D4

[Flawless]

New episodic game from SWERY and the people behind Deadly Premonition.

An episodic noir mystery, D4 follows the story of a detective with the curious ability to dive back in time. He must use this power to solve his wife's murder, and then try to prevent it.

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[goh]

Re: D4

Why did they skip D3?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_%28video_game%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D2_%28video_game%29

[Candyman5]

And looks to be Kinect. Watch the video of the hands going across and up.

[Flawless]

Re: D4

D4 stands for Dark Dreams Don’t Die, download-only title, optional Kinect support.


IGN

D4 is a murder mystery with an intriguing hook: its detective lead David has lost his memory, but is able to dive into the past to solve crimes. Specifically, his wife’s murder.

Of course, given this is a game from Swery, the real hook is likely to be just how strange and offbeat everything is, and D4’s initial reveal certainly doesn’t disappoint on that basis. David refers to his wife as ‘little Peggy,’ and interactions between characters are deliberately weird, with bizarre facial expressions and glances held for uncomfortably long moments.

“Deadly Premonition… was a little bit weird,” Swery tells us, “and this one’s also a little bit weird.”

The best way to think about D4 – from the little we’ve seen – is that it’s going to play something like a modern point and click adventure. Think Telltale’s The Walking Dead series and you’d be on the right track. Within the demo’s passenger jet setting, for instance, players are able to investigate the world in a number of ways, bringing up information about people and objects, and choosing their responses when in conversation. Action sequences are choreographed, but will play out with a few different variations based on how well players follow the on-screen cues.

Swery explicitly made the point, however, that D4 is designed to be played sitting down. He also said that the Xbox One controller would be supported for players that aren’t interested in using Kinect.

D4 will be episodic in structure, with David’s quest to solve his wife’s murder as the overarching story arc. It's also a digital-only title, and at this stage the team is planning on releasing it episode by episode.

[Sandman42]

Re: D4

Hopefully the soundtrack rivals Deadly Premonition.

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[York Morgan]

Re: D4

Hopefully the soundtrack rivals Deadly Premonition.

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That damn thing has been my ringtone for the last three years

[Flawless]

Re: D4

Eurogamer: D4 looks like the first game to be truly better with Kinect

It's a surreal, hilarious and often imaginative adventure game that takes the bizarre humour of Deadly Premonition to an extreme, and it's really all the better for it.

There are stamps that tie it to its spiritual predecessors; Forest Kaysen will appear, as he does in all of Swery's own games, while less explicitly the main character's called David Young, a throwback to the protagonist of Rainy Woods before Twin Peaks' lawyers presumably moved in and it became Deadly Premonition. More importantly, though, the loving reception that Francis York Morgan's tale received gives D4 a certain confidence; after all their plaudits, it feels as if Swery and his writing partner Kenji Goda are truly comfortable with how unhinged their art can be.

And it's never been as unhinged as in this. You play as David Young, a man blessed with the ability to travel through time via his interaction with Mementos, a skill that's central to your unravelling of the mystery surrounding the death of Young's girlfriend. The episode we sit in on takes place on a passenger plane mid-flight, and it's told as a graphic adventure game that's probably best described as Heavy Rain played for laughs.

Using Kinect allows you to survey scenes with your hand replacing the traditional mouse pointer, where you can hold and grab items as well as shift your view by swiping across. You can also interact with objects too - which in this demonstration largely means shoving crew staff and passengers - and often there'll be a segue into a Heavy Rain-like gesture lent a little tactility with Kinect. Bring Young's face down to a sink and you'll have to bring both hands up to splash it with water, an act that replenishes the stamina you rely on in order to carry out in-game actions.

Kinect comes in handy elsewhere, too. Dialogue trees can be selected by reading out the answer of your choosing, tilting your head can subtly shift the camera around and you can grab items by closing your hands into a fist. This being Kinect 2.0 it's all possible while sitting down, and this being the product of a Microsoft that's doubtless well aware of how D4's target audience views its peripheral it's entirely optional, but as Young's investigations on the plane deepen and have him confronting a suspect it's clear that this is one game that's most likely better with Kinect.

The scrap is fuelled by QTEs, but they're energetic and tied in to such ludicrous on-screen choreography that most people will be laughing too hard to take offence. Suitcases cascade musically around the cabin while Young interrupts the fight at one point for an impromptu dance with a flight attendant, and the finale sees the player pick up the discarded leg of a fashion designer's mannequin friend (I did say it was weird) to kick off a baseball mini-game. With the swing delivered correctly - though it's worth bearing in mind that it's impossible to fail D4's QTEs - the ball flies across the cabin, its force knocking the suspect's eye clean out of its socket. Scene finished, and one giggling demo attendee well and truly won over.

[Sandman42]

Re: D4

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I need this game. SWERY is insane.

[Sandman42]

Re: D4

Finished this last night. Makes me sad that the poor sales likely mean there will be no Season 2. Microsoft just dumped this off with no notice or marketing at all, the game was just left out to die.

All the Swery quirks are there though. Great zany characters, hilarious music, allusions to David Lynch works. The ending is just bat**** insane also.