The week I was banned from Xbox Live was a bloody boring one. Upon turning on my Xbox 360, I discovered that I was disconnected from the service completely, meaning that I basically had a useless, noisy white box under my television. I couldn’t play any games; I couldn’t download any DLC for single player games to play offline; I couldn’t even access the Zune service to watch a movie or two. Without being able to play my beloved Halo and being unable to make a start with Deus Ex: Human Revolution thanks to weird international release dates, I had to find something else to pass the time.
So I went to town and popped into HMV to see if I could grab any bargains. I had no idea what to look for, so I scanned the shelves for something cheap and cheerful to last me the week. I looked at row after row of titles, not really being pulled in by any of them…
When suddenly my eyes fell upon Deadly Premonition for the attractive price of 15 British pounds. Remembering hearing Markie gush about it before, I thought ‘why not?’, picked it up and took it to the counter.
I paid for it (as you’d imagine) and set sail for home (yes, I have a boat*).
When I got home, I slapped the disc in my Xbox and sat down. I had no idea what to expect but I’d heard only good things about it, so I settled into my lime green sofa and prepared to be surprised.
And let me tell you: I was surprised.
The game starts off with two kids discovering the corpse of a young girl, Anna Graham, crucified in the woods near the town of Greenvale. FBI agent Francis York Morgan is dispatched to investigate what initially seems like a simple open-and-shut case but, after some terrible driving from Agent Morgan that results in him totalling his car in the outskirts of the town, things soon turn really, really weird.
Finding himself in a world consumed by strange red plants and complete darkness, he makes his way to the town only to find it inhabited by a bizarre creature known only as ‘Shadows’, humanoid abominations featuring black eyes and Glasgow grins that love to bend over backwards and shove their arms down your throat.
After absolutely no emotional reaction from Agent York as you put said Shadows down with a pistol that’s as powerful as a peashooter, you manage to escape to the entrance of the town where the world returns to normal and you meet local police officers Emily Wyatt and George Woodman, where you’ll hear your first example of the truly atrocious voice acting that Deadly Premonition has to offer. It’s delivered slowly and emotionlessly, regularly off-pace and you can frequently hear distortion from the cast shouting too loudly down the mic. The awful audio quality, combined with the truly terrible graphics – they look like they belong in a mid-life PS2 title – completely destroys any suspension of disbelief you may have.
It’s not just the terrible production values that impact enjoyment of the game: the severe dissonance in mood between sections is confounding. At times, you’re inexplicably thrown into the nightmare world, often for no reason, in what is meant to be a scary exploration of the town’s darkest secret. The Shadows are admittedly initially scary, with their creepy faces and unsettling, low-pitched slowed-down wails of agony, but after you hear every single one cry “I don’t want to die!” in such a way, it eventually becomes funny rather than spooky. It doesn’t help that York accompanies each shot with some weird kind of praise to himself. “Bullseye. Great. Headshot.”
After these sections, you’re then placed back into the ‘real’ world, where no mention of what you’ve just been through is ever brought up. It’s during these sections that you’ll need to investigate crime scenes for clues, converse with the badly-characterised population of the town and navigate the town in one of the most boring driving sections ever seen in a game, while York bores you senseless with precise details on obscure movies he’s seen.
Erm, okay.
This isn’t the only weird characteristic that he exhibits, either. He has a habit of regularly touching his temple and engaging in conversation with some unknown entity named ‘Zach’. He tells him case notes, his thoughts and feelings on what’s happening and what to do next. Why does he do this? Is he talking to himself? Is he schizophrenic? Am I meant to be Zach? But I’m Michael! Why no-one bats an eyelid about this odd behaviour from what is supposedly one of the FBI’s premier agents is anybody’s guess.
What the hell is Deadly Premonition meant to be? A survival-horror? A supernatural adventure? An intentionally hilarious parody of contemporary big-budget titles? Why have such weird designs been made: why are the voice acting and graphics so bad? Why do you literally need to wait minutes at a time to access the next storyline sequence? Why do you need to purchase a ‘dartgun’ to play darts in the local pub? Why does a bad copy of the Super Mario tune play at every possible occasion? Why does Agent York introduce himself in the same long-winded way to everyone he meets? Why? Why? Why!?
Moments like these crop up all over the game, with the scene where you meet the owner of the local hotel being perhaps the weirdest of all.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnnE57kfhV0[/youtube]
What’s with the whistling? I’m… I’m speechless.
Deadly Premonition is befuddling. Its poor gameplay and peculiar design decisions combine to make something that’s just weird, like a videogame version of Twin Peaks. Even more mind-boggling is that people seem to love it. Why do Markie and Scott like it so much? It’s so… bizarre. Alan Wake‘s plot is a masterpiece compared to this one.
I’ve recently been told that not only is it going to be remade, it will also be getting a sequel and a prequel. Why!? How!? I just… I…
I have no words.
*I don’t really have a boat.
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