Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise (Nintendo Switch)
Official GBAtemp Review
Product Information:
- Release Date (NA): July 10, 2020
- Release Date (EU): July 10, 2020
- Publisher: Rising Star Games
- Developer: Toybox
- Genres: Open-world, Action, Adventure
Game Features:
The central tension in any “so-bad-it’s-good” media is whether or not the creators have any idea that what they’re making is funny, and how that knowledge might affect the work. Take, for example, Birdemic, a legendarily bad movie about a The Birds-style cataclysm, that was so incompetent it was simultaneously impossible to believe that someone could think it was genuinely good, and that anyone with any shred of self-awareness could produce something so uncompromisingly strange. The release of its sequel, laden with jokes about the first film’s reception and callbacks to fan-favourite scenes, seemed to confirm that the director hadn’t been in on the joke during the first film’s production and was now trying to play along, but with nothing more to add to the conversation about the first film that critics and audiences hadn’t already said. Similarly, Sharknado, while it’s gained traction for its bizarre premise, has never attracted the fervent fanbase or audience participation rituals of The Room or Troll 2 because it was clear from the outset that the creators were trying to make something bad, ripping away the raw passion that comes from an amateur director trying to communicate something powerful and accidentally making something strange and awful. Basically, it’s funny to see someone slip on a banana peel while going about their business; it’s less funny to see someone lay a banana peel directly in front of them, deliberately walk into it and fall down.
But there are some projects that carry such a consistent tone and competency in some areas, while being completely ridiculous in others, that it’s hard to tell what level of self-awareness the creative team is operating at. These can often be the most stimulating, because it allows the audience to find meaning in things that may never have been intended, or for a bit of foreshadowing to be dismissed as a mistake, letting the work surprise its audience in unexpected ways. 2010’s Deadly Premonition straddles this exact line. On one hand, the mechanics vary from tedious to frustrating, the animations are stiff and repetitive, and the dialogue is inhuman. On the other, the music and voice acting are excellent, the scene direction is effective, and the characters are written with such strong and distinct voices that it’s hard to imagine the strangeness of them was unintentional. With that game having achieved cult status due to some popular Let’s Plays and critics focussing on its unique voice, it was hard not to worry that Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise might fall into the Birdemic 2 trap of becoming a greatest hits reel of what worked the first time around.
Mostly taking place in 2005, five years before the original, Deadly Premonition 2 finds FBI Special Agent Francis York Morgan again investigating the murder of a young girl in a small town. York was the most important aspect of the first game, a bizarrely confident, curious, poetic, accepting and blunt man who would give the same emotional weight to a murder investigation as he would a conversation about cooking. The writing here captures York’s character perfectly, and Jeffrey Kramer ably steps back into the role of York and imbues him with all the overflowing passion and (somehow) endearing arrogance that he held in the first game. Luckily, the script doesn’t call back to its predecessor too often and isn’t afraid to establish its own fresh quirks in York’s character. While there’s more overt comedy that falls flat here (some ironic comments by York about how things are in 2005 versus now are particularly bad, not to mention some of the locals pushing their eccentricities too hard) but, much like the original, York’s bluntness, enthusiasm for almost anything and penchant for phrasing innocent remarks in a way that makes him seem completely insane is infectiously charming and can wallpaper over most of the dodgier writing. Overall, however, it ends up feeling like simply more Deadly Premonition and doesn't do enough to establish its own identity separate from the original.
The new town is a great point in the game’s favour, shifting the focus from a small forest town to a small town in Louisiana, essentially a miniaturized New Orleans. One of the best things about York in the original was his intense intellectual curiosity about everything. For example, the “Sinner’s Sandwich” scene where he pontificates on how a man eating a sandwich with cereal and jam on it must be trying to atone for his sins, before getting into a stare-down with the man and deciding he must try the sandwich for himself before judging. Shifting the town to somewhere more culturally diverse allows greater opportunity for York to engage with the locals, such as his fascination with the difference between Cajun and Creole food, while still maintaining the interest in the mundane he had in the original, like the extreme passion for skateboarding he suddenly develops.
That cultural diversity does, however, lead to some of the game’s more uncomfortable moments, and may be a problem for some players depending on their sensitivity to such issues. York receives guidance from a Haitian man throughout the game, and imitates his accent at several points. The depiction of mysticism in New Orleans could be considered stereotypical and insulting. While the lighter tone and strangeness of York’s character could excuse these moments, it’s hard to do so when the script also tries to address real issues, such as the racism directed towards the town’s black sheriff or trans rights issues. The depiction of the trans character has been particularly controversial, to the point that the director is planning on rewriting some scenes, mostly due to deadnaming and improper use of pronouns. Again, considering the time period and setting this could be seen as a mere depiction of bigotry rather than an endorsement, but York is portrayed as the sole ally in town, so his blunders leave a particularly bad taste. Given SWERY’s reaction and the fact that this is a Japanese-developed game set in America, I would attribute these moments to ignorance more than active malice, but that doesn’t stop them from being uncomfortable.
Speaking of updates, there have been significant updates since the release to improve the performance. Plagued with horrific technical issues at launch, the framerate has been raised significantly as of the 1.0.3 update on August 8, though it’s still far from perfect, load times continue to be an issue and some bugs still remain. While it’s likely the technical aspects will continue to improve over time, it was clearly not ready at launch and should never have been released as it was.
These technical issues only served to amplify the awful pacing. The original had a strong, unique voice in its storytelling (for better or worse), but felt jarringly bog standard in its gameplay as an open-world action game. The sequel makes some improvements, but still falls short of where it needs to be. The 24-hour clock returns, meaning both story and side missions are only available at certain times, the town becomes infested with monsters overnight, and businesses are only open at certain times. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the system’s design, but its implementation leaves players feeling directionless, especially in the early sections. Near the beginning, you hit a dead end in your investigation until the next morning, which means you’re given most of a day to play in the town. However, locations aren’t noted on your map until you find them during the story, and York won’t interact with anything that hasn’t been explicitly explained to him. I spent hours exploring every inch of the town, finding plenty of fast travel hotspots to activate and plenty of locations and characters that would become important, but York ignored them all. I found a scant few side quests that also asked me to wait several hours before I could actually do anything, but that’s it. Since time doesn’t pass inside buildings and you’ll mainly be fast travelling around town, this means that time rarely actually progresses and you’ll mostly end up sleeping or smoking to get to a time when you can actually do something. For a game that takes such perverse joy in realistic mundanity (for example, York needs to regularly shower, change and shave so that his bad hygiene doesn’t repulse the townsfolk or give his position away to enemies), the time management system should be a fun extension of that ethos, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that you’re just doing something wrong when you have York spend 18 hours a day sleeping in his hotel room.
Once the town opens up a bit more, there are a few minigames you can participate in to pass the time, such as stone skipping or bowling. They’re fairly basic, with the exception of the skateboarding. Again, the design here is actually fairly clever, but the implementation holds it back. There are six skate parks to play in and accrue points for completing an obstacle course as quickly and with as much as style as possible. There are bronze, silver and gold high scores to beat, each one offering a unique prize, and every run adds your high score to a running tally across all six parks and you receive more prizes at certain milestones, meaning even failed runs are rewarding and incentivizing that “just one more” style of play. However, the button presses are oddly-timed, possibly due to the framerate issues, so it sometimes feels like trial and error to figure out when you’re actually supposed to hit something. York also locks into an animation and freezes up for close to a second after doing any trick, or even kicking the ground to build momentum, meaning you need to make sure you have a lot of space in front of you before doing anything, robbing these sections of the speed and fluidity skateboarding has always been defined by. As a method for getting around town, the skateboard actually works pretty well. It’s a lot more stable than the driving in the previous game, and provides the same opportunity for fun conversations.
Combat is possibly the biggest change here, gameplay-wise, and while it’s an improvement on the previous game it still feels like a slog every time a combat situation arises. York can now move and shoot at the same time, and enemies aren’t bullet sponges the way they were before, but it’s still just a little too straightforward and the combat doesn’t evolve enough to stay interesting. Get distance between you and the enemy, hunker down and plunk bullets at their head, occasionally sidestep a charge attack, move on. You’re also inundated with so many healing items that it’s hard to care whether or not you get hit. While these sections work well for pacing by breaking up the story beats, and there are some decent puzzles or boss battles, they mostly feel like a time-waster until you return to the investigation proper.
Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise does a great job of recapturing the overall feeling of the original, mainly by nailing the characterization of Francis York Morgan. While the town of Le Carré doesn’t have the same charm of Greenvale, there are some memorable characters and inventive weirdness that feels as inspired as it did on the previous go around. However, it struggles to establish its own identity or expand on the goals of the original, settling to just be another strange story in York’s history. It’ll surely satisfy fans of the original, though it’s unlikely to inspire the same passion, but combined with the lacklustre gameplay and technical issues it’s unlikely to win over any new converts.
Verdict
- York's character is captured perfectly, in writing and performance
- Most of the quirky humour of the original remains intact
- Technical issues abound
- Combat feels superfluous
- Time management is undercooked and poorly implemented
