They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but when the book in question has been written by Deadly Premonition creator Hidetaka "Swery" Suehiro and is entitled "Dear Ambivalence: The Mustachioed One, The Witches, And The Suspended Body", you can be absolutely sure I'll be adding it to my enormous 'to be read' pile as soon as I've finished typing. First published in Japan last year, Swery took to Twitter yesterday to announce its English translation by Dan Luffey is now available digitally. You might want to sit down for the synopsis, though. It sounds wild.
]]>I adore Deadly Premonition, a game which shines despite substantial elements being janky or bad. The 2010 horror game about an oddball FBI agent investigating ritual murders in small-town America is not "so bad it's good", it's so good it doesn't matter that it's bad (and maybe the badness even amplifies the good). Well, I've been playing Deadly Premonition 2 ahead of its PC release today, and I'm sorry to say the sequel does not shake out the same way. Despite some bright spots, enough of Deadly Premonition 2 is bad that I've given up.
]]>Tap your temple and warm up your whistling lips, because Deadly Premonition 2 is coming to PC this year. Following its Nintendo Switch debut in July 2020, the open-world murder mystery/survival horror/daily life RPG is coming to Steam next. The original is one of my very favourite games, the most charming and warm-hearted game about a weirdo FBI agent chasing a supernatural serial killer, so I'm stoked to see this coming my way.
]]>It's been an eventful decade for PC games, and it would be hard for you to summarise everything that's happened in the medium across the past ten years. Hard for you, but a day's work for us. Below you'll find our picks for the 50 greatest games released on PC across the past decade.
]]>The biggest gaming surprise of 2019 has surely been the announcement of Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing In Disguise, a sequel to one of the most beloved and reviled and wonky and bestest best games. I adore Deadly Premonition. I can hardly believe publishers are funding a sequel. The announcement came last week during a Nintendo Direct presentation and only a mentioned a release on Switch, so I've been nudging PR people for an answer to the question which justifies an RPS post: a PC release?
"No other platforms. Coming to Switch in 2020!" a rep tells me. Oh. Well. Oh.
]]>Aw, hey! I'm so glad you came. You know, I was saying to Alice, just a second ago I was saying to her: "I hope our favourite listener drops in" and now look here you are. That's great, that's so nice. YOU'RE nice. Ha ha. Have a drink. No thank you, I've had twelve. Look, there's Adam. Watch out though, he's gabbing on about Overcooked and those Jackbox Party Packs But never mind, Alice is outside by the paddling pool, talking some chumps into a game of Jelly Stompers. I also think she has a copy of Deadly Premonition with her for some reason. Brendan? He's in the kitchen, probably boring somebody about Gang Beasts. Best stay here. With me, the Electronic Wireless Show.
]]>Toss another podcast episode upon the fire, stranger. The cold is closing in but the Electronic Wireless Show will keep us warm. Pip, Alice and Adam gather round the podfire this week to talk about the lies (Adam tells) at Gamescom, the icy reception to The Long Dark's story mode, the cleansing rain of Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, and the deadly climates of No Man's Sky.
We then turn to you, listeners, to discuss your favourite in-game weather. And somewhere in the middle there's also a long discussion about karaoke, for some reason.
]]>We're off to a small English town where everyone turns into cats at night with the first game from the new studio of Deadly Premonition director Hidetaka 'Swery' Suehiro. The Good Life [future Fig page] is a "daily life RPG" with a dash of mystery, roaming the town as a human by day and by night exploring places only cats can go. I adore nosing around town, meeting people, and peering through windows in Deadly Premonition -- the world's worst best game -- so this sounds splendid. The Good Life is due to launch a crowdfunding campaign in September, which sounds grand as I'd love to see Swery doing what Swery does without publisher interference (combat in Deadly Premonition was famously a publisher's idea).
]]>The Steam summer sale is in full blaze. For a while it even blazed so hot that the servers went on fire and all the price stickers peeled off the games. Either that or the store just got swamped with cheapskates looking for the best bargains. Cheapskates like you! Well, don’t worry. We’ve rounded up some recommendations - both general tips and some newly added staff choices.
Here are the things you should consider owning in your endless consumeristic lust for a happiness which always seems beyond reach. You're welcome.
]]>Update: The year is finished, which means you can now read the final list of our favourite games of 2017.
2017 has already been an extraordinary year for PC games, from both big-name AAA successes to no-name surprise indie smashes. Keeping up with so much that's worth playing is a tough job, but we've got your back. Here is a collection of the games that have rocked the RPS Treehouse so far this year.
We've all picked our favourites, and present them here in alphabetical order so as not to start any fights. You're bound to have a game you'd have wanted to see on the list, so please do add it to the comments below.
]]>Every game released before 2015 is being destroyed. We only have time to rescue one game from each year. Not those you’ve played to death, or the classics that the industry has already learned from. We’re going to select the games that still have more to give. These are the Saved Games.
Deadly Premonition, in many respects, is one of the worst games I’ve ever played. The combat is awful, with a three-button aiming system and melee weapons that break after four swings. The sound design essentially consists of the same four or five audio clips on loop for the 25-hour story (I’d recognise that door creak anywhere). The driving is shocking, some of the acting is straight out of your local am-dram class, and the graphics wouldn’t look out of place on something released 15 years prior. To top it all off, the PC port is locked to 720p. Glorious.
So why on earth would I choose it as the game I’d save from 2013 (or 2010 if you count the game’s initial console release)?
]]>Hidetaka 'Swery' Suehiro, the mastermind behind bestworstbest game Deadly Premontion, has started his own studio. He left longtime home Access Games in 2016 after being away for a year's convalesce, and apparently he's not going back. His new studio is White Owls, based in Osaka. Though their first game is still under wraps, Swery says they'll be making more weird, scary, dreamy, funny games. That's exactly what I want to hear. Oh, and of course Swery's using this freedom to deliver voice messages from his stuffed monkey partner, Sharapova, and absolutely you can buy an official wall clock with Swery's bum and his Sharapova 'tattoo'.
]]>Hidetaka 'Swery' Suehiro, the mastermind behind Deadly Premonition, is retiring from Access Games. He'd been on sabbatical for almost a year while recovering from illness, but today announced he's properly leaving. His future plans are hazy but I do hope he's well and I'll keep an eye on what he does. Deadly Premonition is wonky at best, and really buggy on PC, but has such heart and embodies such warmth that I adore it and think very fondly of him. He's a certified Buddhist priest, you know.
]]>We made our list for Games of the Year or Bestest Bests or Advent Calendars or whatever it was but some of my candidates were missed off the list for NO GOOD REASON WHATSOEVER. I mean, fine, some of them were console games and some of them are from the wrong year but they're still games that were good this year and I still want to highlight them. Read on for gory janitorial duties, party crypts and the end of Dinklebot. I've also included a link or two in case you wanted to read a bit more about those games :)
]]>D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die is an episodic adventure directed by Hidetaka Suehiro, who you may know as SWERY, creator of Deadly Premonition, gaming's very own Marmite. I hate Marmite and you can figure out how I feel about Deadly Premonition by reading my review.
Last time I read about D4, SWERY had mentioned poor sales and fans were trying to help with promotion. Exclusive to Xbox Uno, the game released without any fanfare and then withered on the vine. I remember thinking a PC port might help and now, here we are.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Are you willing to gamble £1.99 on a game you might very well loathe? If so, head on over to Steam and buy Deadly Premonition in the sale. It is wonky, it is ugly, it is weird, it is slow, its port is awful, and it is charming, it is exciting, it is weird, it is funny, and it is one of my favourite games.
]]>Deadly Premonition is fascinating, broken, bizarre, enormous, boring, brilliant and absolutely unsuitable to play on my PC (Durante's fix helps though). I’ve laboured through more crashes than SID-H3, as well as wrestling with awkward mouse and keyboard controls. Eventually I resorted to playing in a window because that seemed to cause fewer collisions with the desktop. I wouldn’t have persevered for a lesser game, even though, at times, this is the least of games. Here’s wot I think.
]]>The weird, wooden and wonderful world of Deadly Premonition is just around the next curve in the road. The bizarre survival horror game may be on Steam as early as November 1st. If you haven't played the game in its previous console incarnations, I'd suggest that you avoid reading or watching too much about it. There are reasons that people, myself included, hold the game in such high regard, but there are also plenty of good reasons to dismiss it, including an overlong opening sequence and miserable controls. There's a trailer below, my favourite one for the game, but it's both spoiler-filled and not. Out of context (and even in it), some of the scenes make no sense, but I reckon it's better not to know what moods are involved at all. Not long to wait.
]]>I don't play many console games at the moment. My 360 has curled up in a corner, snoring like a pig in a hurricane, and the PS3 hobbled back from the retirement home to entertain me The Last of Us and its brilliant reinterpretation of the great Westward journey. State of Decay has a certain allure but I'll wait for the PC version. Over drinks at Rezzed though, I told almost anyone who would listen (and some who were trying not to) that there was one game above all others from the last generation that I'd like to see on PC. That game was Deadly Premonition and I continued to drown my sorrows as I stated, wisely, that it would never come to pass. A Director's Cut edition is now on Steam Greenlight.
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