This game is terrible.

There is no aspect of this game that is worth any of your time playing or your money buying. Please don't encourage this sort of thing by assuming that it might be fun to try for a laugh in an it's so bad that it's good way, as it's not. Really. Just play something else, or watch TV, or go for a walk, or anything. Just don't.

Coming from Japanese developer Access Games the game itself purports to be a survival horror game with a plot lifted from Twin Peaks, where an FBI agent investigates a murder in a small town where lots of odd things happen. Most of the game is seen from the camera just behind the main character view, except when the view unexpectedly switches to a third-person view arbitrarily, yet keeps the same controls.

For example, very early on in the game the main character is making his way through a wood following a car crash and hears the sound of a dog being attacked/chewed a bit by a malevolent spirit. When carefully edging around a corner, the player sees the poor beast's remains and the view changes to a third person view. Reflexively pressing left on the stick to keep your character moving then causes him to start turning left on the spot. It does take the impact out of the moment.

These flaws are mirrored by other problems with the interface. Other examples are the informational or dialogue windows that slowly scroll onto the screen like an old-school JRPG that can only be slightly speeded up by pressing the start button (but not much). During this scrolling, you may not move the character or do anything else. Everything stops for the text.

Speaking of dialogue... Where to start? Even allowing for some things being ‘lost in translation’ the writing is clunky to the point where all dialogue feels stilted. If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the voice actors wince as they delivered their lines. If you're lucky, some of the dialogue might be obscured by some of the musical loops that pop up during the game at unexpected moments. You'll get to know these pretty well during the course of the game, like the grating whistling-and-acoustic-guitar tune that kicks in whenever something “wacky” happens to inform you that this is the bit where you are supposed to laugh. Like I said, maybe it lost something in translation…

As an example of bad dialogue and animation, a quick visit to YouTube will see you right. Please watch the “Sinners Sandwich” video below and let the results serve as a warning.

Gameplay-wise, the game alternates between wandering through levels shooting or running away from various sorts of evil spirit, quick-time-events when avoiding the advances of the games main villain, the “Raincoat Killer”, driving around the local town in a police car, and to a lesser extent pointless mini games like fishing or playing darts... and none of it seems to be any fun. It all feels like a struggle with the controller to do much of anything.

If you value your time on this planet then avoid Deadly Premonition like the plague, even if it's going really cheap, and it will be...