D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die

[JaySevenZero]

Here's where you can write up your thoughts and opinions for Access Games' - D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die

[matten zwei]

Hello guys. This is my first post on Cane and Rinse. Sorry for my english, but I'm German.

As a fan of Swery’s “Deadly Premonition”, I was very excited to play “D4”. Actually, its exclusivity was the main reason for me to get a xbox one. And although the gameplay was very different from “Deadly Premonition”, i wasn’t disappointed at all when i got my hands on it. Maybe because Swerys games are more about storytelling and characters than the actual gameplay. David Youngs sad story was told in a beautiful and appealing way which made it quick and easy for me to get invested in the character. Although I didn’t like Young as much as York in “Deadly Premonition”, I did like the other characters, especially Deborah Anderson and Roland Walken. The QTEs were surprisingly fun to play, hilarious and fitted well into the bizarre story and were a perfect contrast to the slow paced point-and-click-sections of the game. Another thing that stands out in this game is the amazing soundtrack. The intro-theme is in many of my itunes playlists. When i bought the game, I didn’t know, that it wasn’t finished, so I was quite disappointed when I finished Episode 2 and got thrown back to the prologue again, because the game was amazing so far. I am pretty sure, that it must have sold terribly and I guess the reason why, might be quite simple: The games style is very japanese and might not be appealing enough to larger western audiences. That wouldn’t be such a big deal, if the game hasn’t been exclusive to the xbox one, which sold disastrous in japan. I guess everyone at Access Games knew that it would be hard to sell this game, but I can imagine that they needed Microsofts money to develop this game. So let’s hope the PC version sells better and Swery will continue the story.

[The_reviewist]

Oh, where to begin?
Being of the persuasion that came down on the negative side in relation to Deadly Premonition, I have no undue affection for the work of Swery. I found DP a slow, plodding mess with shonky controls, ugly dialogue and the sense that whoever made it had a childlike fascination with Twin Peaks, and western cop drama culture, without any real understanding of why that worked. I mention this only because it meant that a few moments into D4, when the game began and I was still wrestling with the aesthetic as well as the slightly odd controls, I gave an audible groan at seeing Swery's name in the credits.

But, I decided to give it a fair shake. Lo and behold, it was the story of a semi-psychic detective, based loosely on a childlike idea of a western cop drama... yes. I wish I was kidding. Before I go on, I'd like to point out that I actually enjoyed D4 far more than Deadly Premonition. Mainly due to the lack of hours of driving segments involved. However, it's almost as if the game was trying to undo every good step it took with a series of bad ones. After the initial intriguing icy lake opening, introducing me to David Young, his wife, and his condition... then in stepped the comedy ex-partner, the anthropomorphic (and depressingly sexualised) house-cat girl, and an inordinate amount of clicking about the apartment. This, combined with the trademark Swery clichéd dialogue, had me literally banging my head off the sofa's arm rest as I played. Something no other game has ever brought me to do.

This pattern continued. I liked the concept of his appearance on the plane, and the smattering of ideas around whether he's mad, or could really slip into time and potentially change things, although the game hinted that it's a closed-loop timeline story. Yet in the midst of such moments, it tossed in painfully dull fetch-quests, and characters which drove me fully to distraction. From the barmy passenger obsessed with the window squeaks, to the towering, inhaler chugging cabin crew colossus, each of which made me want to strangle the scriptwriters, animators and Swery himself for subjecting me to this, only to then batter me over the head with Young realising his disjointed time travel a full 10 minutes after I'd already worked it out.

Stranger still, after the herculean effort of attrition it took me to get through Episode 1, Episode 2 seemed oddly half-baked. Adding insult to injury as the story powered through a far faster & more enjoyable stint, only to end on a nonsensical cliffhanger, with a villain straight out of a 90s cartoon appearing at the end. I felt doubly cheated, as after suffering through the first episode, having finally began to have some measure of fun, it simply stopped.

I will admit. It's not a game for me, some people will love this sort of daft, borderline parody nonsense, with the added flavour of it being western culture viewed brokenly through a quirky eastern lens. I'm not one of those people, but I can admire the tenacity to which it flings itself so fully to the cause. The weird characters, odd dialogue, and frankly cumbersome controls were what some might ascribe to "charm". For me, that wasn't fun, it was soul destroying, as were the strange engine choices such as the dialogue trees that would give you an accuracy percentage if you guessed which of Young's nonsensical replies was correct during a flashback. It's a shame the game stopped on episode 2, but frankly, I couldn't possibly recommend this to anyone. Ever. Please. No More.