- Lengthy campaign with over 20 hours of gameplay.
- A living, breathing, persistent open gameworld of investigative mystery, featuring a huge cast of unique NPCs each with their own individual mysteries to uncover.
- Dozens of side quests that will further immerse the player and reveal more of Greenvale¿s secret underbelly.
- A combination of over-the-shoulder shooter action, driving, and 3rd person adventure/exploration offers a variety of gameplay.
- Use your profiling prowess to recreate the crime with the various clues and items found at the scene and the dozens of melee, ranged and hidden weapons to defend yourself from the onslaught of evil.
Product Description
Deadly Premonition, developed by Access Games, is a third-person survival horror action game which puts players in the role of FBI Agent Francis York Morgan. In the process of investigating a murder, players will examine a series of interlocking mysteries in a remote rural town and will encounter an array of complex characters pivotal to the unraveling of the storyline’s mystery. Suspenseful action sequences will force players to make strategic moves, gliding by e… More >>
This title has been met with a number of bad reviews. It occurs to me that of them, they all seem to follow a similar thread. Allow me to demonstrate: “THIS GAME IS AWFUL BECAUSE OF THE GRAPHICS, AND SINCE THE GRAPHICS ARE AWFUL, IT MUST THEREFORE BE ASSUMED THAT THIS GAME IS AWFUL. TOTALLY WEAK GRAPHICS ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE TO A GREAT GAMING EXPERIENCE. ONE STAR! ALSO, I SHOULD NOTE THAT I AM NOT RATING THIS GAME FOR THE GAME ITSELF, BECAUSE I HAVE NOT PLAYED IT.”
I have played this game. I sunk around 50+ hours into the whole experience and found the game to be engrossing and easily worth the twenty dollar asking price. So how could I be so wrong, having played the game and all? Because I didn’t know the truth. The ineffable yet utterly obvious fact: good video games didn’t exist prior to Modern Warfare 2. There was no such thing as a good game for the NES or Dreamcast. There was no system seller title for your Nintendo 64 or Playstation. Forget what you thought you knew about Perfect Dark or Symphony of the Night or any of those games you thought were “good.” Childish thoughts, those. Those games could not be good. Have you seen the graphics? They’re SO bad, guys!
Please disregard the negative reviews for this title, as you’ll find them almost totally useless. The drawbacks to this title are obvious, so there is no point to spend so much time hammering them (never mind making them the entire focus of your ire). Graphics are not “next gen.” Controls take some getting used to. Translation sucks sometimes. Audio is a little out of whack. Got it? Good. Find me an overly negative review that finds flaw with a non-superficial aspect of the game or suggests the reviewer having even played the title for ten minutes. I will assure you that despite these shortcomings, they are not egregious enough offenses to kill what is a very unique, enjoyable, if unpolished gaming experience.
The goal of this game is to provide a solid narrative and a set of quirky, Lynchian characters that they will grow to care about in some capacity. And it works. This rubs some people the wrong way, because they feel the goal of a video game should have been to give them visual wanking material and plenty of loud explosions to scream over when they’re calling some kid in Tulsa something vaguely homophobic or racist. The argument that this game “could” have been great or fun had it come out on a console a generation ago is absurd, because last I checked, a good game is a good game. Bottom line. And Deadly Premonition, for all intents and purposes, is a pretty remarkable gaming experience.
Rating: 5 / 5
Deadly Premonition is obviously not a big budget title, and as such it cant compete with other games in terms of graphics or polish. If you give the title a chance however, you are likely to find that its quirky characters and story will engage your attention in a way that other games with their multi-million dollar budgets simply cannot. With that much money on the line, no mainstream studio would ever greenlight a project as weird as this game.
The graphics are far from terrible, and in a way they have a certain charm that requires you to use your imagination to fill in the blanks. Deadly Premonition reminds me of the sort of bizarre japanese games that were de rigueur on the Dreamcast, games like Illbleed, Maken X, and D2. The investigation is over 20 hours long and there is an abundance to see and do in the town of Greenvale. Gamers with an open mind who would like to see something different, or maybe just to revisit an earlier era of far-out gaming that is now all but dead, should not hesitate to give Deadly Premonition a shot.
Rating: 5 / 5
Deadly Premonition
When I first saw trailers for Deadly Premonition, I was quite intrigued (I love adventure and survival horror games)-so I was going to get this game regardless price or quality (there are so few games in those genres these days that it’s hard to get my fix)… and when I heard that it was going to be 20 bucks, I got even more excited (most budget games these days cost 40… which is 20 bucks more than what a budget game cost one console generation ago). I have to say, I’ve been very pleasantly surprised with this game.
Graphically, it’s no showboat, that’s for sure, but it’s competent–especially for the price. The character models look like high-end original XBOX models, but the environments, especially texture-wise, are rather lacking. I had seen the previews and the price tag, so I wasn’t going in expecting Crysis; but if you’re a graphics whore, you will be quite disappointed. Regardless of the low polygon count and texture resolutions, I really liked the game’s atmosphere–the environments are intriguing and surreal which really helps maintain the game’s mood.
The story is captivating and very well done with a competent cast, especially for a budget title, to help keep you engaged for the 20+ hour campaign. It’s an odd blend of surreal horror and quirky humor that manages to work well together. It’s quite unlike anything you’ll experience in a big budget title… the game takes a lot of risks, which is probably why it ended up being a budget title (ie. if they produced the game with a larger budget, if it flopped, the loss would have been much greater–so, they managed to take risks with a low budget to see if it was a formula that worked).
The gameplay may feel a bit dated, but I grew up on games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil and I honestly think it works well for a horror game because it adds a layer of intensity instead of making your character an indestructible superhuman space marine. You’re placed in a free roaming town with plenty of places to explore and things to do… like more things to do than a lot of 60 dollar games these days. The vehicle segments can be a chore because they handle like bricks on square wheels, so that’s a bit disappointing, but not an entirely game-breaking experience because they’re not really a huge part of the game. Some really creative things were done with the time cycle and character management–your character will grow a beard as time progresses, so you can shave that to keep your image more appealing to those around you… if you don’t change your clothes regularly, flies will gather around you… stuff like that. It’s quite fascinating and is something you don’t normally see in games.
The sound design would be my biggest complaint… it’s like watching an old movie where the music is so loud and the dialogue is so quiet that it’s almost hard to pay attention to what’s going on. I turned the bgm music down to 30 and have the voices volume at 100% and it still had issues, so I put on subtitles. The music can also be a buzz kill with only a few songs that cycle during character interactions and key plot points… some of them feel really out of place (there’s one happy little diddy with whistling that is just odd to hear when you’re investigating a murder… and it WILL get stuck in your head).
If you can muscle through some torturous tunes, the game is really a treat. It has an engaging story with a lot of charm of its own that you won’t find in most mainstream games, a lengthy campaign, and a very affordable price. It may not be a looker, but even had this game been released with the standard $40 budget price, it would have been well worth the cash–so, $20 is quite the steal.
Rating: 4 / 5
I actually waited to write this review until I had beaten the game, which occurred at right about the 24 hour marker. (To put that in perspective I have played this game 21 hours more than Final Fantasy XIII.) All I can say is “WOW!” I am really thoroughly impressed by this little title. This game won’t impress everyone that much is evident but if you’re a more sophisticated/older gamer, someone who enjoys a unique experience or just a person enjoys a good Detective/Horror story I would recommend this title to you without hesitation.
For some reason this game clicks with me very strongly and a lot of people have said ‘it’s so bad it’s good,’ or ‘I laughed through it lolz’ and I have to disagree. There is a good healthy and might I add a refreshing dose of humor for about the first half of the game. Then it shifts into a much more serious tone and managed to draw me in even more than I thought. This transition happened so smoothly that I actually ended up caring about how the story was progressing. Thanks to this little technique of ‘character building’ I was actually riveted to my seat. I kept pressing on just to see what was going to happen next. So here we go, here’s the rumors and the truth.
“The graphics suck!” – Well I still play Atari, NES, SNES, DOS and PS1 games. I had no problem overlooking the fact that these were PS2 era graphics. If anything I think it added a bit. It lets your imagination fill in where the graphics engine leaves off. (Trust me your mind can fill in more texels-per-second than any computer ever will.) As far as I can tell ‘poor graphics’ hasn’t effected Silent Hill 1 at all. So why should this be a problem now?
“The controls are clunky!” – The controls do take some getting used to, and I did find driving to be a little cumbersome. With that being said though the game never asks you to do something that you can’t.
“The story is stupid and filled with awful one-liners” – I actually found the voice acting to be very well done, and the dialog 99% of the time was spot on for the situation. The story is really more akin to a Stephen King novel even right down to the classic “Stephen King Ending.” e.g. You don’t know whether to be happy or sad. I’m still up in the air about that one myself.
This game does shine in other areas such as game play and creativity. Over all the experience is something that I will never forget. Think of it as a mash up of Metal Gear Solid attention to details in a Grand Theft Auto free roam environment with Silent Hill like atmospheric sequences, Resident Evil like controls and a Clock Tower like mystery and events. Truly they have taken a little something from all the pertinent genre leaders and made it their own. The huge amount of things for you to do, plus the different and varied ways that the designers break levels and actions up keeps this game from ever getting stale. You can tell that the designers, directors and testers were very proud of this game and put a lot of love and effort into it and it does show. This game was never a chore to play. It was simply unencumbered fun. Side quests that mean something or give you an actual valuable item. Great cast of characters and personalities, and so much more. This has worked it’s way to a very prominent place on my very short favorite games list. I just wish more game publishers and studios would pay attention to why this game works so well.
F.Y.I. I’m told this game was heavily influenced by the TV series Twin Peaks. I’ve never seen the show but I think I will now, and if you’ve already seen it I would seriously think about getting this title. I’ve been told by fans of Twin Peaks, that it’s a lot like playing the series.
I could go on for at least another 10 pages on all the good things this game does spot on but I won’t. All-in-all an excellent game, the way games should be made.
Rating: 5 / 5
Let me open up by saying I’m apprehensive when a game gets a “2″ anywhere. Whether it is a scale system of up to 10 or 5 “2″ is never a good mark. Yet after playing Deadly premonition it is my hypothesis that the IGN critic rating this game did not actually play it. You see IGN is known for their love affair of free roaming sand box games such as the popular GTA series. Such games come with their own bundle of frustrations and frankly I don’t see how Deadly premonition is more “guilty” of those shortcomings than Rock Star’s chrome plated champion.
The first issue to cover is this IS a budget title. The people who made it were “small time” independent developers. No, you shouldn’t expect Deadly premonition to look spectacular and though the game mechanics are passable they are not revolutionary. (Than again I felt the same way about GTA, aka the driving and gun fighting were “just okay” but nothing to write home about.)
Unlike GTA you’re the good guy this time around. Agent York is coming to Green Vale to solve a murder mystery and apparently the rural hamlet is also “cursed”. Deadly Premonition is serious enough to want to tell a good suspenseful yarn but not so full of itself it excludes cheesy satire & humor. If you love to laugh it is a decent enough reason to pick up this game! From the very beginning York is a few fries short of a happy meal. He discusses cartoons, comic books, and movie trivia with his faceless partner Zach. We can make many assumptions. Zach could be a ghost from a deceased family member, he could be representative of the player, or he might be a multiple personality in an ingenious yet unstable mind. Regardless the actual origin no game has EVER opened up with such an odd & colorful protagonist.
In itself the concept of a free roaming survival horror game is quite original. Most games of this ilk hurry us along. Whether we’re stranded on a hostile spaceship or in a city infested with zombies there are never many people to talk to and any semblance of “normal life” is restrained to notes, descriptions, and diaries the protagonist finds strewn about. For example in Silent Hill you may read a computer entry from “Joe the water sanitation guy” who fought a giant sewer slug but it’s not as if you get to sit down and have a cup of coffee with him.
Greenvale by comparison is not “abandoned”. People drive to work, go to the diner, get into arguments, and try their best to raise their kids. While Agent York can collect enough evidence to move events onto the next chapter in the investigation there is never any rush to do so and he can visit anyone at his leisure. When not tracking down the raincoat killer or fighting ghost zombies of the damned in the town’s “shadow dimension” York buys new cars from a grizzled Vietnam veteran, peeps into people’s houses to observe their routines, changes clothes, shaves, eats, throws darts in the bar, and literally goes fishing for items.
You quickly discover York is not the only eccentric person in dodge. Sigourney is a crazy old woman that carries around a pot in the pursuit to keep it warm. George is a stoic Sheriff with a troubled past which left scars on his back. Emily Wyatt is snug in her role as the “kind and courageous deputy officer tom boy” all us geeks can fawn over. A Californian rocker store clerk has twin sons holding an important secret. Nick is great at cooking yet abrasive when it comes to socializing. There is also Diane, a seductive rich art gallery owner known for her promiscuous habits and odd late night meetings. Keep into perspective these are only a few of Greenvale’s citizens. This isn’t akin to the 5 character “skeleton crew” found in games akin to the Silent-Hill series. The end result makes you feel as if you’re in a “real place” instead of a Hollywood set piece.
Along with York’s health eating and sleeping effect his “hunger” and “awareness” meters. If you don’t take care of York beyond throwing an occasional health kit at him he will suffer for it. York’s “hygiene” is important as well. Let him go long enough without a suit change or shave flies will buzz around his scraggly beard! If you want to play as a hobo FBI agent your wish has been granted!
Combat in Deadly premonition reminded me of Resident Evil 4. Pull out York’s gun and things immediately are seen from over his shoulder and he even has a stereotypical “laser light” and red cross hair targeting icon. While shooting York cannot run but for any of you that enjoy this genre it is not too much of a detraction. In addition York can do a quick 180 spin, push objects out of the way, and smash crates and zombie ghost skulls either with his bullets or close range melee weapons he finds along the way. Certainly he is no Kung Fu master when it comes to swinging a golf club or shovel but he still gets the job done!
I was even more impressed when this low production value gem had “chase & hide” sequences. These occur when the raincoat killer pursues the hero and he has to hide in closets, hold his breath, sprint to a safer check point, or dodge axe blows through real time events so as not to end up the next gruesome victim. Most horror games only give us the choice to fight or only give us the option of evasion so it’s great to finally have a combination of both of them.
Driving isn’t hard. While you have it in your power to light up your turn signals, switch on sirens, and employ the windshield wipers none of those tasks are necessary to make it from point A to point B. The only annoying occurrence is running out of fuel or getting damaged beyond repair when in the middle of nowhere. Easy solution? Carry flares with you at all times. When one of those puppies lights up in the sky another patrol car will be sent to you free of charge. Luckily you can also switch the automobile camera from 1st person to 3rd person if you have a personal preference. Having a vehicle “cleaned” or “refueled” at the gas station will keep it at top performance. Remembering these tips will save you a lot of grief!
The inventory screen of Deadly Premonition is the weirdest piece of interactive game art I’ve ever seen. It looks like a surreal office with a cracked wall leading to outside. Mounted over a fireplace is a moving deer head. From this window in York’s mental attic players can change out weapons, view the town map, look at clues, and view collected trading cards . Most designers would have made this a boring and drab task grid of monotony so the extra creativity is something that should be appreciated!
It perplexes me this game got low reviews. It wasn’t egotistically puffing itself up to seem better than it actually was. The people behind it were generous to offer it for a mere $20.00. If that were not enough Deadly Premonition has a fairly large sandbox setting. Unlike its’ more linear action driven survival horror siblings this beast cannot be blazed through in only a few nights.
My verdict: A
Rating: 5 / 5