Having played D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die through to its cliff-hanger finale, I do not believe that the words of this review – or of any others could do it justice. By way of anecdotal evidence, I tried to explain its many levels of weird to my girlfriend. Feeling I couldn’t quite get my point across, I decided to show her a section of the game in motion. Picking up where I had left off, I crossed the room with the game’s protagonist, David Young, to answer a door which was halfway to being banged off its hinges. Upon opening it, I was greeted with a woman wearing nothing but heels, a leotard and a large bow in her hair. Added to this was the mouse she was holding in her mouth. What followed was a sequence of QTEs where I was assaulted by this woman, resulting in her spitting the mouse across the room and into David’s mouth. Did I mention she’s actually a cat?
There will certainly be gamers who will need to read no farther. This is not your average game; however, it doesn’t come from the mind of your average developer. Swery65, as he is known, is the creator of Deadly Premonitions, itself a cult classic on the Xbox 360, where wonky controls, bizarre and compelling characters and quirky gameplay are all part of the charm. It is entirely possible to run out of variations of the word ‘weird’ when writing about Swery and his games.
Yet to focus on the absurdity is to do this game a disservice. There is many interesting things going on during the 5 odd hours it takes to complete what amounts to the first series of this game. Much like recent point-and-click-adventures for console – The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us being the most notable – D4 has a large story to tell, and (sales permitting, presumably) will be brought to us in instalments. And that 5 hours completion time can be slightly less or much more, depending on how much of a completionists you are.
You play as David Young, a narcotics police for the Boston Police Department, whose accent never seems to fit quite right. Since the murder of his wife, Little Peggy, he has been working as a Private Investigator, with the sole case of trying to find out those responsible for the murder of his beloved. In the incident where his wife was shot, David also took a bullet to the head. While he survived, he has no recollection of the event until he found his wife’s body and heard her whisper her cryptic last words, “look for ‘D’”. Aside from this clue, David’s injury also granted him to the ability to travel back in time using mementos, objects which relate to important moments of the past. Not only can he return to past moments, but David can also interact with everyone and everything. Along with his partner, Forrest Kaysen, the two of them attempt to uncover the mystery behind Little Peggy’s death.
You move between David’s apartment and a flight which may contain evidence relating to the case in the form of a prisoner being transported by a U.S. Federal Marshal. The first thing you notice in the game is the control scheme. The game can be played with Kinect, which certainly keeps you active if you opt for it over a controller. Each action, from walking to opening doors interacting with objects requires a grab or a swipe. Twitch streams of the game are recommended to see people do what amounts to a full work out, especially during some of the action sequences. I played the game with a controller, and while the combination of buttons presses was initially off-putting, you soon sink into a rhythm.
It is worth your while to explore everywhere to get a fuller appreciation of the story and the characters you encounter. They are just as splendidly outlandish as you could imagine, including a flamboyant fashion designer and his mannequin, a flight attendant with a penchant for inhaling drugs mid-conversation and an abnormally tall gentleman with a sinister air, who wins hands down the word for the most annoying voice-acting committed to gaming. Many of the characters can be talked to, with the odd dialogue choice presented, whereby you try to gain 100% synch by saying what responding how you believe David would. However, the game does not seem to deviate in any meaningful way should you hit 50% or even less. Objects will become highlighted if you interact with them, and are easy to find as David is on a fixed path in every scenario, with the ability to spin 360° at each point.
Every action you perform costs stamina, which can be replenished by eating food. Only once did allow myself to reach 0 stamina, resulting in paying 1000 credits to retry, but in general food is easy to obtain and you will find it randomly scattered through each area or can buy it. The need for stamina itself is questionable, though having accepted every other idiosyncrasy of the game it would be petty to complain too much about this one. You also have an Assassin’s Creed-esque ‘vision’ mode which highlights evidence, and a health meter, neither of which you will need to keep too much of an eye on as you progress.
As well as the main search for your wife’s killer(s), there are also tonnes of extra, optional cases to be found. Some can be completed on the spot, while others take a bit more thorough searching. While searching the plane in the past, it is possible to jump back into the present in order to take something back into the past to complete them if needed. However, for my first play through I let the main story take centre stage and only completed a handful of these side missions. This is a game that can be even more rewarding second time around. Suddenly, the bizarre has become the norm and you are better able to take everything in, rather than being distracted.
D4, like its spiritual predecessor Deadly Premonitions, has flaws that can be picked at. Yet these same flaws can easily be viewed from a whole other perspective and endear the game to the player even further. From the dodgy accents, the decidedly Japanese take on Boston culture (clam chowder, baseball and music ripped from a Dropkick Murphy’s CD all feature), slightly clumsy controls and a bonkers story, everything can either push you away or drag you farther down the rabbit hole. I for one am more than willing to stick with this story until its conclusion, so fingers crossed more gamers embrace Swery’s particular brand of gaming so we can (perhaps) make sense of it all.
