“Zach, we should take a break from shooting monsters to get our suit dry cleaned.”

I can’t figure Deadly Premonition out. One minute I’m in a hospital talking to some NPCs about an autopsy… the next I have dead shadow people coming out of the walls. I shoot fifty of them, then I’m back with the NPCs again and my protagonist carries on like nothing ever happened.

I can’t tell if this game wants to be Grand Theft Auto, Resident Evil or Silent Hill. It might want all three.

There’s something charming about a game that tries to deliver on all fronts on roughly 1% of the budget that would require. Deadly Premonition is at some points a shooter, and at others a QTE action game. But you also have to eat and sleep and drive. You have to keep your clothes cleaned, hold your breath, and if the loading screens are to be believed you have to go fishing. Everything about this game is clunky, ugly and unresponsive… but they really did try to put everything in here.

I flipped through the side missions you can activate. There are like fifty of them. How am I going to find time to do all these and collect cards and pick flowers and solve a murder and talk to the voices in my head about old movies?

What a bewildering game. I think I’ll keep playing it.