Deadly Premonition: Capcom, I hate you so much

Deadly Premonition (Red Seeds Profile in Japan) is one of those games you play entirely for the plot and dialogue because the mechanics are so broken. This is a perfect example of a game you should play on Easy mode – there's no point in trying to challenge the mechanics unless you're a masochist, you're just here for the ride. It's a bit like the retarded cousin of Killer 7, which had the deepest plot of any video game, period; and also some of the worst mechanics.

Deadly Premonition is not by Capcom, but as I was playing, and especially as I was playing the completely inappropriate final boss fight(s), I couldn't help but notice how the three worst bits of the game were due to blindly borrowing ideas from Capcom.

Tank Controls and Fixed Shooting

Ever since Resident Evil, games have been using tank controls – pushing forward moves the character forward, pushing left turns the character left, ditto for right. No matter what the camera orientation is. This is completely awkward and unintuitive, and well designed games go with persistent relative controls – pushing the stick right moves your character right on screen. If the camera changes while your character is moving, then the character keeps moving in the same direction as long as the stick is held that way.

Furthermore, you can't aim and move at the same time.

Deadly Premonition mostly uses the intuitive directional controls. But every now and then it throws you into Capcom control mode, including critical times of the final (final) boss fight. It's even worse because normally it uses sane persistent relative controls, but occasionally the camera moves to fixed position and the control scheme changes to Capcom. Which is entirely as bad as it sounds.

People seem to forget that the Resident Evil controls are purposely defective in order to heighten your sense of tension. Your biggest enemy in Resident Evil are the controls. We're long past that, and still Dead Rising 2 uses these purposely bad controls because even Capcom forgets why they did things in the first place.

Even Square Enix finally gave up random encounters as a crutch for stupid and lazy designers. There's no excuse any more. Time to give up tank controls.

Stupid Inappropriate Boss Fight

This is a horror game. It is a psychological thriller right up to the point that it turns into a Boss Fight against a character that wouldn't be out of place in a Capcom fighting game.

Think how badly Bioshock ended and you'll be right on the money – and there's nobody more to blame for the 'every game must end with a boss fight' mentality than Capcom. Capcom doesn't even stop with a boss fight – why have one when you can have five? There's some of this here too, because…

Even more Stupid Inapprorpriate Boss Fight

Spoilers here: Once you beat the stupid inappropriate boss there is an even more stupidly inappropriate two stage boss which will grab you by the short hairs and yank you out of any immersion you had. And again, all I could think here was Devil May Cry. Imagine an episode of CSI or Numbers where the bad guy suddenly gets 500 feet tall in the last five minutes and starts ponderously attacking you while you plink at him with your govt issued 9mm pistol. Oh, and he has a well telegraphed weak spot. That's almost every Capcom game ever made, and sadly, this one.

It's Not All Bad

I still liked the ideas this game had, even if the mechanics and ending were ridiculously bad. I'm not sorry I took the time to play it. But I think it would have worked better as point and click – and that is a horribly low standard.

Capcom, I do love how you tune your non-stupid mechanics so well. You just need some serious examination of what works and what doesn't with the realization that mechanics evolve in mind. Would you make a website now with a blink tag? I don't think so. Nor should use use tank controls or stupid inappropriate boss fights, much less a reprise of every single boss in a row.