Deadly Premonition: The Director's Cut

 PC
User Score
7.3

Mixed or average reviews- based on 135 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 85 out of 135
  2. Mixed: 23 out of 135
  3. Negative: 27 out of 135

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  1. suneater
    Apr 21, 2014
    2
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Deadly Premonition is hard to write anything for without giving away spoilers, so I will break this down into two sections: A simple spoiler-free "Pros & Cons" section with a summary of my review, followed by a spoiler-filled review.

    Pros: + Lovable characters in a charming setting + Extremely relaxing atmosphere and gameplay pacing    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Deadly Premonition is hard to write anything for without giving away spoilers, so I will break this down into two sections: A simple spoiler-free "Pros & Cons" section with a summary of my review, followed by a spoiler-filled review.

    Pros:
    + Lovable characters in a charming setting
    + Extremely relaxing atmosphere and gameplay pacing
    + Hilarious dialogue and (mostly) gripping plot
    + Tons of side quests and post-game content to explore

    Cons:
    - Frequent crashes (both random & reproducible)
    - Terrible port that isn't optimized for modern PCs
    - Clunky, unsatisfying combat with terrible SFX
    - An overabundance of ammo, healing items, and other pointless pick-ups (food & sleep were almost never needed)
    - Many boring, drawn-out travel sequences that are unskippable
    - Terribly timed and overused QTEs
    - Tons of muddy, low-rez textures
    - Heavily compressed low-rez cutscenes
    - A ridiculous ending that almost ruined the game

    Overall, Deadly Premonition is a one-of-a-kind game. I would recommend you at least give it a chance because you might not experience a game like it again. It certainly has its ups and downs; the good parts are excellent and the bad parts are godawful, but in the end you have something really memorable here that is worth playing... if you can get it to work properly.

    Spoilers below, you have been warned!

    I went into Deadly Premonition expecting "Resident Evil with FBI Agents" and instead received "Shenmu with Zombies". While the town of Greenvale is very charming and cozy, I feel that more attention went into the production of this digital town than anything else. It's a great place to explore but I felt no reason to considering how literally overburdened I became with pickups (many times my extra storage also became full) just by playing the main story. Its a shame Greenvale's attention to detail wasn't put into the combat sequences of the game; the Resident Evil-esque generic horror music becomes very repetitive and the combat's SFX are weak, hollow stock effects that almost put me to sleep many times.

    Although the game starts out believably enough, with you chasing a string of serial killer murders in a quiet town, the game started to introduce "supernatural" elements that I assumed were the main character hallucinating. In fact, the other world invasions seemed to all be in Zach's head up until you control Emily in the clock tower and she has to deal with them too. At this point I was really worried that the whole game was taking a literal approach to the events happening. I don't know if the game was rushed, or if there were massive re-writes, but things got really, really stupid during Episode 5 & 6 at the end of the game. I wish more time had been spent on fleshing out a proper psychological thriller rooted in reality rather than the supernatural DMC-style boss fights and plot changes that comprised the last two episodes of the game.

    All this is assuming you can get the game to run (and keep it running) on your computer. Even with a fan-made patch (provided by Durante, the man behind DSfix for Dark Souls) that has been updated many times since launch, DP is plagued with random freezes, random crashes to desktop, and freezing at reproducable spots. Lots of other small issues caused me to replay tedious sections of the game (opening the browser in steam overlay crashed DP almost everytime, alt+tabbing WILL crash the game, etc.); even though I finished the game in about 17 hours, I have 24 hours clocked on Steam because of all the issues I had. There were many other small issues that detracted from the game, such as sound moving around seemingly randomly between speakers if you don't have Windows set to Stereo sound, that make me wonder if ANY QA went into this game.

    While I wanted to love this game, the last two episodes were a jarring and ridiculously over-the-top change of pace that felt like jumping from watching an American TV series to watching the last two episodes of an anime. In fact, Deadly Premonition plays more like an episodic TV series, broken down into bite-sized chapters (with "Previously during the investigation..." segments) than an actual video game. Deadly Premonition is a very unique experience but definitely won't be appreciated by everyone. If this game worked properly, I would be more apt to recommend it. As it stands, it is a crash-riddled mess than is probably better experienced on a console.    … Expand
  2. NANOX
    Oct 31, 2013
    4
    For PC its a Bad port...
    Really low quality videos and graphics (not even the fix of Durante's helps) still look like a early PS2 game.
    The sound in general weak gunfire, explosions, you name it... ) The response of the keyboard in some of those damn QTE its awful Lack of full support for Gamepad. most of ports force Pc-users to USE gamepad to play as intended... Im watching you Dark    For PC its a Bad port...
    Really low quality videos and graphics (not even the fix of Durante's helps) still look like a early PS2 game.
    The sound in general weak gunfire, explosions, you name it... )
    The response of the keyboard in some of those damn QTE its awful
    Lack of full support for Gamepad. most of ports force Pc-users to USE gamepad to play as intended... Im watching you Dark Souls and you State of Decay in this case the lack of them.

    some ppl love it, and some ppl hate it... in my case its below my lower expectations...    … Expand
  3. GPReS
    Nov 13, 2013
    2
    The port is a total mess: low fps, no XBOX joypad support, really LOW graphics and to sum up neverending crashes. I am not that optimistic about upcoming patches that will fix crashes, fps and will add xbox pad support, that's why I already refunded it... Score is 2 for intriguing intro... will change my score if the game will be patched as it should be and I'd be able to .play it.
  4. TendeDameo
    Jan 26, 2014
    4
    This is the worst PC port ever.
    The game itself is very interesting, but too many bugs.
    You might not be able to complete the story.
    Patches for fix are disappointingly insufficient.
  5. bruixots
    Feb 19, 2014
    1
    I have this game for the xbox 360 version, which I LOVE IT!! my favorite game of this generation, by far! I've been defending this game in all forums, etc...but... the port they did for a PC is just an INSULT for everyone who bought the game, is a careless port, full of bugs and even not gamepad control option!!! The worse thing is their actitude after released the game, complete awful andI have this game for the xbox 360 version, which I LOVE IT!! my favorite game of this generation, by far! I've been defending this game in all forums, etc...but... the port they did for a PC is just an INSULT for everyone who bought the game, is a careless port, full of bugs and even not gamepad control option!!! The worse thing is their actitude after released the game, complete awful and not respecting the costumers. I WILL NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM THEM ANYMORE, such a disappointment!… Expand
  6. kcanon112
    Jan 24, 2014
    3
    Little to no options but I think most PCs can handle it.I still had fun until I got the keys to the police car upon entering the car got an annoying looping screech sound, the bug seems common and means I won't touch the rest of the game until it is fixed.
  7. sbarrett00
    Jan 22, 2015
    1
    I tried to play the game Deadly Premonition: The Director's Cut yesterday. This game originally came out on the Xbox 360 in 2010. It was recently re-released on PS3 as well as ported to the PC. For years this game has been heralded as an open-world survival horror homage to Twin Peaks: the story involves a quirky FBI agent investigating a strange murder in Washington state. The originalI tried to play the game Deadly Premonition: The Director's Cut yesterday. This game originally came out on the Xbox 360 in 2010. It was recently re-released on PS3 as well as ported to the PC. For years this game has been heralded as an open-world survival horror homage to Twin Peaks: the story involves a quirky FBI agent investigating a strange murder in Washington state. The original version of the game also involved the detective interacting with two dwarves in a red room; maybe homage is an understatement.

    Make no mistake the game is terrible. It controls like Resident Evil 4 and has graphics which are about the same - except it was released 5 years later. It was developed by a small Japanese game studio that had a deep appreciation for David Lynch so naturally it has developed a cult following in the states.

    Some of my favorite games were developed by Japanese game companies. My wife and I both love the Tales games released by Namco Tales as well as the SMT/Persona games released by Atlus. The key difference here as that both of these companies do great localization - that is, they spend a lot of time getting decent translation of the original Japanese dialogue.

    This is pretty important; if you don't do that then a lot of the humor and personal interaction just comes across as stilted and awkward. I have the feeling that this is pretty much the case with Deadly Premonition. I think a lot of folks view the "quirky dialogue" as Lynchian - but considering how poorly the rest of the game comes together it is more likely that this is just bad localization.    … Expand
  8. ichmarich
    Jul 12, 2023
    1
    music is good, gameplay and controls are bad.. the story is boring too, and the graphics not really good..

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
59

Mixed or average reviews - based on 7 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 7
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 7
  3. Negative: 1 out of 7
  1. PC PowerPlay
    Feb 24, 2014
    60
    It's difficult to tell where genius ends and incompetence begins, but either way, it's astoundingly entertaining. [March 2014, p.62]
  2. PC Gamer
    Dec 24, 2013
    63
    Enjoyable writing cloaked in layers of problematic navigation, tonal inconsistency and pressing A and D not to die.
    Read full review
  3. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Nov 25, 2013
    60
    Twin Peaks gone gaming is an unique experience marred only by obsolete technology. If you're drawn towards unconventional games, don't miss this weirdness made in Japan. [Issue#236]
See all critic reviews »