Deadly Premonition (Xbox 360) > Reviews (4)

To start of, let me just say that this game is flawed is so many ways. The graphics are good Ps2 age at best, the voice acting isn't all that good. The sounds you gun make along with the sound of the environment are not wonderful, and many of them will drive you crazy while your playing. However! All of these things are just little draw backs when you look at the game from a larger point of view. The story is one of this games most amazing aspects, It's a little messed up, with a lot of plot holes, but the basis of it will keep you so engrosed that you will play till the end for the story, and not just the gameplay (admittingly, the gameplay is one thing a game needs to do well on to be a good "Game", and this game doesn't pull that off so well) but for the story, and the people in Deadly Premonitions world. Right, Onto the "Review" Part of this Review.

Gameplay and Playability.
The gameplay changes often, going from a dark and creepy "Survival horror First person shooter" to a simple "Rpg" game. The shooting aspects of the game are not all that great, you can't move while aiming your gun, there's no "Iron sight" in the guns, it's all done in a red dot sight manor, a lot like the Resident Evil shooting.
The explration while in Greenvale (The place Deadly Premonition is set in) is calm for the most part. It's simple "go talk to this NPC, hear about what they want you to do, or what's going on in the digital town, then go here and talk to this NPC or play this mini-game (All of which are very simple and nothing special.) and go back to collect your reward. The game has about 75 side quests, all of which have nothing to do with the story line and make the main quests seem un-important. This is a flaw for the game, but it's easy to over look this by just enjoying the side quests after finishing the main story, since after you finish the game becomes open ended, and for the side quests that you can only do at certain times, your able to select a chapter to return to.

Overall I give the gameplay a 3 out of 5.

Story

You are Francis York Morgan, known to everyone just as York. You are a FBI agent who takes a special interest in the murder of young woman, and this has led you to a case in the small town of greenvale. So you and your alternate parsonality Zach, head off on a case much bigger and stranger then you would ever expect.
There are many twists and crazy idea's and the story doesn't follow a lot of logic, but that's how the world of deadly premonition likes to do things. While playing, you lose your mind in the story so much that those little things that wouldn't normally make sense don't bother you as much.

Story get's a 5/5 from my point of view.

Graphics

Okay, this is the game's biggest downfall. This was a budget game so they only used low level graphics, and it shows. The NPC's look chuncky, and the Shadows that attack you look pretty awful. The main Npc's in the story look almost good, it's clear they put far more effort into them. Unfortunately, This doesn't change the fact the games graphical quality is at best late ps2 gen.

I give the graphics a 2/5

Sound

The sounds used in this games then to get used a lot, over and over. It's clear they either didn't have a lot of money to spend on this aspect of the game, or then just didn't put a lot of effort into it. The voice acting however it up to par standard in my opinion.

Sound 3/5

Longevity

The game took me about 30 hours to finish the first time, this was with doing about 25% of the side quests, only the ones that interested me at the time. It's a fairly long game. I estimate it would take about 50 hours to finish the game and all the side quests, if your the type who enjoys getting 100% on there games.

4/5

Overall

This is a low budget masterpiece.
It's flawed all the way and it's in no way perfect, but you can pick it up for about £10 in shops or even £15 on the xbox live marketplace, and for this price you'll be a fool not to give it a chance.

3.5/5 overall, It's an amazing game held back by it's graphics and sound quality.