Deadly Premonition: Director's Cut

Really great game, cult classic.

Take a look at Steam Discussions before you buy! The game is great but port the port is crap! The framerate's busted, it crashes and freezes on the same spots, the videos are grainy and jerky, and THERE IS NO CONTROLLER SUPPORT DESPITE IT BEING A CONTROLLER PORT! IT IS BROKEN! DON'T BUY THIS!

A strange tale is ready to unfold, Like no other ever before sold. A rash of murders take hold of our little town, While visions of ladies in red dance in their gowns. A sudden death to bring out our Mr. York, Then finds himself against ghosts with pitchforks. And the angelic children whisper into each others ears, Is the rain Deadly, or is it tears? The hunt begins with townsfolk with false smiles, In an open world spreading out for miles. Interesting immersive mechanics are strewn throughout, But take care that some are not as good as might be tout. The still dead eyes and rubber mouthed faces, with the strange and sometimes hard side cases. The charm and joy to be achieved with this venture, Is the characters and story of this adventure. Twisting and winding around like a mad man's dream, I liked it much with its Twin Peaks theme. I recommend this to those who want to scratch that mystery itch, but might I offer you The Sinner's Sandwich? = watch?v=rp5krDoflLI = So says Mr. Stewart.

I kept hearing about this: it's weird; it's like Twin Peaks; it's one of the greatest stories ever told! I like Twin Peaks, and I love weird; sign me up! It started off well enough with a psychological dissection of Tom and Jerry (yes, that Tom and Jerry) played completely straight; it set a great tone... that was swiftly abandoned for... ever play 3D Zelda game where the humor is largely relegated to characters flailing their arms and going, "WUUUUoouuuuugh!!!"? It's that kind of "quirky". The actual story rides the line of reality for a while, but has horror sections that are somewhat explained at the end, but mostly exist to give it some actual gameplay with not quite enough thought as to how they fit in; the climax is so out-of-nowhere-off-the-rails that it could've been written by a completely different person. The characters aren't charming or interesting in a way that matters, and conversations are just awkward. A lot of times, the audio cues make no sense; you'll be discussing a grizzly murder and some goofy whistle song would play or something equally weird or inappropriate to the tone. It doesn't come off as weird or subversive, so much as extremely amateur; my lady and I used to love renting the worst horror movies we could find, and we'd usually enjoy them, but this just falls off the end of the scale. The worst part is that I learned most of this by watching a longplay; the PC port is a broken mess that frequently crashes to desktop. It took me an hour just to get it to run, 2 more hours to tweak it to the point where I could pass the intro, and before the end of the first chapter, I gave up, because I couldn't get past a certain cutscene, and it wasn't one of the more infamous crashes, so no help online. It plays well, at least; I was surprised at the mechanics, because Third-Person Shooters almost never feel good to me, but this felt alright. Still, I couldn't possibly recommend this on any merit.

Criminally awful PC porting aside, this is one screwed up game. I am not sure if the horrible and broken gameplay is to blame, the almost caricature characters being passed off as serious, or the absolutely boring story without any meaningful payoff. This was never a good game, and calling it Good Old Game just feels sacrilegious to Silent Hill 2, Resident Evil 4, Alone in The Dark or the instant classic Alan Wake.