Review: Deadly Premonition

Deadly Premonition is a sandbox with third-person shooter elements for the Xbox 360. It was developed by Access Games.

Francis York Morgan investigating a crime scene.

FBI Special Agent Francis York Morgan is sent to the small town of Greenvale to investigate a murder; a waitress named Anna was found murdered and tied to a tree out in the woods. Shortly after York’s arrival more murders occur, and a local legend dubbed the Raincoat Killer is blamed. York has to learn to the identity of the Raincoat Killer, and learn the dark secrets of Greenvale.

Deadly Premonition has three game play parts to it. The first part, the part that gets the plot moving along, is when York has to go to some pat of Greenvale to talk to someone of some other action that starts a cut-scene. This takes up most of the game time, but does not involve a lot of game playing. Mostly it involves York finding a police car and driving from one part of Greenvale to the other. While the plot is interesting, getting there is really boring once the player has gotten used to Greenvale. Thankfully York sometimes has conversations in the car, but unfortunately those eventually run out.

The second parts of the game are the combat areas. Sometimes when York investigates somewhere he is transported to a dark twisted version of that place, filled with attacking ghosts. The left shoulder buttons makes York aim, the right button fires, and the right control stick aims

These areas are pretty straightforward; they are mostly long sets of corridors with little deviation. Almost all the enemies are the same ghosts that slowly lumber towards York and attack him when they get close. Since they can take several shots before dying without flinching, the challenge is in finishing them off before they get too close.

They are also horribly tedious. The narrow hallways are forgetful, as are the enemies, which only provide a challenge when the player does not think. And there is no variety to the fighting either, just the same enemies and the same strategy. The combat areas could have been entirely removed and it would not have hurt the game, except for one boss fight near the end.

The third part is when York has to meet someone at a certain time, but not for several hours, leaving the player to find ways to fill in the hours by running around Greenvale. The game runs on a very slow day/night cycle, so the player has a lot of time. The biggest way to eat up time is the side-quests for the townsfolk. Almost all of these quests involve doing something minor, like going to some part of Greenvale to pick an object and bring it back, or do something like compete in a trivia challenge. Sometimes the rewards are nice, like weapons or new suits, but a lot of the time they are just useless collectable cards with the character’s face on them. And if the player runs out of things to do they can make time pass by quickly by making York smoke or sleep.

The most interesting thing about Deadly Premonition is its setting and characters. York is a somewhat unstable man who frequently talks to his invisible friend Zach, goes off on long tangents about movies he likes, and is incapable of understanding when not to talk about grisly murder investigations. Greenvale is populated with interesting character like the tough but authoritative sheriff, the creepy blond twins, the slutty art gallery director, or the eccentric wheelchair-bound millionaire and his rhyming assistant. The characters are cartoonish in nature, like characters from a not really serious mystery drama, or a soap opera.  The biggest draw to driving around Greenvale and completing the game is learning more about them.

The story itself is a mixed bag. At first it feels cliché, but it never feels clichéd enough to not be interesting, just somewhat predictable. Then it starts to get really weird, which explains some of the plot and the back-story, but raises a ton more questions.

And then there are the millions of technical problems that should not exist in any game in 2010. Voices do not line up with mouth movements; characters go through the same recycled animations all the time; doors make the exact same creaking noise no matter what they are made of, characters smiling look inhuman; explosions pass through enemies without them noticing; and the grass looks painted on. The only nice thing that could be said is that plenty of detail was put into the town itself so it looks like a unique town and not some copy-and-pasted level. And Access is aware of these faults, which is why the game is only twenty dollars.

It is damn lucky that Deadly Premonition is cheap and has an interesting enough setting to get players to play through it until then end, because almost all of its other features are boring bordering on terrible. It is worth it though, to at least the story; and at least a lot of the filler can be skipped over.