Developer Toybox Inc
Publisher Rising Star Games
Format Switch
Release Out now
Routinely mislabelled as ‘so bad it’s good’, Deadly Premonition remains one of videogames’ most fascinating enigmas. It is, in fact, both: wildly flawed, with archaic controls, poor graphics and some questionable design and narrative choices, it’s also ambitious and inventive with an absorbing, surreal mystery at its heart, and features one of the medium’s great protagonists. Brash, arrogant and deeply tactless, but with an infectious enthusiasm for his work and ’80s-slash-’90s cinema, FBI agent Francis York Morgan is Hidetaka ‘Swery’ Suehiro’s crowning achievement to date. Another game in his shoes would seem to be an appealing proposition, then. And yet, as Morgan notes (and the subtitle suggests), appearances can be deceptive.
Yet at first, we’re not actually playing…