Circuit Jerk

Today’s an important day for a couple of reasons. The most obvious is it’s Heavy Rain launch day, and that game is going to be ridiculously good. With all the bucks and over-talked bullet points, it’s one of those IT titles that make it fun to be a twentysomething with just enough disposable income to consider gaming a lifestyle choice.

The other game is going to be an absurd pile of horseshit, but that makes it no less of an essential purchase. Deadly Premonition is the first boxed game to launch at the $20 price point for the Xbox 360. And… well, you just have to see this goddamn thing to believe it.

I don’t know what to say. I don’t wanna say Twin Peaks, because if you’re at all familiar with that source material, you certainly don’t need people pointing it out to you. But, man, if that ain’t Twin Peaks filtered through a bunch of Japanese people working on 5 bucks a day and for a shot at the Embarrass Humanity Award, I don’t know what is. And I probably don’t have to tell you that this game won its fan base the minute they caught wind this shit was going down.

Oh, what’s that? You want to know how it plays? Well, take a look at this.

Oh, yeah, dipshit, it plays just as bad as you thought it would? I’ll be seeing you in line, mister.

The real triumph of this game isn’t that it’s a colossal mess that knows how to get my motor going. It might simply be that it’s a game with guns and large character models and zombies and all that other stuff you get in a $60 but for $20. Even if it sucks, and you’re immune to its charms, you should still consider spending your dollar vote here. The industry needs this price point on this kind of game as much as we do.

And let’s not be completely myopic here. It’s probably entirely possible to make a game that doesn’t embarrass at this price point. Sadly, you will probably always miss out on fidelity here, and that’s not an insignificant point. But what if you just want a competent game to kill a couple hours, and you don’t want it to be Silly Billy Garbage Collector on Live Arcade or Tumbly Tim’s Physics Journey on PSN. Think of it as the game equivalent of all the B-movies on NetFlix.