For our inaugural entry of the Games Club, we’ll be playing Swery65’s cult hit, Deadly Premonition!

We’ll be back in two weeks to share our first impressions. In the meantime, let’s avoid posting any spoilers in the comments. As usual, a transcript is below the cut.

Transcript

Welcome to Push to Smart’s Games Club! If you missed our introduction, the Games Club is a new feature where we invite you to play a game along with us. After introducing the game today, we’ll meet back in two weeks for a mini-let’s play-slash-water cooler, then finally come back to discuss the game and all it’s spoilers. For our inaugural entry, we’re going to play Deadly Premonition, the breakthrough game from cult auteur, Swery65.

​We’ve highlighted Deadly Premonition a few times on the show before. But while it’s one of Stacey’s favorite games, I still haven’t played it! We figured the Games Club would be the perfect opportunity to dive right in and final experience it–because, as she assures me, it is an experience.

As a fair warning, while Deadly Premonition often enters the realm of the surreal and silly, it is still a horror game at its heart and draws influence from the films of the 80s and 90s; if you’re not comfortable discussing the ways in which gender and sexuality is often portrayed in these films, you might want to sit this one out. We promise the next choice will be a bit more E for Everyone.

Deadly Premonition starts as a murder mystery with a supernatural twist. As Special Agent Francis York Morgan (just call him York), you explore spooky woods and take down ghosts in a manner much like Resident Evil 4, but Deadly Premonition diverges from the horror standard as soon as you and York are set loose in the weird, wonderful, and lived-in town of Greenvale.

​Between fighting ghosts and solving the Laura Palmer-esque case at its center, you are permitted to explore the town in near-real-time. You’ll find yourself driving to the far reaches of town to find lost bones, collect the right recipe ingredients for an impromptu date, and escort an elderly neighbor home. You’ll talk to yourself–or maybe York’s talking to you, the player? That’s just one of the many idiosyncrasies that make Deadly Premonition a fascinating text to play, unpack, and, yes, experience.

​The game can take between 10 and 60 hours to complete depending on your investment in the town’s denizens. While Stacey thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the people of Greenvale, we’re also interested in hearing how you play. Similarly, I’ll also be playing the Director’s Cut of the game, which includes a few tweaks, as well as some additional narrative framing. While the Director’s Cut is more accessible through both Steam and the Playstation Network, we hope those of you who are playing the original Xbox 360 will jump into the discussion as well. Whatever you’re playing, and whatever your style, join us back here in two weeks while I attempt my first playthrough.