Mini Review – Deadly Premonition

Psychological horror.

Who killed Lau… Anna Graham.

Lurk

When Laura Palmer Anna Graham is found brutally murdered, FBI special agent  Dale Cooper Francis York Morgan and Sherriff Harry S. Truman George Woodman soon discover that in the town of Twin Peaks Greenvale no one is innocent and nothing is what it seems.  If that intro doesn’t tip you off this game is heavily influenced by David Lynch’s TV series Twin Peaks. In fact being a lazy journalist slag I’ll happily say this game is Twin Peaks mixed with Silent Hill and a dash of Resident Evil 4.

Hand in gob horror.

I’ll start off on the graphics which aren’t great, they’re on par with a late era PS2 game and there is very little variety in the enemies you do face in the supernatural other world sections of the game. The controls during the action sections of the game aren’t very good, they’re very reminiscent of Resident Evil 4, with the third person over the shoulder view. Add to that the fact you have to stop when you shoot,  the controls are kind of counter intuitive using the A button to shoot instead of the triggers.

Saying all this though the story is what keeps you playing this, the game’s designer ‘Swery’ created an interesting game world populated with strange characters. The majority of the voice actors are also very good, there’s maybe two support characters that the voice acting isn’t very good on, but they’re the exception, especially taking into consideration there are twenty or so different characters in the game.

The game is full of nods to films and TV shows that are obvious influences to the game’s designer. Whether this is the huge hotel with 70s décor as a hint towards the Shining, to a conversation with Zach about 80s John Hughes films and  Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.  This is a long game as well and whilst part of that reason is down to the fact it uses the Hideo Kojima school of plot progression, AKA overly frequent cut scenes. Though if you want to there are a ton of side missions that can be completed in the free roaming sections of the game.

As you know we here at Peoww love our lemons, those game that whilst, not being the most polished titles show a lot of promise and can bring a lot of enjoyment whilst playing them. This has lead me dubbing this game Deadly Lemonition, for a budget title that can be picked up for under twenty quid brand new this game has had me playing it for a lot longer than Halo: Reach, a supposed Triple A title.

8/10