A I would say my favorite underrated game is Deadly Premonition. With the exception of one very special person, every single one of my friends either don't know this game's existence or they didn't give the game a chance, and I barely see anyone talk about this game. I have seen titles after titles after titles given to this one game by few websites like Best Worst Game, Most Polarizing Game, Most Suprisingly Good Game, and many more. I can see how a lot people don't like this game, graphically the game looks terrible for a 2010 game, the gameplay is really arcady, the voice acting is iffy, the controls are bad (For the Xbox 360 version from what I've been hearing. I really don't know how bad the controls were for the X360 because I own the PS3 version which from all reports had better controls, but I honestly can't say.), the audio gets repetitive (Especially for vehicles where the motor sound repeats after you reach a certain limit), some mechanics were infuriating, it was a very easy game, and a lot more.
However what me, and a lot of other people who have played it, liked about it was it's charm. I absolutely loved the story, it had me guessing on who the main villain was the entire time and I like that it was very heavily inspired by Twin Peaks. I love the characters, each one have a special place in my heart (In terms of gaming) due to how quirky some of them were, especially with the main character Francis Morgan. The game, while very arcady, had it's own charm to it that I love like some of the sounds that happen when you run over objects or pick items up, reminds me a lot like a PS2 or PS1 survival horror game. I love that the game was a survival horror comedy, I have not seen a lot of survival horror comedy games in my life (Not like a lot of other survival horror games, like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, where it is serious or tries to be serious from start to finish and is only funny through stuff that was unintentionally funny, easter eggs, or unlockables. Deadly Premonition did it's comedy without any of that and I like that.). I love the soundtrack, one song in particular that I love from the game's soundtrack is Life Is Beautiful, that song plays so many times during the course of the game, first few times I found it charming, next few times it start to run thin on my nerves, and before I know it I'm humming and whistling the song non-stop and ended up loving it. The other was some of it's mechanics, I hated the driving the most because it always took so long and you had to buy gas (And I think there was only 1 gas station in the entire game), like going into a first person view and manually turn the windshield whippers on and it actually affecting the windshield and the lights going on and off, the game gave you money for doing mundane tasks like shaving (Someone right now, name me another game where it awarded you for shaving.) and having your clothes cleaned or you can even get awarded the good old fashion way by being a total creeper and looking through windows to see what people are doing, and it added in a few mechanics like hunger and sleep which makes you more hungry the more you're tired (However they both deplete slowly and food is plentiful in the game.) but those I have seen before at that time although I don't remember sleep coming to any effect in many games during that time. I'm also an addict for open world games and games that have side activities, and this game's map is huge (Probably not as huge as GTA San Andreas and definitely not even as big as the map in Just Cause 2, but still huge) so that means a lot of collectible hunting and some side quests. Perhaps the biggest thing that I about the game is it's overall charm. I have not seen any game, that directly talks about real life T.V. shows, movies, celebrities, and music bands like Deadly Premonition does like Tom and Jerry, Back To The Future II, Steven Spielberg, A Clockwork Orange, The Damned, Star Wars, Stanley Kubrick, and even Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, and this is another reason why I didn't mind the driving sections, because the main character would always talk about stuff like this when you're driving and which made me like driving just so I can hear the next T.V. show, movie, band, or whatever that the main character was going to talk about and express his opinion on. Then as I mentioned earlier, the game plays like an old survival horror game, the characters are quirky in their own rights, and plus it's a survival horror comedy (How many of those do you see nowadays) and I like it's humor.
I think Deadly Premonition is one of those games that did not, and still doesn't, get a lot of attention when it needs to because in my opinion Deadly Premonition is a game that shows that you don't need to be up to standards of today's games in terms of graphics, audio, and complexity to be a good game. That can be said for a lot of games, especially indie games, but I think that it's Deadly Premonition that holds the torch.
