First Impressions: Deadly Premonition: Origins (Nintendo Switch)

Ah, Deadly Premonition…one of the most divisive games ever made. For every person who loves its insanity, there are double that who think it’s one of the worst games ever made.

I sit in the camp of the former. It’s one of my favourite games ever and had a profound effect on me when I played it many years ago. From the wacky characters to the insane dialogue to the gripping story, Deadly Premonition is wonderful. All it’s faults, of which there are many just add to its charm. The Xbox 360 version was one of the first video game reviews written for the site and you can read that here.

Of course this isn’t a review. It’s our first impressions of the re-released version on Nintendo Switch. Called ‘Deadly Premonition: Origins, its release came at the same time as a sequel was announced. To say I was excited was an understatement, sadly this version of Deadly Premonition is very disappointing.

Why? It has sound issues that make it nearly unplayable. Strong words? One of the game’s major strengths is the audio, in particular the voices. Imagine if 7 times out of every 10, no audio was heard while York, Emily, the Sheriff etc. spoke. Well, that is the sad reality of Deadly Premonition: Origins on Nintendo Switch.

It’s a broken game where not only do the voices rarely work but sometimes, they’ll start and cut out. Then we have missing sound effects like footsteps, gun shots and more. It’s intermittent but it happens far too much to be forgivable.

It’s such a shame as beyond that, the game is Deadly Premonition in every glorious way. It fits the Switch so well, both when docked and when portable. The latter is actually my preferred way to play. There’s just something so cool about playing this game handheld.

However, this can’t be recommended because of the sound issues. When the version released in 2010 is better because it doesn’t have this flaw, something has sadly gone wrong.