[DJ]

AKA I'm finally getting around to playing this.

Long story short: Work's ramping up as it tends to do this time of year, and I've been coming home needing something to "unwind". Given that I don't drink and I've never really been one to binge-watch TV, my options are pretty much "read a complicated book" or "play a complicated game".

I know a lot of people unwind by playing something mindless that they don't have to think about terribly hard; I'm the dead opposite. I need something that will get me so engaged that it'll absorb all excess attention and that's actually quite relaxing to me. If something's dull or repetitive or predictable then I tend to just go through the rote motions while my mind's off doing something else and it doesn't work as escapism anymore.

So I started going down the list of stuff I "should" have played but never got around to and oh hey Deadly Premonition. Guess we'll crack that.



All I know about this game has come from briefly glancing at people's comments who've played it. It's been on my to-play list forever, and now seems like as good a time as any.

I beat the prologue, and as a huge Twin Peaks fan it's pretty clear already that they haven't chopped out nearly as much of the Rainy Woods we're-blatantly-stealing-from-Twin-Peaks as was advertised.

Combat's very easy so far, though I don't really care as this isn't a game one plays for the mechanics. York's weirdly nonplussed by being attacked by a bunch of these things:



That's about as far as I've gotten though.

Anyone want to go into specifics on what to expect? Anything I should or shouldn't do to proverbially get into character?
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[DJ]

I've only just completed the autopsy, and it's moving to what I'm assuming is going to be an action sequence after that (York's gone upstairs to have a cigarette).

Is it cool to just roam the map for a while and collect stuff and see the lay of the town? It seems like there's a timer going on but it's not super clear what that involves yet. Hunger hasn't dipped particularly low, nor has sleep, but I suppose that makes sense as I'm still at the beginning of the game.

Director's cut gives some bonus items you can use out the gate like suits that cut your hunger by 1/3rd and increase money drops substantially. Worth using (i.e. do they make the game less annoying), or will that fuck the balance up? This doesn't seem like a game that was particularly well balanced, even with the director's cut.
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Can I get a Cliff's Notes on what these issues were? I'm curious.

I mean the game's clearly a complete and total mess, but I figured that was part of the experience.
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The idea of deciding to not like a game after the fact because someone brought up gender (or really anything) related issues down the road that hadn't been considered previously is quite strange to me, I'll admit. I tend to give games a lot more wiggle room in this regard than a lot of people, though, for better or worse. This isn't to say I don't have my own lines I draw where I'll stop enjoying something, but it has to be pretty fucking bad before I'll let it ruin a game for me provided it's doing other things I'm appreciative of.

Right now I'm digging the Twin Peaks vibe enough that I'm probably willing to shoehorn a lot of the clumsiness with female characters into that archetype. I'm not expecting the game to do it as well as Twin Peaks did, but I mean Twin Peaks was about the investigation into a girl who was sexually assaulted and then murdered and dumped on a beach; later you find out that she wasn't sexually assaulted, she was a willing participant in some pretty brutal stuff, possibly even up to the murder itself. The series goes back on this a bit because it's a pretty shocking point to make, but if that's the kind of ground that Rainy Woods Deadly Premonition is mining, I'm fully expecting some rather :/ shit to crop up.

We'll see, though. This is sitting within reach of me right now:



Love me some Twin Peaks.
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[DJ]

I haven't given up on this I swear. I'm working through this entire weekend (on that note oh my god you sons of bitches better be happy about this, those of you who know what I'm working on, because there is some BLOOD going into that sucker lemme tell you) but anyway I get a few days off soon-ish because Holidays don't give a fuck about submission schedules and our office closes down anyway, so I plan on diving back in in earnest then.
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