Deadly Premonition -- Final Opinion.

I have completed a run through of Deadly Premonition with a total time upwards of thirty-seven hours. The game is huge for a survival horror title. Of course it's the sandbox nature and the side quests that account for most of that time. Deadly Premonition started out as a PlayStation 2 title and they didn't move very much beyond that graphically when shifting the game to the current generation of hardware. The graphics are horrible. They're well below the generational standard. The voice acting is all over the place. You have a couple of strong performances mixed in with some awful voices. The music is hideous. The controls are workhorse. Which means they function. They get the job done and nothing more. The combat is somewhat interesting but ultimately shallow. It's a carnival shooting gallery. You can't move while aiming beyond a sidestep to the left or right and you're essentially trying to kill the enemies before they reach you. The story is batshit insane. It's one of those cases where the Japanese take on America creates a weird version that's so far removed from reality that you can't even recognize it anymore. The people behave with Japanese mannerisms and the like. You have a bizarre version of an American town to start with and then add in a heavy Twin Peaks influence and you might start to grasp how weird the game gets. However a couple of the characters are actually well done and rather intriguing and it helps the game actually arrive at a rather effective conclusion. Deadly Premonition is a surprisingly worthwhile experience that clearly won't be for everyone. If you're someone who can't grasp the concept of the whole being better than the parts then Deadly Premonition isn't for you. You'll also need to be someone with a tolerance for the weird or quirky. You'll have to just roll with it and maybe you'll find that it pays off in the end as I did. I enjoyed my time spent in Greenvale, the game's town, and with the twenty dollar price point, it's not too much a risk to see if you'd enjoy it as well. I'm giving Deadly Premonition a 7.5.