Tips to make Deadly Premonition playable
This is one of a series of posts about Deadly Premonition.
As I think I’ve mentioned, Deadly Premonition is kind of a clunky game to play. Here are the lessons I learned that make the game a lot easy to stomach, moment to moment. A lot of these are actually mentioned in the surprisingly in-depth and lengthy manual (at least for this day and age.) Others are mild spoilers in terms of quest rewards, but trust me you’ll probably want to know them in advance unless you’re just going to get everything anyway. Anyway, here they are:
Talkin bout spoilers
This is one of a series of posts about Deadly Premonition.
Spoilers are always a threat with me, mainly since I kind of obsessively read up on games while I am playing them. Some games I don’t really care about spoilers, but others (like Deadly Premonition) are full of twists and turns that I don’t want revealed. That can be difficult to avoid, however, but I’m actually pretty good about it when I really want to be.
Open worlds for open minds
This is one of a series of posts about Deadly Premonition.
Deadly Premonition took a while to grow on me. In fact, I had just started to play it when I got roped into the whole Final Fantasy XIII deal, for which I put Deadly Premonition aside. Up until that point I had been kind of playing it wrong.
After the opening sequence, you might be fooled into think this game was a crappy hybrid of Resident Evil 4 (lousy tank control zombie shooter) and Silent Hill (creepy small town with evil mirror universe.) Then you get out of that first forest, meet the Sheriff and his Deputy, go to your hotel room, get a car, and all of a sudden the game becomes an open world murder mystery.
Introduction and Awkwardness
This is one of a series of posts about Deadly Premonition.
After an initial cryptic dream sequence straight out of Twin Peaks, Deadly Premonition opens with one side of a cell phone conversation. FBI Special Agent Francis York Morgan (you can call him York) is arguing over sexual implications of the Tom & Jerry Show. When his cell phone loses reception, he gives up and starts talking to himself, or rather to some apparently imaginary friend he calls Zach. He tries to light a cigarette, fails, and accidentally runs off the road. After plunging through trees and rolling several times, he crawls out unscathed and lights his cigarette on the first try. He gives the lighter an ironic glance, shrugs, and then zombies attack him.
Welcome to Greenvale!
That Street Fighter post I just put up was the first post I’ve uploaded in a while. This is because I honestly can’t bring myself to give a shit about Final Fantasy XIII anymore. I hit the open world portion and the wheels just totally fell off the plot. Those idiots can stand around on that grassy plain for an eternity if they like.
Maybe that’s harsh? I’m not sure I care. I’ll finish it eventually, but for now I’ve got Mother 3 to keep me company, which is like a million times more with the hyperbole than Final Fantasy XIII.
Also, I mean. Super Street Fighter IV. And the Halo Reach Beta. And these things I’ve been reading about Fallout: New Vegas! And Super Meat Boy! And Spelunky!
We’ve got better things to write about.
So I’m officially (even though Nathan has already started in spirit) declaring an open shift in blog content to “gamesblog”.
I’m keeping the name, though. I like it.
Which Fighter Will Prove the Old Axiom Today?
So Street Fighter is something like twenty-three years old. That’s pretty whacked. I’ll be twenty-eight this year. That means Street Fighter has existed in my life as long (essentially) as The Simpsons. Though the original Street Fighter is pretty awful (and obscure, and I’ve never played it, and who cares?), we’ve all played Street Fighter II. Whether it was the original, or a turbo, or a super turbo, or a hyperfighting, or an HD remix. I feel pretty confident saying you’ve played it.
Maybe you button mashed. Maybe you were trying to figure out what your invincibility-frames were so you could keep up pressure for a stun. Either way, you’ve probably thrown a fireball.
But I want to talk about Street Fighter because I just bought Super Street Fighter IV and I think it might be the definitive entry in the series. Twenty-three years later, perfection.
Well, it’s relative. There’s always someone with tool-assisted combo machines who finds a way to game the system and exploit some crazy frame situations. I think these people ruin the game. I think people should just learn to play the game with their hands and let it go. But for now, while everyone is learning new characters and figuring out target combos, the game is perfect.
What makes the latest iterations of Street Fighter so great isn’t the stunning animation or move to 2.5D. It’s not the giant cast of characters (though that’s a plus). It’s not any particular feature over the other.
It’s the balance.
I remember reading Gamepro years and years ago (pro tip!) when the first Fighting Game Renaissance was in full swing. There was a huge feature on Street Fighter and combos you could pull off. People were finding ways to link together attacks to maximize damage and minimize your opponents ability to interrupt. Back then, a 6 or 7 hit combo did so much damage that the folks who could pull them off just dominated. Though I never played competitively, I’m certain this would have lowered my Street Fighter-related self-esteem badly. I just fought my friends who were about as good as I was.
In between then and now, there’s been so many games with a focus on creating long combos and overwhelming your opponent with a torrent of attacks and a bunch of crazy shit on the screen (Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is basically the king of that). I liked those games, but they were overwhelming. I always thought I was good at the opportunity part of fighting games but I was never any good at the “memorize 17 inputs” part of combo-based fighters. That’s just, like, violent Simon.
Super Street Fighter IV, though, has reached this really nice plateau where long combos are succeptable to damage scaling, meaning that even if you do pull off a 16 hit combo, it probably does as much damage as being punched three times separately. It’s not universal. Some characters have some pretty sick chains that allow you to milk a single mistake for half a health bar. But by and large, a good set of Street Fighter Fundamentals can take you a good way in SSFIV competitively.
I believe these recent iterations of Street Fighter are the most accessible since the classic Street Fighter II.
But I want to make it clear that I don’t think that means you can walk into SSFIV, sight unseen, and win a match with button mashing. That might have happened in Marvel because there’s just so much shit happening, but it won’t happen here. If you do that in SSFIV you’ll probably be whooped. I think what I mean is that a basic understanding of punishing, specials, and normals can get you further in SSFIV than the last bunch of street fighters I remember playing. And, since your opponents are increasingly just random people on the internet, that’s a big deal.
So I think it’s more accessible than other street fighters in terms of ease of play. There’s still lots to learn, but the beauty of street fighter is that you often learn by doing. I’m not sure it’ll ever be a game for impatient people who get easily frustrated when they don’t win. And I think it definitely requires some user buy-in to get comfortable with the game. But I think the entry-point for success in ranked play is lower thanks to smart design that balances characters and strategy.
And that can only be a good thing.
