Agent Cooper vs. Agent Francis York Morgan - photos via Twin Peaks Brewing Co. and Neogaf
Deadly Premonition is one big pain in the ass to play. The game controls are unbearable, the graphics are reminiscent of some game that debuted on the N64 years ago, and gameplay is tripped up with frequent bugs and quirky quests that make the whole thing feel insufferably slow.
That said, there are so, so many obvious parallels between Deadly Premonition and Twin Peaks that despite its many faults I can't help but reserve a certain desire to play it just to see how far its mimicry goes. In my first two hours of play last night I've noticed the following likenesses:
- You play as Agent York, an FBI agent from the big city who's come to a small town to solve the mysterious homicide of the beloved 18-year-old girl Anna. Sound familiar?
- You begin the game in a mysterious room surrounded by red trees with the floor covered in red leaves. You revisit this room in your dreams, sometimes at the start of a level. There's no midgets, but there are a pair of creepy twins (that actually replaced twin midgets from an earlier build).
- Agent York is constantly narrating his thoughts to some character named "Zach", not with a tape recorder, but through some communicative device in his head (aka York's crazy???). I assume the player is "Zach", but no-one else in the game speaks to "you" except for York.
- York is very particular about his coffee and biscuits.
- You collect trading cards in the game and they look exactly like the real trading cards for Twin Peaks. (shown above)
Now just so we're clear my fellow Twin Peaks fans, despite the similarities this is not the game you'll want to buy an Xbox for. The game just clearly comes off as the low-budget bastard son of a
hypothetical Twin Peaks game. Deadly Premonition has a few things in it that separates it from the tv show, like the whole survival horror gameplay and the fact that Agent Cooper is way cuter than Agent York, but at the end of the day it's painfully obvious where the game got its characters and storyline.
Since there was never a Twin Peaks game (and I have yet to play Alan Wake), this is acceptable for now, just bizarre. I'll probably keep playing it because, well, I bought it and it's kind of like playing Twin Peaks the game. But man, even the songs from the Deadly Premonition soundtrack all have their Twin Peaks doppelgangers. There's even a (terrible) knock-off Julee Cruise on some of the tracks. Unbelievable!
"Laura Palmer's Theme" Twin Peaks - Laura Palmer's Theme
