing, game.
44. Well hello there Thomasina. Glad the game handled their only LGBTQ character with some class.
45. Tiny York needs to hustle already. This dream sequence is interminable. It's close to Max Payne bad.
46. Aww, "Deputy Willie". This little pup's going to help us find Yor- IT'S SOME KIND OF DEMON DOG IF IT'S WITH KAYSEN, DON'T TRUST IT.
47. Great, they gave Emily a gun. I'll take some potshots at Kaysen while I have the opportunity. None of your comic relief buffoonery will work on me, Kaysen. I ain't buyin' a lick of it.
48. DAMN! Bye Thomas! What a way to end a boss fight. I definitely can't stop now, I'm hooked.
49. Are you really going to call that chapter "Cat Fight", game? Is that what we're going with?
50. This "running into a door" animation is too good. I might just keep doing this. Not like I have any idea what else I ought to be doing. (Oh, I had to hold A. Not press A. Like with every other door. Ever. I hate this game. No, all right, I hate certain aspects of this game.)
51. Oh great, leave a half-dead Emily with Kaysen. Great idea, York. Your best yet.
52. What is George dressed like? Is this what all that punk rocker car talk was leading up to? I can't wait to pay him back for all those QTEs.
53. All right, he just turned into Oni I guess. Let's hope Capcom doesn't see this. He still has a few QTEs still in him too, it appears.
54. Yessss! Get fucked, boi. What's the matter? Didn't hit the right button to dodge that axe in time? HAHAHAHA.
55. Oh man, the real culprit reveals himself. I cannot believe who it is. I am dumbfounded. I am rendered literally speechless by this revelation. I ca-
56. Giant dog in the road! Giant dog in the road! I knew it! That fucker was a demon dog! You all heard me call it!
57. "It wasn't an upside-down peace mark... it was a tree!" Our prodigious FBI Agent everyone. "It was... Kaysen?" Another stroke of genius. Keep the insights coming, I'll go get some popcorn.
58. And in this chapter our guest protagonist is... the Raincoat Killer? While Amazing Grace plays? I'd say that the game has gone off the rails, but what rails?
59. The town's gone insane again. Sweet. Man, could I have killed all the townspeople if I wanted to? I might've wanted to rid the world of these twins before Greenvale ends up like The Village of the Damned.
60. Oh so that's who Zach is. Clever stuff. Especially the bit with the scar. Wait, so who am I then? I'm so confused. Mento? Who the fuck is that?
61. Man, they really put Emily in the fridge, huh? Goodnight, sweet ladycop. You had the best and most realistic character model in the game. Until they stuck a tree in your hoo-ha, anyway.
62. Wow, Kaysen's pretty gross in full-on monster mash mode.
63. What the hell is this thing? And how does Kaysen's dungarees still fit it?
64. Cool guys don't look at abominations exploding.
65. Aww, we get a little more light comedy with Emily's corpse. This is going to be a happy ending, isn't it?

Should've Stayed in the Red Room

Deadly Premonition is definitely... well, let's not say interesting. Not because it isn't true, but because it's such a loaded and ambiguous and lazy way to describe something so utterly strange.

Taking a tree analogy, because it seems apropos, Deadly Premonition is a case where you can look at all its roots and kind of understand what they might be leading to, and then get thrown for a loop as you look up and see the gnarled, twisted approximation of a tree that sprouted from them. Those roots include Silent Hill (the general look and feel of the game's overt horror beats), Resident Evil 4 (the very distinctive over-the-shoulder gunplay, though one could make the case that Dead Rising is perhaps the better source due to how frickin' unwieldy it can be to control that reticle), Twin Peaks (I could make an entirely separate blog about the Twin Peaks references, but I'm sure I've already been beaten to it) and American horror movie/fiction in general, which the game makes clear is of personal interest to the game's writer(s) through the conversations Agent York has with himself (kinda) in car rides. However: knowing all those inspirational sources won't help make sense of the game, or how it came to be the way that it is.

Instead, we'd be better served following the auteur root for answers. (Sorry, "route". Damn trees on the brain still.) Much of modern Japanese games, now that the technology behind game development has advanced to the point where it can allow more of a creator's vision to manifest on-screen, are directed by the various auteurs prominent in the industry. Shigeru Miyamoto, Shinji Mikami, Hideo Kojima, Hideki Kamiya, Suda51, Yasumi Matsuno and, indeed, Mr. Hidetaka Suehiro are the sort of folk who, once you've played something that they directed, it becomes instantly apparent just who is behind a game even if you know nothing else about it going in. I actually suspect that these games do well primarily because they have such a strong creative talent calling all the shots, with the actual quality of the game itself coming secondary. We've come to the point now where game design all over the world has been strongly influenced by the generations that have come before, and Indies like Shovel Knight have proven that many of the formulae established in Japan for so many genres and themes can be replicated accurately enough by pretty much anyone with access to game development tools and a modicum of talent and understanding for how and why the design of those games allowed them to be successful. What has become a priceless commodity in light of all this, is having a very distinctive vision directing a game to set it apart in an increasingly bigger market. Japan does "distinctive" like no other -- which might sound vaguely euphemistic I grant you -- and so I feel the "auteur game designer" conceit subsequently has a lot of steam behind it in that territory, as well as in the overseas territories those games manage to reach.

Deadly Premonition is wonderful because it has such a distinctive voice. It's perhaps not a great game on a purely mechanical basis. In fact, there's no "perhaps" about it. The third-person shooting gameplay is sluggish; the driving is doubly so; it can be awkward to get to places due to how often the time of day and the weather can screw you over; it can be very obtuse on a handful of matters; and it has an interesting tendency to broadcast all of its twists long before they happen. It has its rare moments of mechanical brilliance too, of course, such as how all the shadows seem identical until you played a few of the game's "Other World" areas for a bit and notice that the occasional shadow is actually a lot stronger than normal, or faster, or takes more damage before going down. Their behavior's often different too, either becoming hostile immediately or milling around passively until they eventually spot you. There was one interesting sequence where a bunch of cop shadows were endlessly shooting away at an Other World facsimile gun range, never targeting you until you got into their range of vision. There's definitely a lot of great design ideas well-hidden in the aggressive mediocrity of the game's production values.

Said lousy production values don't extend to the music and the narrative elements like the characters and story though. I frequently found the bizarre music choices to be a delight, with an eclectic mix of orchestra, metal, reggae (kinda?), punk rock, rockabilly, lounge music, Green Day covers and what is perhaps the earwormiest whistlin' ditty that has ever existed. I didn't even need to link to it; it probably started playing in y'all's heads as soon as I mentioned it. The characters are a mix of small town folk either inspired by their Twin Peaks equivalents or people Swery might've perhaps met once, with the occasional incongruously bizarre addition like the gas-mask wearing industrialist Mr. Stewart and his rhyming manservant, or the Milk Barn's head-bobbing rockabilly enthusiast and his Sokoban-endorsing Maude Flanders-ish wife, or the trashy duo who run the gas station, or the tubby but jovial seed salesman who is clearly involved with the game's tree-related murders in some way while the game tries desperately to pretend that he isn't. The story sets up early on why every other building in the town is a huge labyrinth ("the lumber trade died down and the population dwindled to a tenth", more or less) and why many stores close when it rains ("the Raincoat Killer will getcha!"). Contrivances, sure, but it all fits with this weird small town and its folklore and history. The story's also hospitable enough to spin its wheels for the first half to get you acclimatized to all the oddness, before revving up gears for the murder-a-thon that constitutes the second half of the game. Revelation comes after revelation and it's unusual to see a game pick up steam in this way and become more and more bizarre, than the standard other way around as everything kind of winds down towards a conclusion.

It's hard to know what to make of this game when it comes to recommending it to other people. It plays into that dichotomy between advocating a game as a purely mechanical product for its technical aspects and functionality, like a DVD player or a toaster, or reviewing a game as a piece of art. I'm not sure Deadly Premonition is either. It's a B-Movie game (a B-Game?); the very definition of a cult classic. It's also effortlessly charming and absolutely worth seeing for yourself and is just about functional enough to keep you engaged with the gameplay and not have something break or crash every other hour (unless we're talking picket fences that you can't help but careen into with your car). But then, it's been four years with so much coverage from so many people discovering the game and wanting to talk about it, that it's probably safe to say that everyone's made up their minds about Deadly Premonition already. Let me add to that wailing cacophony of similar opinions: This is a game you should play. Not because it's good, but because it's unique.