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A few days ago, I decided that I had waiting far too long to play this game, so I ordered it from Amazon and made a pact with myself. I've had a large problem with finishing games lately (I have so many half-completed games that it's really starting to get frustrating), so I decided that after it arrived I would play it for at least one hour every night. Later I decided that it would be fun to tweet about it while I played it and blog about it afterwards.
Enter today: A package at my doorstep. It starts now.
A few hours later, I even got the shrink wrap off!
Starting the game for the first time, I honestly was expecting horrendous graphics due to what I had heard from others, but I have to say I've seen much worse. Many of the character models look pretty nice and I really like most of the animation. Sure, some of the textures look a little weird, but all-in-all I think it looks fine. Stylistically, I really like what I've seen so far and though they're certainly stand-out graphics for current generation consoles, I never once thought "Wow, this looks bad," during my first hour-ish with the game. I also feel that the graphics fit in perfectly with the kind of game this seems to be so far.
Let's get to the story (First hour spoilers): Francis York Morgan, an FBI agent and avid smoker, is driving to the town of Greenvale to investigate a murder when he runs his car off the road into a nearby forest. Getting out of his car, he finds himself in an eerie fog with some strange-looking twitchy corpse-things. Fighting his way through them, he eventually makes his way towards Greenvale where he meets up with the Sheriff's assistant and the Sheriff, who makes it clear that he does not want York to be there. York then stays the night at the local hotel, eats breakfast with an old lady, gets his fortune from his coffee (yes, you read that right), and then heads to the nearest phone, where he reports his findings (saves the game). That's as far as I've gotten so far and it has drawn my interest even though so little has happened.
I have to say, though, the character of Francis York Morgan has been great so far. He's constantly making pop culture reference and doing bizarre things without ever acknowledge that the things he's doing are strange. He talks to a character named Zach (presumably imaginary, though many player actions are specifically asked of Zach), which makes for a great way to have interesting monologues when only York is present. As I said before, he also reads into his coffee every morning to find a fortune to help him throughout the day. As odd-ball as he sounds, he really is an interesting character and I can't wait to see what else he has in store.
The gameplay so far feels a bit like classic Resident Evil with the view and aiming system of RE4, though all of it takes place in an open-world setting (that I haven't really gotten to yet). York finds melee weapons, which seem strong but degrade over time, and starts out with an FBI standard pistol, which doesn't pack much of a punch, but has infinite ammo. Strange twitchy corpses walk and teleport around the environment and York has to shoot them while solving some basic puzzles. In practice it's more fun than it sounds, though you have to be one that appreciates the survival horror genre. If you want fast-paced action, you should definitely go elsewhere. I can't really speak much about the gameplay yet as the first hour or so is very story heavy and I would hate to over-generalize it.
With all that said, the first hour of Deadly Premonition left me waiting for tomorrow to play it some more. It certainly has surprised me in a pleasant way. I thought that I would either love this game or absolutely hate it and if the beginning is any sign of what's to come, I'm in for one enjoyable ride.
