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Deadly Premonition 2 is sadly too bad to be good this timeIt’s finally on PC, and I won’t finish it
It’s finally on PC, and I won’t finish it
I adoreDeadly Premonition, a game which shines despite substantial elements being janky or bad. The 2010 horror game about an oddball FBI agent investigating ritual murders in small-town America is not “so bad it’s good”, it’s so good it doesn’t matter that it’s bad (and maybe the badness even amplifies the good). Well, I’ve been playingDeadly Premonition 2ahead of its PC release today, and I’m sorry to say the sequel does not shake out the same way. Despite some bright spots, enough of Deadly Premonition 2 is bad that I’ve given up.
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I tried to avoid Deadly Premonition 2 when it debuted on Nintendo Switch in 2020, holding out hope for a PC release, so all I knew was it had terrible framerate problems. I assumed it had big non-technical problems too, because it is a Deadly Premonition game, but I hoped for better than this.
This lampshading is not funny when the game so egregiously wastes my time.
“EXCUSE ME? MA’AM? I SAID, PLEASE CALL ME YORK, EVERYONE DOES”
It’s full of small changes which waste time or make life difficult. The cigarettes which let you skip time anywhere don’t last as long, and no longer stack in York’s limited inventory space. The beds scattered around the open world are replaced with campsites where you need to bring a sleeping bag which breaks after use. Fetch quests can be made easier with a new ‘concentration’ ability which highlights pickups on the minimap, but it recharges slowly so you’ll want to stock up on energy-restoring coffee. Even with a fast travel system opening up sooner in the sequel, too many other changes make it bothersome to catch people around the world during their daily routines. At this point, the payoff doesn’t feel worth the effort.
No, I could have guessed.
I could push through. I could look up walkthroughs to optimise its time-wasting, though I don’t want to experience this story and its characters between alt-tabbings. Maybe I will, eventually, when memories of busywork have faded. But for now, I’ve given up after 13 hours.
I just wanted to turn in my ‘kill 30 dogs’ quest in the hope he might then talk to me without feigning a movie announcer voice. Or he’d give me another bounty quest. Oh, I’ve looked it up: it’s another bounty quest.
