I've Played Deadly Premonition Part 1- "The Best FBI Agent... EVER!"

It's finally time for the first part of an I've Played series! This time, it's for a relatively new game on the Xbox 360, called Deadly Premonition. It's a survival horror game that was released in 2010. It's not a very popular game, but has an amazing style to it, so it has some fans here and there. I've just got this game recently, so this run is my blind run. Hit the jump to see what happens during my first run through the game!

Unlike many games that boot you to the main menu to begin a game anew... this game starts the disk off full blast with a cutscene that shows the backstory for the game. I would think that this should be the first cutscene in the game... but apparently the backstory is better when it's reserved to be prior to the main menu. The cutscene starts off with two young twins and their grandfather walking through the woods. After a short while of talking, they come across the body of a dead woman, crucified on the side of a tree. And she's topless!

At the moment they find the body, time slows. The leaves stop in mid-air, the boys' eyes widen, and the grandpa's mouth gapes. Then... a long, white snake coils up her body and goes through her cleavage. WONDERFUL sexual innuendo! Afterwards, the authorities investigate the body and people get sad and start crying. Finally, after a while of crying, the title screen finally appears. The cutscene was long, but was beautifully styled and thus felt like it took no time at all!

After beginning a new game (which I have set at the normal difficulty), there's this really abstract world that the player character enters. It's really pretty, with scarlet leaves on the ground, lights coming from lamps and TV's, and the twins who found the body in the intro cutscene, dressed as angels. I think this area is meant to introduce the player to the controls and navigation, since there are tutorials for how to move, observe objects and do actions on the objects. It looks nice, but is ultimately pointless.

Afterwards, the main character, York, is shown driving down a wet road to work on his next case. Some extremely catchy jazz music plays as the camera zooms on his face. Apparently he's talking to someone on the phone how Tom & Jerry (as in the cartoon) need each other. It's a very interesting and pretty funny conversation! I'm beginning to like him already. York also talks to his buddy "Zach" pretty often. Zack isn't a real person, though. I'm assuming that he's referring to me when he talks to Zach, since sometimes when he asks Zach something, there's a quick-time event that I have to respond to.

The nice, smooth atmosphere of the car ride quickly turns bitter, however. York, after focusing on his lighter to light a cigarette, looks up to find a man in a red raincoat standing in the middle of the road! To avoid killing a person, he swerves off the road only to flip his car and get lost in the middle of the woods.

Finally! It's time for some ACTUAL gameplay! York controls like a tank. He is moved forward/backward by pressing forward/backward on the Left Stick. When the stick is tilted left/right, he turns to that direction. York also comes with two default weapons, a combat knife and a pistol (with infinite ammo! I don't know if it's infinite on harder difficulties than normal, however). In the very first area of the game, he also can acquire a lead pipe, which does massive damage to both enemies and obstacles in his way.

After wandering down the designated path a bit, I noticed a growling sound of a dog fade in. That got me worried! Dogs in survival horror games are very hard to deal with, so I started to panic. Slowly making my way up the path, the dog's barking suddenly turns to whimpering and the sound of sloppy, wet flesh being torn! I did NOT want to go up there! I was imagining that a dog was eating the insides of a person, and that it would go after me next! Going up the path... it appears the opposite is true! The sounds of whimpering and flesh suddenly cease as I turn past the side of a rock and see the remains of a poor doggie, atop a large smear of blood. Considering the noises stopped right as I saw the dog, and that the culprit wasn't there... then that means that either the culprit is supernatural or York is an idiot. Thankfully, the former is true.

Further down the path, I came to a little wooden shack. A cutscene stops York a ways in front of it as he sees a woman stumbling into it, zombie fashion. Walking into the shack... NO ONE'S THERE! Creepy! The only things that are interactable in the shack are a can of pickles (which I picked up; they can be used to restore his hunger gauge... more on that when it become more prominent) and a large generator machine that, when activated, opens a nearby gate. But that's not all it activates, because the woman that wandered into the shack has now appeared behind York!

Upon seeing the woman, a strange screen appears, where a photograph of the woman appears on the screen and the text "You got Mysterious shadow" appeared. I suppose that these are his "clues" to solving the mystery? Perhaps. Anyway, it's straight into combat with a short tutorial to using the gun. Wield the gun with the right trigger and press A to fire. B reloads and left trigger locks on to the body part that was last shot. After a few headshots, the creepy lady goes down.

One interesting thing that I noticed is how York says things like "Nice Shot!" or "Amazing!" whenever he shoots a headshot. That definitely makes me feel more proud in getting a headshot... even if there is auto lock-on after the first shot. The lady from the shack is not the only enemy to defeat, however. There are two more in that area alone, with several other enemies appearing later. After going through the gates that the generator opened, York finds himself inside a boardwalk-filled park!

Right outside the gate, I notice a public phone ringing on the hook. I start to think to myself "Uh oh! Is it a haunted phone?" Well, my questions were happily answered as I approached it. Using the phone, York can report into the FBI and save the game! Hurray! Past that point... there's nothing really worth mentioning. There's a lot of enemies and boardwalks. Also, at one point, inside another shack, York finds a generator that has been completely destroyed by an axe. He takes a picture of it, letting it act as a certain clue similar to that of the very first enemy.

Continuing down the area, after solving a puzzle of simply removing the fuze box from the broken generator and putting it into one that controls a gate, a lot of enemies show up. I truthfully think that they were infinitely spawning, but I didn't have the opportunity to find out. I got gradually swarmed, causing my health to drop after several enemies. It got to dangerously low conditions by the time I decided to high tail it out of there. Running as fast as York could, I managed to dodge all the enemies... but wound up running into something much worse.

Without any provocation, a cutscene suddenly triggered. In it, a person wearing a red raincoat, having glowing, red eyes (Bakemonogatari, anyone?), and holding an axe appeared in front of York. He ran quickly up to York as a quick time event appeared on screen. I had to press the A button to evade his grab. Unfortunately, I was too late to respond to that as the person picked York up by his neck and threw him to the ground. Then, another quick time event appeared as the person swung the axe up high. This time, the left stick appeared and it was bobbing left to right. Thinking I had to mimic the action, I quickly tilt my left stick side to side to dodge the axe.

...I still don't know if that was the right action or not. I believe that I would have to either tilt and hold the left stick to one side, so to make York dodge... but once I missed the action command, the person swung the axe, proclaiming "DIE!" That was an automatic game over for me, and the end of today's I've Played session.

Phew! In total, today's session lasted 42 minutes, 18 seconds. Perhaps that's why there's so much to write about (plus, it's the beginning of the game, so there's a lot to explain). Overall, this game's experience so far was extremely fun. The characters are all likeable at first (although the crying in the pre-main menu cutscene is annoying), the combat is fun and the game feels legitimately scary and creepy. I look forward to playing more of this game!

So, my dear reader. Have you managed to read this far? I hope that it's not too much for a read. I'm still getting used to this I've Played format that I've wanted to do... so it'll definitely change over time. But what do you guys think of this? Too much information? Too long? Too spoilerific? Feedback will definitely help me improve these in the future!

So now... here's a song from Deadly Premonition's soundtrack. It's the "Greenvale Theme", and also the theme that plays when the twins find the crucified woman on the tree before the main menu. Listen to it and enjoy! Thanks for reading!