Deadly Premonition Director's Cut Review {CULT CLASSIC or JANK PEAKS?}
Cult Classic? Twin Peaks Love Letter? Jank Peaks? All the above? Witness 1nteger's most notorious & difficult to play and review game! It's the Deadly Premonition Director's Cut Review for PC.
What is it and how'd you play?
Playing as special agent Francis York Morgan, it’s your job to investigate the brutal murder of a young local beauty in the town of Greenvale. Amidst the backdrop of soaring mountains and a small American suburb, York must solve the mystery of the Red Seed Murders and stay alive in a place where supernatural creatures and a mysterious raincoat-clad, axe-wielding killer seek to end his investigation for good.
Deadly Premonition was originally released on February 23, 2010 with the Directors Cut coming a few years later in 2013 for windows & ps3.
Developed by Access Games under the vision of Hidetaka "Swery" Suehiro and published in Europe by Rising Star Games. It's also available on Xbox 360 & Nintendo Switch. I think we played this game at 4k maxed but fiddled with settings due to vast stability issues. We used necessary mod fixes (dp fix I believe, we followed the wisdom of https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Deadly_Premonition:_The_Director%27s_Cut) for alleged stability & widescreen compatibility which included a default inclusion of sweetfx (which for whatever reason always seems to the bane of my pc gaming existence).
So alluring, but so hard to play.
We experienced the game on the PC via Steam, and by Lord Jesus I wish we didn't, definitely best probably experienced on a console like PS3 or Switch, as the start hopefully demonstrated. It currently retails at £20 at time of writing this copy.
I think we played this game at 4k maxed but fiddled with settings due to vast stability issues. We used necessary mod fixes (dp fix I believe, we followed the wisdom of https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Deadly_Premonition:_The_Director%27s_Cut) for alleged stability & widescreen compatibility which included a default inclusion of sweetfx (which for whatever reason always seems to the bane of my pc gaming existence).
We used a hack for our official Xbox controller via steam controller settings to make controller input in Deadly Premonition Directors Cut more civilised (I mean, them default pad controls though, oh boy).
We clocked in about 50hrs of combined live and recorded broadcasts which you can find the playlist in the description and maybe even in the top-right where the cards live if I'm sharp with this one.
We unlocked 37/60 achievements completing about just under maybe half of the sidies / collectibles (more on those later). And in short, it was a pain in the piñata lower-thirds to even attempt completing just does sadly.
The Good
• Unique overall feel and setting of the game (Twin Peaks the video game).
Interesting protagonist in both actions, dialogue and backstory.
• Funny dialogue and some well-crafted quirky characters.
• Intriguing story and whodunnit plot at the start and middle.
• Some interesting detective mechanics (in terms of checking you were paying attention with investigation skills, multi-view encounters and the other mechanics; when they work)
Interactions are mostly fun and some of the side quests offer some nice variety and very handy rewards.
• Nice varied and quirky soundtrack
The Bad
• Either the game itself or the mod/patch 'fixes' made this game look pretty uneven / heck even ugly in places (probably the Sweetfx) and overall with lighting and shading issues among other things.
• The game is practically unplayable on modern windows without fidderling with it via Dpfix and the like. Best played on a console I'd say.
• Fast-travel needed to be much more obvious and less missable, considering the map size and speed of travel, especially during the early game, coupled with the fact that it's not really clear when it's okay to ditch your cohorts and explore / side-quest.
• Food / survival mechanics count against encouraging exploration and side questing due to it's tedious nature when waiting for certain times or conditions for quests to be valid and especially without necessary aids that are again missable.
• While it's impressive that NPCs have routines and times they do things are congregate at or with other NPCs, it also results in making side quests hard to do as you can't find a person or you can't find them in the right place & time.
• Driving mechanics and collision is pretty awful!
• Combat is syrupy (good luck with that aim) and enemy variety / AI is seriously lacking, just passable to meh. Is helped greatly with some side quest rewards.
• Some story / character motive reveals could have been better / less anime bad guy towards the end.
• Economy is pretty silly in this (40 bucks for a bup of boffee anyone?) and you can't sell stuff.
• Some mechanics are reused a little too much (namely QTEs and hide and seek rinse repeat segments).
• Ranged weapons feel mostly meh and pale into insignificance when compared to the mighty power of melee weapons.
• The game includes remnants of dead mechanics from a previous design (IE it was originally meant to be a stealth only game hence you can hide in bins for nothing and might explain why projectile combat is so rough).
The Ugly
• Crashes, Crashes and yes ma'am, more crashes.
• Corrupt loading with a potential for corrupt saves also! We experienced the former multiple times.
• Side-quests are overall too tedious to do and will almost definitely require replaying chapters which doesn't allow saving until you complete said chapter again. Also this can result in a bugged save. You are often required to find characters under certain times and conditions to boot. Combine that with stability issues and you have a real hot-mess recipe for fun.
• Mechanics make it tedious to do the majority of side quests, especially combined with the cryptic and missable nature of the fast travel system within the game.
The Score
5.5/10
So what an earth do you score such a game? Ideas are better and bigger than the execution, oh man, I feel like it's an slightly above average 5.5 out of 10 man.
If it were based on having a completely or mostly crash-free experience with less tedious mechanics when it comes to side questing, in addition to obtaining the vital fast-travel option, this would easily have been a 8, despite all it's problems, but tedium and frustration marred my PC experience, of this otherwise intriguing Twin Peaks cult-classic game.
Curious jank worth experiencing, if you have a console or immense motivation and / or patience. You'll likely need both.
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