.tiff

A quick post about that Twin Peaks game... I mean, Deadly Premonition

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

"Greenvale"   Deadly Premonition - Greenvale

and

"Audrey's Dance"   Twin Peaks - Audrey's Dance

Thomas Mclaine   Deadly Premonition - Thomas Mclaine

Cartoon Backgrounds

From Fast and Furry-ous

Animation Backgrounds is a blog that isolates and collects the painted backdrops of many cartoons. I'm not sure how they found them all, but it's pretty neat to see cartoon backgrounds with the cartoon characters omitted.

Getaway from Convict Concerto

Looking at these it's easy to recognize how beautifully detailed a lot of this backdrop work is, but the scenes also reveal themselves as sort of bizarre landscapes when lacking the cartoon characters to define them. I really love the old watercolored backdrops from some of the older cartoons, a lot of which I actually remember watching as a kid. Aside from Erik Svedang's new game Komenten, I can't think of another recent game that showcased a similar aesthetic. Maybe Machanarium. I wish we'd see that more often!

From High Diving Hare

Animation Backgrounds via Diskursdisko, via Neven Mrgan

8-bit Lost Buddies by Neven Mrgan

via mrgan.tumblr.com

The end of LOST is near, and Panic's Neven Mrgan thought it was best to commemorate most of the castaways of the show in pixels. By "most" I mean you won't see any Libby, Mikhail, Miles, Jacob, or young Bieber-in-Black in this line-up, but fortunately Mr. Mrgan has provided the Pixel .PSD so you can make-your-own.

Out of the set, Charlie and Hurley are my favorites, and thinking about it isn't Hurely's character basically an island-flavored interpretation of Hoagie from Day of the Tentacle? I think it's pretty clear that LOST ripped off the whole time travel thing in DOTT. I mean, obviously.

Meanwhile, LOST still hasn't fixed ITS pixels. Only a few more episodes, LOST. COME ON.

Obligatory pixelated Twin Peaks Red Room post

via snakebomb.tumblr.com

Sent to me by pen pal and fellow Twin Peaks enthusiast Tim Höfer, a lucious pixel painting of the iconic Red Room and a few other familiar Twin Peaks icons. That cherry pie looks good enough to eat, but honestly, the coffee could be a little more black. As black as midnight on a moonless night, that is.

*sigh*

*misses Twin Peaks*

Black Lodge by Ashley A. Thanks Tim!

Spoiler Alert! QA'ing for video games is NOT A PRIZE

The Tester is going straight for that niche of people who need reality television but just can't find a reason to leave the comfort of the PlayStation Network. Or rather, for all the dreamers dreamin' on about getting a QA job for Sony. Because that's definitely what dreams are made of when it comes to working for the game industry. Just imagine! *sigh*

The Tester is definitely something else. I don't want to spoil the trailer for you if you haven't already seen it (see it), but there's plenty to gawk at. Let's just end this post with a quote from my good friend Steve after seeing the trailer:

You win a fucking show to be in QA for a video game company? Dude. Better prize: fart sandwich

The Tester via GameLife