Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut (PC) Review

Deadly Premonition hits the PC with a Director’s Cut that may have left a little too much on the cutting room floor.

Once again we are shown the problems in the rocky market of pre-orders in games. As more and more games become yearly releases as a way to maintain constant revenue for game publishers, we start to see the issues of having a rushed game sent out into the atmosphere. Many have been launched with less than stellar results such as GTA Online and the infamous Sim City.

Pre-orders have also been pushed harder and harder with each holiday season, urging us to indulge in plastic figurines and season passes. Such a market is completely unsustainable and if current trends continue, we might see a massive collapse of the market such as we’ve never seen before. While Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut isn’t a big triple-A title or a blockbuster of a sequel (it’s the expanded edition that appeared on the PS3), it nonetheless feel like it’s been pushed out the door and onto the PC way to soon.

Deadly Premonition was considered one of the most unexpected surprises of the current (past?) console generation. Made by a previously unknown Japanese developer, this was considered a masterpiece of oddball storytelling. PC gamers have been craving for the experience for 3 years now (which is how long it’s been since it debuted on the Xbox 360), so when it was announced that DP would release on PC in ‘Director’s Cut’ form and in time for Halloween, internet forums exploded. “We can final play this on our crazily overpowered setups!”, they cried; but the joy was short lived.

It is with that that I say DP has been left next to unplayable for most people who bought the game, myself included. Still running on 720p with no graphics options to speak of, this felt like an insult to those who have waited patiently for its release- again, myself included.

The game suffers from no key remapping or controller support whatsoever, something that continues to befuddle me to no end. How is it possible to release a console port and not even offer controller support? That’s just weird.

Deadly Premonition: Director’s Cut also plays the same intro every time you boot it up, and this is next to unwatchable thanks to stuttering video and out of sync audio. The menu is controlled by the arrow keys and relies on the R-key in order to go back to the main menu. Whatever happened to the Esc-key? Is it no longer a viable option for navigating menus?

The game is (as far as I was able to tell) the usual WASD 3^rd person adventure, complete with text boxes popping over intractable items. It’s what you’d expect from a game in the genre and pretty much nothing more. What makes it ‘different’ is the story which, if you’re not into David Lynch and the all-around weirdness that was (the television show) Twin Peaks,  may or may not float your boat. This was pretty much all I was able to get out of it as it abruptly decided to crash (and crash…) leaving me with nothing to do on Halloween.

Final Thoughts

I have no doubt in my mind that this could have been a great experience on the PC.

So it’s particularly unfortunate that such a bad release will surly limit the amount of people who will want to try it out later down the line. Fortunately there is already a fix by Durante, the Dark Souls patcher, that’s available for download. Although still somewhat raw, the fix is said to get the game to at least playable settings. Other than that, I’ll say give it some time. This could become the trend setter for better PC ports down the line.

At least that’d be something.