Some games are so infamous that making a proper review is tricky. You can start loving or hating it and end in a completely different mood altogether. How to properly convey this? Just mentioning the change in a review is an answer so simplistic it is almost insincere. Luckily, for these cases there is always the emo thing to do: write a diary .

Day 3

I’m currently in Episode 4. It started after a cool little boss fight and an awesome boss death followed by the most non-intentionally hilarious one-liner ever. Agent York is now confirming my suspicions about who the killer is. The game throws some red herrings on you, but at least the relevant hints are also all there. There wasn’t one of those Agatha Christie’s moments where Hercule Poirot solves the crime based on information the author hasn’t previously revealed to the readers. The solution doesn’t appear to be gratuitous either, like a Scooby Doo cartoon where the culprit is the character that appeared for less than a minute for apparently no reason at all other make you think “ah… I vaguely remember that guy” when he’s uncovered. This is great and I needed some ‘great’ after that awfully boring Episode 3.

Episode 3 was more exposition than anything else and, since nothing really happens, all the fighting sequences felt too much like useless filler. However, I guess I should have expected this hiatus after the number of body started to pile up in chapter two. Nevertheless, hiatuses in a game like Deadly Premonition, that has no fast-travelling whatsoever, can kill the game because it accentuates the almost unbearable emptiness of travelling from one location to the next (especially now that Agent York has less to say during his conversations with Zach). Even worse, this chapter had some atrocious blunders regarding the plot. One involves a mandatory and completely illogical fishing sequence – which, like all the other minigames from Deadly Premonition, sucks – and the other some interesting scene intercalated by one of the most boring experiences I ever had involving a videogame dog.

Worst of all, I don’t care about Emily’s well being anymore because the game temporarily gave me control over her. By doing this, Emily becomes another Groundhog Character – she can die how many times she wants and she will just wake up again at the previous save point while the radio plays Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe”. Besides, now I know she can handle herself pretty well in action – which means a possible death would feel as shallow as one of those plot devices of early JRPGs: the character that could kill millions with a single move is killed by some puny poisoned knife.

Enemies have been slowly getting harder. I remember that it only took 2 headshots to be kill most of them in the beginning; now they can stand up to FIVE shotgun blasts on their faces. When they gather on you, it’s fairly easy to die as each hit of theirs takes about 1/4th of your life. There was a new enemy too. She was so resistant I had to check the interwebs to see if I was doing something wrong. I wasn’t. She was just that tenacious. Thankfully I recently got the best melee weapon from the game: an electric guitar!

Finally, enemies might not be part of Agent York’s dementia after all – not only has the story been hinting they could be ghosts, but they were also seen by another character. I rather simply think that craziness is contagious, though.

Episode 4 looks promising. Onward! So says Mr. Stewart.

The previous entries can be found here:

• Day 1
• Day 2