…. I suck at keeping a schedule



Would it even matter calling this SWERY month at this point? It’s more like the SWERY Marathon. I apologize for this busted ass schedule. Needless to say, I am going to stop with these big month long events because I can’t seem to pull them off properly no matter how hard I try so I’m not gonna be celebrating these things for a month. I will have special events still, sure, but just nothing that has a dedicated schedule. Maybe just four things in a row. And with that said, we move on to the final game in the SWERY horror roster. We had many games on here. Deadly Premonition was a wacky, insane yet charming thriller that I always come back to, and The Missing was a genuine piece of writing and legit horror from SWERY. And the less said about Extermination, the better. So we finally come to the game that started this entire marathon, the game I waited for the most out of any on this list and the game that I will be ending this marathon on. Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise.
I’m honestly shocked that this game came into existence. I mean, I’m really happy it did, but still, it’s so surprising that it was even able to happen. With more time and a larger budget, was SWERY able to work out some technical kinks with the game? Well… yes and no. We’ll get to them when we get to them. For now, let’s start with the story. The game is set in 2019 in an apartment in Massachusetts. We follow two lackluster FBI agents, Aliyah Davis and Simon Jones, as they investigate a drug of red dust that has been spreading, turning people into mindless husks and driving them crazy, the source being that of the Greenvale Case that York worked on, where they meet Francis Zach Morgan in his apartment to ask him questions, where he tells them of his first encounter with the Red Seeds, in the town of Le Carre in Louisiana, where he finds himself once again in a sea of murders and strange incidents. So in short, this game is both a sequel and a prequel. The Aliyah questioning segments taking place in 2019 where the Le Carre segments where you play as York take place in 2005, three years before the events of Deadly Premonition 1, and this is a unique way to go about a sequel and I kinda love it. But that’s just the premise. Can the game really live up to that?
Well, this game has a lot of things that I think it does better and does worse. First off, let me just say I love the modern day segments where you play as Aliyah questioning the old, senile and sick Zach in his apartment (Also the reason I call him Zach is for numerous reasons. You’ll have to play the first game to understand). I know a lot of people can’t stand these segments because they drag on, but look, I loved both of Suda’s Silver Case games despite having little to no gameplay and being mostly dialogue based and I love the long periods of just talking in Tarantino films, because those things, along with Deadly Premonition 2, manage to make the dialogue interesting. One strength that Deadly Premonition 1 had is that when the writing wasn’t being batshit insane and fucking stupid, it could be so interesting that you are invested by the dialogue. SWERY is one of those writers that just knows how to write interesting dialogue, be that for the bizarre tone of the conversation, the strange philosophy of the characters, American society seen by the eyes of a wacky Japanese man, or just because the words they use are so interesting, it all manages to keep my attention, and these segments are brimming with amazing dialogue. The dialogue is as good as a Metal Gear Solid game, I would say, though instead of Hideo Kojima showing how much he knows about political trivia, you got SWERY showing how much he knows about movies and American trivia, and it’s not too bad. I genuinely get a kick out of hearing about the different kinds of movies that York watches, how Cajun food is this combination of a dozen other cultures just tossed into a pot, the description of culture in Louisiana. I genuinely never had much thoughts on Louisiana, just thought it existed for Mardi Gra and bayous, but after playing this game, I got a hunger for some Cajun food and wanted to experience the deep south. This game just manages to keep my interest through dialogue alone and I love it. And don’t worry, it still manages to be weird and stupid at times as well to keep it interesting.
The characters in this game are their own blend of crazy. Sure, you’ll have a few regulars here and there, but oh man, the characters that are here are so crazy that they almost come off as normal, especially if you live in small towns. You got a hotel manager who also acts as the chef and bellboy and hotel owner, each with their own personalities, you got an old woman who focuses on superstitions and is always bowling all the time, a local priest who is also the town doctor who makes drums out of cans and animal skins, an angry short man who runs a crawfish farm, even a gravekeeper who thinks he’s an alien, a character with no importance to the plot that you can miss entirely. There aren’t as many characters to interact with in Deadly Premonition 2 and I didn’t see them go around town as much as I would’ve liked, but the ones that are here have their own unique charm to them that you can’t help but enjoy. And you do have one Patty Woods, a little girl who acts at York’s assistant throughout the investigation to level out the insanity. She’s always there to call people out on their weird bullshit and make jokes. At first I was so sick of having her around, but I then really grew to find her quips at York’s insanity to be hilarious. And of course, if we’re talking about characters, we gotta discuss York. I thought he was a charming guy in the first game, but now he is made even better here. You can see his transition from this baby blue eye’d young man with a smile that could melt even the coldest hearts to this pale, miserable old man who laughs at morbid things and has full intent of killing whoever was responsible for all this. But either way, he always has his strange personality quirks to keep him being the same York we loved. Always talking about movies and in more capacity this time, messing with Zach in his free time, discussing the joys of coffee. This man, he feels like a real man. That smile, that’s the smile of a real man. I love him.



But the game isn’t perfect. I mean, it’s a SWERY game, of course it’s not. But I wanna get through the issues I do have first and foremost so that we can discuss the stuff that I do love, truly, again. And… we’ll get to the major one soon. First off, this game is glitchy. As fuck. Let’s get the big one out of the way that you have most likely heard of. The frame rate. Yeah…. It’s bad. Inside buildings, it’s not too bad. You can move it around with ease and it’s fine. But outside. Oh my god, it’s a fucking slideshow. It fluctuates from “Bad” to “Oh my fucking god, it’s terrible”. And this wouldn’t upset me too much if not for the fact that you spend most of your time outside. I have heard, however, that they managed to massively improve the framerate, so that's good. But I could bear through that, even if it made me a little ill. What I can’t handle are the loading times. You will see a loading screen pass for a solid minute before you start moving again. They go on for way too long and, I get it, the game’s gotta load. But holy shit, a solid minute? This is giving me PTSD from the loading screens on the 360 version Dead Rising 2. I haven’t heard word of that getting fixed. It’s no deal breaker, but I wish it was shorter. Another thing are the quests in this game, major and side both. The major missions aren’t too bad. But there are moments where they start to drag, like when you gotta go and pick up three items for a character, one of the items being in one specific unmarked spot on the map and another only being sold on a Monday, and I didn’t hear this until Wednesday, so I had to spend a full week sleeping the days away until Monday to get it. It was just a slog. And then they have the gall to send you out to get three more items! And the other world is just not as fun as the first game. And yeah, I liked the other world in Deadly Premonition 1. Yeah, the combat wasn’t great, but at least the levels changed and felt like unique levels with their own layouts, designs, and puzzles to them. The three worlds you go into in Deadly Premonition 2 are just the same red corridors each. And they go on for so long until you reach the boss. Oh yeah, Deadly Premonition has bosses in this game. Depending on your skills, they can either be easy with a lot of health or you can destroy them in literal seconds. It’s kind funny, but it does ruin the tension of these fights, so I personally never upgraded my gear for these reasons alone. Other than the level design itself, everything else feels improved. The combat is a lot more in your control now, even giving you access to the Psycho Gun, a sick name for a weapon that just turns your arm into a gun, and the enemy design, while only three enemies, is vastly better than smiling human. Sure, the creepy janky movement is gone and I would go so far as to say that Deadly Premonition 2 is even less of a horror game than the first because it’s just too clean now rather than janky and dirty, which worked in the first games favor. But hey, it’s better. But the side quests, ugh.
I did not enjoy those at all. They mostly consist of you going around, collecting items, shooting animals for their skins and returning them to the person for a miniscule reward. Sometimes you don’t even get the reward and instead just another sidequest that will task you with getting more items. Yeah, I didn’t enjoy these very much and just kinda gave up halfway through. There aren't many rewards to warrant going out of your way for it. While you may think you’ll struggle with cash at the start, they hand money out like it’s candy, much like the first game, and you will always have enough money to buy food and bullets and such. You only get the one gun, so there’s no weapons, you rarely find yoursel starving or sleepy with the amount of coffee you get and the fact that the restaurant in the hotel you live in is always giing you food, which you will always afford because you always have money. You see what I mean? The game doesn’t have much tension. To be fair, neither did the first game when you could shove an endlessly respawning supply of lollipops into your gullet until you’re satisfied. But I will say, in doing the sidequests, it was much easier to get around town thanks to it. Sure, there’s the fast travel, but it helps that the town is much closer together than Greenvale, where you could spend half an hour driving around to get rom place to place. Where as in Le Carre, you only spend five to ten minutes driving. Or rather, skating. Yeah, there’s no car in Deadly Premonition 2. There’s just a skateboard. And I love it. You can go anywhere you want off road, you can whip it out whenever the hell you want, and the music that plays is just a wacky good time. All I can say is Francis York Morgan better be the guest character in the upcoming Tony Hawk Pro Skater Remake or I’m gonna be upset.
But, then there’s the elephant in the room. If it was just the glitches and the awkward gameplay mechanics, people would go, “Yep, that’s Deadly Premonition” and call it a day. But then we get to the controversy of the game. Then we get to Lena Dauman. Lena Dauman is a transvestite woman who is a major part of Deadly Premonition 2’s story, and is basically a moral in that it’s okay to be whoever you are, no matter what. There’s no shame in being gay, transexual or anything, but you are still a human being. And with that respect should also come respect for the lives of others around you, and that doesn’t justify doing horrible things. The reason why I bring this character up is because I thought they handled the transexual theming appropriately, with York being sickened by transphobia in the south and getting angry that the thought of people having this mindset, saying that the south has problems with accepting people. But it comes when the game drops the original name of Lena when she was born a man. And that is where people have issues. For those that aren’t familiar, for transexuals, when they transition, they change their names, and leave their old name behind. This is known as deadnaming, and it is seen as offensive to some. The game I talked about a year ago, The Red Strings Club, got into some trouble for this as well despite being a pro-gay game. But SWERY didn’t know this. No one in Japan has this mindset. There’s no deadnaming in Japan. When you bring up a person's name, that is how they refer to the person they once were, not meaning to offend. So when SWERY got blasted online, he apologized and made it his intent to patch out the deadnaming as soon as possible. But of course, gaming journalism jumped on that and called the game “Transphobic” and that “York as a transphobic character and worst game of the year”. I can’t get too made because we all know that game journalism is a fucking joke, but the fact that they took this as transphobia, when three years prior, SWERY made probably the most pro-trans game out there, far more than whatever Steven Universe fanfiction they were reading. It just pisses me off that every single article about Deadly Premonition 2 only focused on this one thing. I won’t lie and say there’s no stigma against gays and transexuals in Japan. In fact, it’s huge and to deny that there is is naive and stupid. But I assure you, the last person to be transexual is fucking SWERY.
Okay, so with that out of the way, that’s pretty much all my gripes with the game. I will say that it has some issues along with some ways that it improves on the original game, be it combat, world design, world transportation, all that, while the first game still beats out this game in it’s own way. I’ve heard some reviewers say that if you liked Deadly Premonition 1, you’ll love this game, but if you hated 1, you’ll hate this game. This was a game made only for Deadly Premonition fans or fans of this kind of style. And yeah…. I’d agree. Deadly Premonition is niche. It is extremely niche and made only for people interested in that stuff. And that’s why I love it. It has so much passion put into it. This could’ve just been a quick cash grab to get money off of the cult following of the game, but they didn’t do that. I hate to use the term cash grab to describe a game because it’s so tired, especially in a greedy, soulles industry like this, but that is how some sequels can be. But Deadly Premonition 2 was handled with the same love and care, or miscare depending on how you look at it, that the first game had. And it is a game that knows how to end a character arc. This was the perfect send off for a character like York and Zach. It was the best way to end their story of the Red Seeds, of the other world, and of all the strange shit that happens in the world around them. I couldn’t ask for a better ending for two chucklefucks. Would I like there to be a Deadly Premonition 3? Perhaps. But not with York and Zach. At least not as the main characters. They have finished their story and any more with just be needless fluff, I think. While Deadly Premonition 2 drags in a lot of ways, the more I thought of it’s ending, the more I thought, “This game is something special”, and it is. A sequel to a game that reviewed poorly and only had passionate fans to keep it afloat that would’ve been lost due to the publishers owning the rights, much like what happened to SWERY’s other game, D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die. But instead, he got the rights back, was able to make a game, and despite all the technical issues and backlash, was able to put out the game that could satisfy fans, to some extent. Even if some of them are a lot more stubborn than others, there are those that love this game, myself included. We may never get a game like this again, so I’m glad I could enjoy it myself. And I will always look up to Hidetaka Suehiro as a mad genius along with the likes of Goichi Suda, Yoko Taro, Shinji Mikami, and Keiichiro Toyama. Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise, a name that it truly lives up to.
And that’s it for SWERY month. I thought I would never get this thing done. And yet, I’m sad to see it end. I’ve grown fond of these strange titles that SWERY makes and I look forward to see what he does in the future. I hear that he and Suda51 and Keiichiro Toyama are working on a game called Hotel Barsalona, which will be a horror game. Not much info is out sadly aside from the name and the partnership, but…. With names like that, I’m excited. I hope that this marathon has gotten you at least mildly curious to check out a few of these games. Deadly Premonition 1 is on Xbox 360, PS3, Steam and Switch right now. The Missing is on PS4, Xbox One and Steam. Sadly, Deadly Premonition 2 is currently a Switch port as of the time of this article, so you’ll have to wait for that one. And fuck it, didn’t talk about it, but D4 is on Xbox One. Check these games out if you enjoy weird story telling like I do. With that said, I hope you enjoyed this look into this strange man and I hope you look forward to a less insane piece of work in the future.