Last week I finished Deadly Premonition, which is now probably one of my top favorite games ever. Paradoxically, it is also one of the clunkiest and ugliest (for this gen) games ever created.

It was originally going to be a straight-up Twin Peaks ripoff/tribute called Rainy Woods, but somewhere along the way they decided for legal reasons to add more originality. That’s not to say there aren’t still Twin Peaks touchstones all over the place, they’re just not as extreme as originally intended. As a huge Twin Peaks fan, I first heard about this game being in development a couple of years ago, and I’ve kept an eye out for it since.

Deadly Premonition is:

• Twin Peaks-style quirky town / characters
• Open-World / Time Mechanic a la Dead Rising
• Silent Hill-esque “otherworlds”
• Dreamcast-era graphics… in 2010
• Truly hilarious and often baffling dialogue from its characters
• The most endearing videogame protagonist ever
• Extremely clunky camera / controls
• One of the most interesting and dark twisting roller-coaster rides of suspense, comedy and horror I’ve ever experienced
• A truly emotionally moving ending, which I haven’t seen in a game since Silent Hill 2

I bought Deadly Premonition for the 360 for $20 brand new. The first hour or two I felt very ripped off, but once I became used to the clunkiness of the mechanics, I started to “get” it. By the time I was about halfway through, I was really enjoying myself, and by the end I was ready to call it one of my top favorite games ever.

I can’t recommend this game hard enough, especially for $20, but I can all but guarantee you will think it is shit when you first play it. (Possibly the second, third and fourth as well, but given time you will be sucked in.) Here’s a great Destructoid review that does a pretty good job of summarizing DP’s “uniqueness”.