Yep, they’re thinking exactly the same thing as you: “How did I end up in this crazy half-baked horror game?”
Format: Xbox 360 Dev: Access Games Pub: Rising Star Games Out: 29/10/10 Players: 1
If you want a vividly engaging title with a gripping story, characters you actively connect with and tense atmospherics, realised through stylish presentation, do not buy Deadly Premonition.
What is there expected to be on the surface? Twin Peaks and Resident Evil meets GTA. It sounds innovative… but would have been better realised if the game didn’t feel like a PS2 launch title.
Let’s start off with the fundamental issue. You’re cast as Agent York of the FBI, who has gone to the quaint town of Greenvale to investigate a murder. It kicks off pretty much immediately as your car is destroyed and you fend for yourself until you roll into town. This, right here, is where the generics of plot and game development end.
It takes a lot on this crazy blue marble we call Earth to leave me utterly, speechlessly confused. But the intro cutscene: two children looking at a mangled corpse, one of the puzzles – finding corresponding squirrel keys to get to different parts of the town, and the copious amounts of townspeople who are a little “off the beaten path.” It all adds up to a sheer amount of WTF, which in any other game I would love. Completely blindsiding the player with something they didn’t expect is an in-game technique that I adore seeing. But it comes across as if it was completely accidental in this. A lucky strike by an amateur developer who managed to cock things up enough in other areas to hide this unintentional beauty.
Presentation-wise, these guys must really like amateur hour. The closest kin to compare this to would to call it an uglier version of the original Shenmue. Textures are ugly and character skins make even me feel handsome. It’s just nasty. Then the sound design, to give them some credit, a small amount of the voice acting falls into the ‘not bad’ category. Zoom out the magnifying glass, and the music, the sound design, the whole thing is just an apocalypse of sound (not in the good way). A mish-mash of poorly designed audio combined to make something that reminds you of a tinny mobile phone game.
We have the traditional over-the-shoulder style of play, but it manages to make even that an awkward affair. I understand that some of the tension comes from inhibiting character movement, but this is just poor control responsiveness and button mapping.
Stir this in with some of the most awkward, clunky, non-responsive controls to hit the survival horror genre, and we have what should’ve been an Xbox Live Arcade game to begin with. But even at that level, this is definitely a title to avoid.
Jason England
Tags: action, deadly premonition, horror, rising star games
