Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut (PS3) Review

The scene opens on two rambunctious little boys, scampering through an idyllic forest as their grandfather follows along closely behind. All too soon, their carefree play is interrupted by a grisly sight; a young woman has been brutally murdered, her body gruesomely displayed for the world to see high above the little boys. And so begins your journey in Deadly Premonition.

You play as an FBI profiler, sent to investigate the murder in this small, provincial town. Things are odd right from the start, though, and you barely have time to wonder “Who the heck is this Zach guy?” before you are run off the road. (Your character is always talking to Zach, with no explanation given as to who he is – are you crazy? psychic? Is Zach really you, the observer? Who knows?).  Whatever the explanation, you don’t have much time to worry about it before you are met with your first creepy, backwards leaning zombies/ghosts that need a little eradicating.

You have various weapons at your disposal, and the opportunity to earn more as you play, but using them is pretty straightforward and works fairly well. You select between weapons using up and down. You must actually stop to aim and shoot, with bullets on the fly not an option. L1 readies your weapon, R2 locks onto your target (or you can aim manually, if you prefer), and R1 fires/hits/stabs/etc. Most of your targets aren’t horribly challenging to defeat, as the game is more about figuring things out and enjoying the at times quirky, at others downright odd storyline than shooting stuff up constantly.

And quirky this story is. In fact, I would go so far as to say that your tolerance/love of the absurd will make or break Deadly Premonition for you. This is not a game you play for the realistic and awe-inspiring graphics. Why? Because they are neither realistic nor awe-inspiring in any way. In reality, the game looks like something that could have been released years ago, with none of the vivid realism modern gamers are used to. Deadly Premonition is the video gamer’s answer to the movie genre of cult classics. To be so bad it’s good is a very fine line, and so many fail to meet the mark. Deadly Premonition wants to be your Army of Darkness – but even if it meets that goal, there are only certain people who enjoy cult classics, and so it is not a game for everyone. If quirky or campy is so not your thing, then Deadly Premonition is not the game for you, Director’s Cut or otherwise.

Deadly Premonition has obvious connections to the 1980’s tv series Twin Peaks, both in style and delivery, but fear not if you are not familiar with the show. Suffice it to say that it is an odd mix of the horror genre with its own brand of weird humor – and Deadly Premonition captures this feeling well, with strange plot twists and odd developments at nearly every turn. There isn’t a whole lot of replayability to the game – both because the real fun in the game is finding out what will happen next in the story, and because there are no options to play at a different difficulty level or anything like that. But it is still worth the price of admission just for the unusual storyline and delivery – assuming you have not played the original release of Deadly Premonition. For gamers who have already played and enjoyed the game, there really isn’t much more on offer in the Director’s Cut that makes it worth another buy.

Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut brings a true original to the Playstation platform. Deadly Premonition is a game of contradictions – on the one hand, it really looks terrible, and there isn’t a whole lot in the actual gameplay that would draw anything other than criticism. On the other hand, the quirky storyline and aura of “anything can happen” makes it well worth playing and an unique experience, to say the least.