Deadly Premonition Review

Now, then. For the rest of you -- those champions of innovation and good taste who won't let a few blemishes stop you from having a good time -- I want to tell you about the most fun I've had playing a videogame in a good long while. Deadly Premonition is the kind of experience that reminds you of why you fell in love with this medium in the first place. Once you look past its flaws, you'll find a game that is completely engrossing for far longer than it ought to be, is refreshingly self-aware that it is, in fact, a videogame and not a movie, and in many ways, is one of the best examples of game writing I've ever seen. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Click the image above to check out all Deadly Premonition screens.

Dashing, quirky lead Francis "York" Morgan is an FBI agent who's volunteered himself to investigate a strange murder in the small industrial town of Greenvale, USA. The murderer's M.O. -- force-feeding the victim a handful of mysterious red seeds -- suggests that the crime is related to a series of similar incidents York has investigated in the past. He must interrogate a wide cast of colorful townsfolk (with names like Wandering Sigourney the Pot Lady and Raging Bull), analyze clues, and use his criminal profiling abilities to catch the murderer before they claim another victim.

Oh, and by the way, York has an imaginary friend named Zach who he has conversations with in public. He can also predict the future by looking at a cup of coffee, eats food he finds lying around on the ground (including raw onions and potatoes), will sleep anywhere that looks comfortable, slags off of work to go fishing, and occasionally has to battle zombies that probably only exist in his head.

The way the game plays out is something like a cross between the open world and pinpoint map objectives of Grand Theft Auto, the wandering and interrogating of Shenmue, the observational "stalking" parts of The Last Express (characters carry out their daily rituals and have conversations with each other, whether or not you're there to see them), and the standing-still-while-shooting combat of Resident Evil 4. It is a "jack of all trades, master of none" scenario, unfortunately, but it somehow balances out into a good game.

Where Deadly Premonition really shines is in its ability to fool you into feeling empowered. Because the game allows you to see what everyone in town is doing at any given moment, it feels like you can actually catch the killer if you're just in the right place at the right time. This leads to some really interesting experiences. One time I glanced at the in-game map and noticed one of my prime suspects was hanging out at the scene of the crime. I hopped in my borrowed police cruiser and sped all the way across town, sirens blazing, to see if I might catch her doing something incriminating. When I finally made it to the site, I found her looking intently at the ground, as if she were trying to find something she'd lost. Confronting her about it opened up a sidequest and revealed some very interesting and completely optional information that shed some light on the mystery -- not in an official way (it didn't change the story or sequence of events), but directly to me, the player.

Click the image above to check out all Deadly Premonition screens.

This is what I mean when I say that Deadly Premonition has some of the best game writing I've seen. Understand that I don't mean it's full of gorgeous prose (in fact, much of the dialogue is awkward and in need of an editor), what I mean is that the game tells you its story in the interactive way that only a videogame can. Sure, you may, if you wish, simply move from checkpoint to checkpoint and get the gist of the story through cut-scenes. But actually exploring the town and acting on your instincts will flesh out Greenvale and its strange inhabitants in very rewarding ways. The game has more dialogue than you're ever likely to read -- not only does every character have something new to say during each of the game's numerous chapters, but what they have to say changes depending on where they are at the time you talk to them.

Deadly Premonition is by no means a great game, at least in the traditional sense, but I'll be damned if I didn't enjoy every minute of my nearly 42 hours playing it. The setting and story might have a little too much in common with the early 1990s television series Twin Peaks, but the homage is done with love and admiration. You can really tell that game director SWERY and his team at Access Games went above and beyond in creating Deadly Premonition, and frankly, it disgusts me knowing that the game was kicked out the door at a $20 super-budget price point.

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