Developer Toybox Inc
Publisher Rising Star Games
Format Switch
Release Out nowDeadly Premonition 2: A Blessing In Disguise
flourish feels similarly insensitive, as Swery and fellow
writer Kenji Goda co-opt a real-world tragedy as a way to
explain why the mystery was never fully resolved.If such lapses in taste are pretty much par for the
course, the technical problems here are far worse than in
the first game. We find ourselves pining for the shopping-
trolley handling of Morgan’s car as he negotiates Le
Carré’s streets by skateboard, the abysmal framerate
dropping even further once we get a speed upgrade.
Hiccups and temporary freezes are rife, on one occasion
earning us a small fine as we fail to swerve a pedestrian.
Performance improves slightly indoors, though entering
and exiting buildings can mean a wait of between 30
seconds and just over a minute. Swery’s keenness to
subvert open-world conventions, meanwhile, often
amounts to egregiously wasting your time. The second
act, in particular, sets you on a wild goose chase that has
no bearing on the plot, requiring you to locate three food
items, one of which isn’t available for several in-game
days. At which point, we find ourselves recalling
Morgan’s earlier complaint: “This case can go fuck itself.”
As can Deadly Premonition 2’s combat-focused
otherworld sections, which intrude less frequently here,
but run to interminable length. Set in tedious,
claustrophobic networks of corridors and boxy rooms,
they pit Morgan against precisely three different enemy
types that would be irritating were they not so laughably
easy to defeat. Even with some dropping from the ceiling
and others spawning behind you – preceded by a
framerate drop that prevents you from responding
immediately – you’re given so many boxes of bullets and
health packs that it’s as hard to die as it is to run out of
resources. Mercifully, they’re interrupted by bouts of
‘metaphysical profiling’, wherein Morgan revisits events
from the past by interacting with a series of crime scene
hotspots. It’s telling (and quietly damning) that A Blessing
In Disguise is at its best when you’re barely playing it.
The 2019 sections amount to little more than looking at
items around Morgan’s apartment and questioning him
about them; nevertheless, it plays out as a battle of wits,
as Davis weeds out the truth through proper detective
work rather than supernatural ability and good fortune.
Even so, Morgan remains the real draw here, whether
he’s punching killer bees, following eerie Dalmatians or
interrupting a villain by saying, “I hate to rain on your
sensational parade of a monologue.” Yet despite a few
delightful flashes of Swery strangeness, you sense its
creator’s heart isn’t really in this. For all its faults, the
first game was a piece of outsider art: a messy, budget-
priced curio made with passion and sincerity. This less
ambitious, full-priced follow-up is a lesser experience in
every sense. So bad it’s good? We wish. Alas, for the
majority of its 20-plus hour runtime, A Blessing In
Disguise only holds up the first half of the bargain.R
outinely 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 as Morgan.
Instead, we’re interrogating him: alongside bumbling
assistant Simon Jones, smart young agent Aaliyah Davis
arrives at Morgan’s Boston home to investigate his role
in a case 15 years prior. Just as the original wore its Twin
Peaks’ influence on its sleeve, it’s already clear Swery is
borrowing from another TV crime drama. Though gaunt,
hollow-eyed and cancer-ridden, Morgan’s gnomic
responses and handlebar moustache are obvious nods to
True Detective’s Rust Cohle. Indeed, it’s a surprise when
he and the Nietzsche-quoting Davis are beaten to
Cohle’s most famous maxim by a tutorial pop-up.
The first extended flashback to 2005 does seem to
prove that time is a flat circle, as Morgan investigates
another ritualistic murder case, apparently involving
a powerful new drug. Now he’s in Le Carré, a small town
just outside New Orleans. As he chats to a hotel chef
over breakfast, noting that his arrival there was prompted
by his love of Paul Schrader’s 1982 horror Cat People, it
seems like business as usual for both Swery and Morgan;
likewise, when he pauses his investigation of a crime
scene to skim stones across a creek. The dialogue is silly,
surreal and funny – usually deliberately so. He finds
a likeable foil in Patricia Woods, a young local who pokes
fun at Morgan’s personality quirks. It’s not too long until
he’s hanging out at a local bar, where the barman – a jazz
saxophonist at weekends – wears nothing but a white
trilby, a pair of pristine briefs and cowboy boots.
Accents aside, while several of these characters could
slot easily into the first game, the town isn’t a patch on
Greenvale. It’s flat, bland and often feels lifeless: while
you still need to pay attention to opening times of local
establishments, you never get a sense of its rhythms or
its inhabitants’ routines, with many characters tangential
to the central plot. And while there was an element of
smalltown stereotyping in the original, it’s rampant here.
Le Carré is a hotbed of voodoo, incest and casual bigotry,
while its treatment of a transgender character is troubling,
too – a surprise, given Swery’s more empathetic work
in puzzle-platformer The Missing – not to mention
a diatribe from Morgan himself. One late-game narrativePLAY
If lapses in
taste are pretty
much par for
the course,
the technical
problems are far
worse than inthe first game
4
VOODOO TRIALS
Morgan’s spiritual guide to Le
Carré is Houngan, a ghostly
priest whose oracles hint where
he should go next. You use
these clues to pick out locations
from the in-game map, with
a cash bonus for getting it right
first time. You can also equip
a series of voodoo charms,
although their benefits in
combat are negligible, while the
skateboard upgrades make
exploration even less pleasant.
The minigame boosts, however,
are worth your while – and
you’ll probably need the help
for a surprisingly challenging
ten-pin bowling sidequest.
A target-shooting airboat ride
along a twisting bayou is the
most enjoyable of the asides;
with your ride interrupted by
the occasional alligator, you’re
finally able to put those shell
enhancements to good use.