Deadly Premonition

Title: Deadly Premonition: The Director's Cut
Platform played: Playstation 3
Price paid: part of Playstation Plus subscription

Deadly Premonition: the Director's Cut is a videogame - that much is a fact. Everything else about it is speculative. Is it a horror or a thriller? Is it supernatural or a story of a mad person? Is it broken or purposely clunky? Is it a rip-off or an adaptation or an homage? I think it walks the line so drunkedly that it's actually impossible to decide for sure, but let's take a proper gander at it anyway. 

I'll leave the story for the end of this review and focus on the mechanics for now. Graphically, the game would be at home on the GameCube. Everything looks a little bit fantastical in one way or another but that too could be on purpose. People's faces are hilarious, imagine slightly off grapefruits with eyes and lips painted on them. People's body language is completely exaggerated and unnatural, they shake their heads for two minutes straight, shake their fists or pull grumpy faces like cartoon villains. And they'd probably get away with it all, too, if it wasn't for you meddling kids. 

Sounds design is equally bizarre. There is a load of terrible laughs and awful cries, exaggerated sighs and weird humming, and then there are the zombies. "Noooooooooo, I don't want to dieeeee!" each one exclaims as you mercilessly kill them and watch them dissolve back into the ground they came out of. Weirder still, some say "Kiiiill meeeeee!" as you maneuver around them only to bemoan the same melodic "Noooooo, I don't want to dieeeee!" which means they're either indecisive or just Tumblr emos. The protagonist, one Francis York Morgan, has a real tendency to tap his collar while he thinks but the tapping sound effect is so exaggerated it's more akin to a slam than a tap. And yet again, it so outrageously ridiculous that I have to assume it was done on purpose and I just cannot hate it because in some twisted way, it's utterly brilliant. What makes it worse, the character models have wide, glassy eyes which makes everyone around York look as surprised as I was at how loud his finger-collar combo is. 

Between the ages of five and eight I used to talk to myself because we both reckoned we were the only people smart enough to understand each other but in fact my logic was so warped and roundabout that people had every right to think I was a weirdo. I mention that because I fear Swery's adult logic is akin to my childhood one. Everything about Deadly Premonition almost makes sense. I'll touch on the plot aspects in a later paragraph but let's look at the game purely mechanically. From quite early on, you're told to drive around the town to get places quicker; the town is believable (I believe it's based on a real place, actually) but still feels badly designed but that gets kind of explained away by the plot. When you do drive, your vehicles are automatically limited to the legal speed limit of 40mph for a residential area but there are long roads which wouldn't be classed as such where the speed limit still applied but that gets kind of explained away by the plot. In the combat sections, you have to stop moving to aim a gun, which I suppose makes sense to some degree but the game doesn't give you a chance of firing blindly which is annoying. Trying to kill a horde of zombies is like trying to piss into a bottle on a conveyor belt. Now, I know Swery's roundabout logic and I know this could be explained away by saying that as a federal agent York wouldn't shoot blindly because he's been trained not to waste his shots and all that but I'll take the first exit, thanks. Being a federal agent, York should also be firing warning shots, although I suppose he is an American federal agent and we know their attitude towards protocol and ethnic minorities. On the other hand, PRICING MAKES NO FRIGGIN' SENSE WHATSOEVER. $27.99 FOR A TURKEY SANDWICH?! IS MY NAME SEAN COMBS?! 

[minor spoiler within next paragraph]

Which brings me onto the little things. There is an unmistakable attempt at making Francis York Morgan a human being. If he runs, he runs out of breath and heartbeat speeds up. If he doesn't eat, he gets hungry. If he doesn't sleep he gets tired. If he doesn't shave, his beard grows AND THEN MIRACULOUSLY DISAPPEARS IN THE FINAL CUT SCENES LIKE THE NEXT SENTENCE OF THIS REVIEW. Lol jk this isn't an actual sentence. York smiles, frowns, screams, loves and really benefits from the bizarre setting. He is an eccentric dude, not the least his tendency to peek through windows and ability to remain unseen despite apparently sticking his entire head through (the game lets you take a 180 degree view of the interior of a building). York loves Emily - he fights it for a while but he loves her. Those are the things you cannot change about him, but other than that there's some room to play with. My York was a bearded vegan who preferred a good night's sleep to caffeine, wore sensible, matching suits and used a wrench as a weapon of choice. The wrench is part of the problem I had with the game. By far the best weapon in the entire game is locked away behind a random side mission. AS IS THE ONLY MEANS OF FAST-TRAVEL WHICH I HAD NO IDEA ABOUT UNTIL AFTER I FINISHED THE BLOODY THING. At first I thought that the driving around was a good way of giving the player some breathing room between the zombie sections but after a while I realised it was just punishment for not doing LITERALLY EVERY SIDE MISSION (okay, not literally, there's just the one, really feckin' obtuse one).

[Full plot spoilers ahead]
So, plot.

Yeah...

York is a dude and we're in his head. There are weird twins that say cryptic shit to him. The same twins and a dog are being walked by some old dude and they run into a woman that has been crucified to a tree. Francis York Morgan, an FBI agent following a serial killer whose trademark is leaving behind red seeds sets out to the scene of the killer's latest crime, Greenvale. Here, the game gives a slight justification for the speed limit as York inexplicably crashes and has to walk the rest of the way. The first person he meets in Greenvale is Emily WHOM HE IMMEDIATELY FALLS IN LOVE WITH but is in denial about for the rest of the game. York has an imaginary friend called Zach. For the longest time, I thought Zach was meant to be the player but Zach is actually the original persona of the Francis Morgan entity. York slowly discovers that the killer is a local celebrity with a fifty year long career in murdering known as the Raincoat Killer. The Raincoat Killer exclusively targets women which totally isn't sexist because there's totally a good reason for it. See, the Raincoat Killer turns out to be a pawn in a game played by an unassuming fat man who is instantly suspicious because he's the only fat person in the whole game. Now, I'm not saying Swery hates fat people but I reckon he ain't a fan since THE ONLY FAT PERSON IN THE GAME IS ENTIRELY AND UNDOUBTEDLY EVIL. The plot was completely fine by me for the first seven eighths of it. People moved away from Greenvale because of the obvious racism, the only black guy left is a doctor. The sheriff is an insecure bellend with a power trip, his deputy gets off on being the hot chic in a small village and her brother is a full-time poof. There is a weird guy who gives away little trees and has a dog he follows around rather than the other way round. There's a dude who pretends to be a former high-ranking army officer and runs a scrapyard. The other hot local lady runs a gallery with nothing but pictures of trees because she always wanted to live in a forest. And that's great, it has that weird Japanese charm to it where everything is both really serious and utterly ridiculous all at the same time. But the game just decides to turn full-on ridiculous right at the very end.

So George turns out to be the Raincoat Killer and turns into a demon. Kaysen turns out to be the mastermind and a full-time demon. Kaysen plants the red seeds in Emily and a small tree sprouts from her womb. Now, I don't know about you, dear reader, but I would class that as a rape scene. The scene is horrendous and sickening and one of, if not the highlight of the game. It turns what at that point looks like a story headed towards a soppy happy ending on its head and kicks its teeth in. Emily has to die, one way or another she will and it is up to you, player to save her from suffering. Oh, no, wait, Zach's an actual person. Here, at the very end we're treated to the reveal that Francis Zach Morgan witnessed his dad killing himself and telling him to be stronger when the time comes because apparently the Red Tree likes targeting that specific family. Zach then created a new persona called York. For whatever reason, Zach's grey hair turned dark as a result (I'm assuming that's his imagination). York hasn't got the heart(balls) to kill Emily and so he brings Zach back. And we get our soppy happy ending in the most disappointing way ever: York and Emily live happily ever after in a paradise forest that just happens to look evil.

Swery has confirmed certain aspects of the plot and denied others. The zombies the player encounters are "psychological" and not "supernatural" and they are the victims of the original Raincoat Killer. This means that the combat sections are simply Zach going extra schitz. He said Kaysen is "an agent of the Red Tree" and revealed that Greenvale's road design is made to resemble Kaysen's dog, Willie. This suggests that Kaysen was a pawn to an even higher power, one of an evil mastermind dalmatian - William Red Tree IV. And to be fair to Swery, Willie does lead a lot of the characters to do what they do like a good boy. But little do they know, he's a very, very bad boy indeed. I think the Zach/York split is weak. Zach is York with less confidence and that seems to be York's sole purpose in life - to teach Zach how to be confident. Yet again, it's a satisfactory result because Zach becomes confident enough to even start a family and pretend to be emotionally stable for long enough for his daughter to let him live with her. Ultimately, I don't think much is gained from Zach and if anything we miss out on what could've been a really heartfelt and sad ending with York finally letting Emily go the way George just couldn't. And again I'm reminded of my younger self creating grand stories that made more sense in my head than out of it.

Deadly Premonition: the Director's Cut is: having your balls squeezed painfully by a beautiful woman while she sobs heavily at a Richard Prior stand-up routine/10