Deadly Premonition (2010)
Messy, buggy, ugly and thoroughly offbeat, Swery65’s story of small town crime left journalists blinking in wide-eyed disbelief. They proceeded to rattle off a laundry list of complaints before slapping it with low scores across the board. But were they missing the point?
Word soon got round that Deadly Premonition was a flawed work of genius and the winds of change began to blow. Critics late on arrival were kinder, willing to overlook the broken visuals and hammy gameplay. But if you’re the kind of gamer who allocates your dollars and cents to 9/10s alone, you likely missed out on it altogether.
Give Deadly Premonition a try though, because, for all its batty behavior, it’s something a little bit different: an open-world crime adventure with a thoroughly wacky story to boot.
Dead Rising (2006)
Dead Rising was ahead of its time. Even today, with a remaster and a slew of sequels under its belt, the original entry rarely gets the praise it deserves.
You’re a photojournalist named Frank caught up in the middle of a zombie outbreak and trapped inside a large shopping mall. Help is on its way in 72 hours, and an in-game clock is ticking (the 72 hours equates to roughly six hours in real time). What you do with your time is up to you, but if you want to unlock the “true” ending and uncover the mysteries of Dead Rising, you need to chalk off all the required missions within the required limit.
On your first go, underpowered and outmatched, that’s pretty hard to do, but the genius of Dead Rising is that you keep all your gear and all your stats in every subsequent playthrough. Yes, New Game+ is old hat today, but here it’s built into the very fabric of the world. Since you can’t hope to beat the clock the first time around, you build up your knowledge of the map with the view to taking another crack in a few hours.
So many games bolt in place a New Game+ mode, but Dead Rising truly interrogates what its purpose is. It’s my favorite in the series, too, as it pulls no punches.