Deadly Premonition 2 on Switch: Just How Bad Is Performance?

[@Jousoful]

Not everybody knows this, but the "2" is actually for the two frames per second

[@SeiyaDLuffy]

XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

[@blues05]

So obvious!

[@boppbipp1446]

part_number*fps=const

[@robertdunlop5247]

22

[@DJTEKTORO]

😂👍🏽

[@stevenhida]

We're rendering a room here...at 22 fps

[@MrJj86uk]

Ha just did same comment myself. Funny.

[@19HajimeSaitou91]

Wich = God

[@alexweinberg3913]

Deadly Premonition 2: A PowerPoint In Disguise

[@FarmYardGaming]

Those are some smoooooooooooooooooth PowerPoint transitions

[@Zeegoku1007]

Yeah , game is running at most 60 seconds per frame sometimes...not too bad 😎

[@jarde1989]

Man I hate when someone beats me to a clever comment 😂😂

[@Dragonfury3000]

Lmao

[@raiden_pb]

every switch game ever

[@Tyranniod]

"The original starts with a car crash but I think that the real car crash is the sequel." Damm Richard! 😂😂😂

[@jedijames5982]

Richard sounds so polite, yet so savage at the same time 😂

[@JohnDoe-kv3kd]

He just slid that sweet burn in there so smooth. Damn, it was pure poetry..

[@gamerxt333]

Re-creating the crash with his hands all a flurry.

[@user-ro1cc8tz6d]

"works on my PC" -gamedevs

[@alanjay479]

Thank you. I'm so tired of people acting like atrocious performance was "always part of the charm" because of horrid ports when the original Xbox version ran mostly fine.

[@SeiyaDLuffy]

That i was going to Say. Xbox 360 runs fine, PS3(Japanesse version)runs fine too. Just the director's cut runs bad

[@jackoski__19]

There’s no charm in bad performance. I’ve never seen a game excused like this before.

[@earlyriser03]

Exactly. And it’s even better on Xbox One.

[@SeiyaDLuffy]

@@earlyriser03 yes, is even better on Xbox One due the Backwards Compatibility

[@BAZCHILLIN]

They should bring DP2 to the 360 for its final form!

[@Sephy69]

it would probably run better!

[@TruTrae]

Adam Bell um don’t you remember how dark souls ran on 360?

[@Sephy69]

@@TruTrae no, never played it. Not a game I'm into sadly. Was it bad?

[@BAZCHILLIN]

@@TruTrae it's just a joke, DS1 on 360 was fine, blight town was a breeze.

[@UndeadCollector]

@@TruTrae It did run well, there was only one Part of the World that struggles hard (Blighttown)

[@AriaLaurel]

I'm surprised to see anyone defending the slideshow performance of this game. Deadly Premonition on Switch, which is how I assume a lot of people were introduced to the series recently, is by no means perfect but apart from the driving it's very playable. This is just something else altogether... The fun jank is the strange dialog, weird animations, insane plot, and (debatably) the subpar combat. 10fps is not fun jank. Long loading and hitches during combat are not fun jank.

[@christopherpoussin3948]

@@pedrocx486 Lol.. did you actually read his comment?

[@immigrant133]

FPS obsession is a mental illness. Digital Foundry has done a lot to spread this madness. Games should be judged for their artistic value, not technical specifications.

[@nathanriver1556]

@@immigrant133 When performance gets in the way of the artistic vision you can't separate the two.

[@HaydenRoberts08]

Pedro Morais He’s defending the original DP, re read his comment.

[@Noname15514]

@@christopherpoussin3948 Fanboys don't know how to read.

[@benbodnar976]

Single digit frames at points. This blows my mind holy shit

[@SunCityGamer]

All the way down to 0!

[@bloxyman22]

During my gameplay or any other videos I have seen, I have never seen as bad performance outdoors as this digitalfoundry clip. Low framerate of around 15fps during daytime is normal with also random split seconds stutters here and there. But in this case they can last for several seconds and that is not normal even for this game. I also do not have the long several second freeze when interacting with a character.

[@FNCSBROS123]

@@bloxyman22 theres no defending how terrible the performance of this game is

[@SavantGardeEX]

@@FNCSBROS123 Yeah this game is badly optimized, but it's also on the fact that the nintendo switches hardware is so weak.

[@JackFrost-1856]

@@SavantGardeEX are you people actually naive enough to believe the hardware is at fault when more impressive and demanding games look and run better on the Switch?

[@RicochetForce]

"I can't see the difference between 60 fps and 144 fps." "I can't see the difference between 30 fps and 60 fps." "I can't see the difference between 24 fps and 30 fps." "I can't see the difference between 15 fps and 24 fps." "I can't see."

[@The2143]

I can't

[@iconofsin4578]

Who's jugs are those? 👀

[@SavantGardeEX]

But for real i can't see a difference from 60 to 144 fps tho.

[@Keivz]

Exodus Arise You & me both. Wasted $ on a 144 hz monitor taking people’s word that there was a night & day difference smh

[@Mindbending81]

Lmao!! 👏

[@maxkur67]

7:05 You are forgetting that Deadly Premonition 2 is done by Toybox, the authors of that very Director's Cut version and all further iterations while Access Games is the one responsible for original on X360 & PS3 (JP-only) back in 2010 and that mentioned D4, don't confuse them.

[@residentgrigo4701]

Yep. Access Game is on ok budget type dev. Toybox is shit. I still finished DP 2 today. 6.0/10 for now. The original and D4 are better. Even in terms of story.

[@ianmitchell5979]

It sucks that Swery left Access games. It killed D4, and made Deadly Premonition 1 & 2 a technical mess for everything. It wasn't even given mouse and keyboard controls for the PC port of DP2.

[@dejiko]

The X360 version of DP1 has that Twin Peaks filter going on which really adds to the atmosphere.

[@Etrius0023]

Plus there's a bunch of visual effects that are bugged/missing and other graphical compromises for performance in the consequent re-releases.

[@dennett316]

The state of this is not acceptable, and seeing people defending it by claiming that Swery obviously didn't care about the framerate or that it adds to the charm and is just like the original, it's just nonsense. If they do patch it, I wonder how many of those making excuses for it along those lines will put their money where their mouth is and leave it unpatched? After all, they wouldn't want to mess with Swery's intent or take away the charm, would they? It's ridiculous the lengths some will go to to excuse this kind of thing.

[@Etrius0023]

Yep. As a huge Swery fan it's obvious that this has more to do with the non-existent budget/inexperienced development team than anything intentional or by design. Everyone who bought the game is owed a patch.

[@MrYoungHegelian]

It's an exclusive game so some fanboys will defend it just on that but most everybody thinks this runs terribly.

[@charlestrudel8308]

@@Etrius0023 I guess, we will need to wait again for 7 months before having a version that somewhat run, like DP origin now...

[@arbiter-]

Its hilarious that this game gets defended while it's fundamentally broken while The Last of Us 2 is still getting so much hate and it's a technical masterpiece. People are stupid and the internet only made it worse.

[@noeltiwaz1378]

I think it has great story but the controls, the graphics its horrendous I wanna throw my controller at the tv

[@Granhier]

Any DF video with a LICHDOM BATTLEMAGE reference is a video worth watching

[@MyReksio]

Nobody: Literally nobody: John: *LICHDOM BATTLEMAGE* XDD

[@DJTEKTORO]

Yea it’s Crytek engine which is known to be intense, but good news Lichdom and Agony are both patched and worthy games for both collectors & niche gamers. So basically hidden gems.

[@picolete]

But Lichdom got kinda fixed later, they should re test it on xbox one x

[@19HajimeSaitou91]

Any video with Wichard *

[@_V.Va_]

@@MyReksio No.

[@DenkyManner]

I guess they pressed "publish to Switch" for the first time last week.

[@Two49]

Seems like it. Someone should steal Swery's laptop and press "export to PC" lmao.

[@DarkMatterVisible]

15:36 The issue is clearly not the engine. They have obviously screwed up their memory handling. They probably also screwed up the batching and culling system, I can guarantee there are dozens or hundreds of operations running unseen in the background for absolutely no reason. There’s no shortage of profiling tools for Unity that show you incredibly detailed stats of everything that is going on in the game. There is no excuse for the game to run like this, and there’s no reason to not fix it. They can implement fixes for all of these issues without reworking the game. They’re clearly just incapable of doing so.

[@LiminalDreams91]

No

[@dr.loomis4221]

just...no

[@InJeffable]

Deadly Premonition 2 looks like a Dreamcast port with enhanced textures. There's no way this game should be having performance issues on Switch.

[@RomainDelmaire]

Considering how it looks, it definitely could've (should have) ran at a stable 60fps

[@TomDobo1992]

To be honest i dont think it would matter if it was on X1X or PS4 Pro but the game would still run so poor. This is just terrible Devs rushing a game to make quick money.

[@JohnDoe-kv3kd]

@@TomDobo1992 And looking at the other game it wasn't much better though. I mean who would unlock the framerate so you get a nice wonky constantly fluctuating fps?! At least the 360 version had a basically locked 30fps,how could someone look at the PS3 version and say yeah we should bring that version over.

[@xboxbot77_91]

Most Dreamcaat games ran at a smooth 60fps. This is far from a Dreamcast game.

[@skurasch]

The Dreamcast had really good texture filtering, it was capable of better textures than the ps2.

[@Floodsye]

When you begin talking about sub 10 FPS as "charm," you're lost in the sauce. Can't imagine being so deluded to think that this game is actually playable...it's a crime lol. Rich and John certainly had some fun talking about it at least :P

[@RicochetForce]

Yeah, I love how much fun they were having tearing into it. Though I'm not surprised by people defending poor rendering performance in games. For many years I've seen people defend Ocarina of Time's abysmal framerate.

[@VexAcer]

@@RicochetForce Pretty much every N64 game had framerate issues of some kind. OOT's 20fps is obviously low, but it isn't alone in that.

[@LukeSparrow221]

@@VexAcer N64 is literal DECADES ago. In the modern dat/age there are 0 excuses, especially for a game with graphics this unimpressive.

[@FNCSBROS123]

@@LukeSparrow221 ya lol this game looks like a dream cast game

[@DieHardjagged]

@@VexAcer Why the fuck do you think Nintendo decided to rerelease it for the 3DS because of that.

[@TilSkywalker]

So I used Unity in my Bachelor thesis and I can assure you that you can easily put more trees and buildings into a scene and run it at a higher framerate on a midrange android phone without any issues... What the heck happened here? It is fascinating!

[@rhysjones8506]

People will try and blame the switch, but it just seems like lazy work to me...

[@JohnnyWednesday]

It's just poorly optimized unfortunately. .NET doesn't help either - the garbage collection can hammer your tight loops if you're not very accustomed to dealing with it. Yeah a native language and an engine like Unreal will always perform better - but you can come close with .NET and unity - but unless you know what unity is doing for you? you're not going to be able to manage the 'black box' effectively - with the open world nature? I'd bet the main problem is the spatial partitioning system - it often is with all but the most experienced coders.

[@apcrol]

@@JohnnyWednesday there is already incremental garbage collector and it works perfectly on switch. "engine like Unreal will always perform better" - have you seen Ark Survival on switch lol?

[@Astfgl]

@@JohnnyWednesday Unity doesn't use .NET at all. Yes you program in C# but the implementation is based on the Mono runtime and compiler toolchain. Besides that for consoles Unity makes use of IL2CPP, which translates the compiled C# code into C++ and then passes that on to another compiler to turn it into pure native code. Combined with the incremental garbage collector and things like Burst you can write some pretty performant game code with Unity, provided you use the tools well.

[@raiden_pb]

switch is just way too underpowered of a system, the fact that fortnite which is an incredibly optimized game runs at 30fps on the switch while being 60fps everywhere, including mobile should give you an indication of how much underpowered the system is.

[@TheRacePig]

Wait hold on a second, that bit where you fire the gun and it freezes for a second, but doesn't a second time....that's on the fly shader compilation! On a console! What on earth! There are some pretty severe core competency issues with this dev team, clearly.

[@garageghost6038]

Thank you for pointing this out! I knew that that type of stutter was familiar, but I couldn't quite figure it out. Clearly that's not the only issue tho, since the frame rate is still terrible even after staring at a single spot for hours. I wish they'd just use one of the many tools that unity provides to debug performance issues.

[@bltzcstrnx]

How is this possible? Console is a fixed platform, the hardware & software stack is guaranteed.

[@dannonyogurt98]

I'm surprised rich didn't try it on his overcooked switch. I would've like to confirm its a CPU bottleneck.

[@benr8071]

It might be ram bandwidth, and definitely cpu

[@bullmike23]

Same. I'd love to see a video of this running on the modified Switch!

[@FortuneHunters]

I think it's more like a developer bottleneck.

[@garageghost6038]

@@FortuneHunters well yeah the issue here is not the switch, but it'd be interesting to know what exactly they screwed up in development. Do they just have a massive script run every frame (which would cause high cpu load), do they read/write a bunch of stuff to/from the ram (essentially causing a ram bottleneck due to inappropriate use of ram), or do they just pull their shaders straight from the storage (maybe because they already filled ram with other useless stuff, which would explain the stutter after firing the gun for the first time). There is clearly a huge screw up in their programming.

[@mistersurrealist]

This broke my heart completely. There's a BRILLIANT game here buried beneath a ton of technical issues. I hope there's a way to fix the frame rate/stuttering. If they do, this is GOTY material in my opinion. This game does for me what The Last of Us Part 2 could NEVER: it fills me with utter JOY.

[@Diego35HD]

@CJ P. Broken framerate is just a staple of poor programming.

[@Diego35HD]

@CJ P. I don't even have a switch my guy, let alone the game, sorry lol

[@theanimerapper6351]

@@Diego35HD I wonder if he wanted you to mail it to him or something lol

[@SeiyaDLuffy]

@CJ P. You didn't see the video? Xbox 360 version Of the original Deadly Premonition runs mostly locked 30 FPS, the issues comes with PS3/PC and Nintendo Switch. It wasn't a DNA for the series, it was a issue that came after. Even the japaness PS3 version of DP, not the director's cut one, was running fine

[@residentgrigo4701]

@CJ P. Its not. See the 360 original. Or the video. I finsihed both games. This is a mess. A whole new mess and a worse game.

[@pronstorestiffi]

Was really looking forward to this game, loved the first one. But there is no way i can get my self to spend money and support this blight on mankind.

[@helpinghands7935]

Same man.

[@TheSoulReaver]

If the frame rate is ass, the game is a pass. So says Mr. Stewart.

[@gazda9272]

"Sounds like The Sinner's Sandwich,Self inflicted punishment to atone for past sins"

[@MrJj86uk]

08:44 Richard : 'Yeah but you know, were rendering a room here at 22 frames per second... John: hahahhaha, OK yes this is not good' 😆

[@LKubrick]

The most telling things is the lighting. I guess the only used real-time lights, this can kill your game, even on a modern PC. You should bake your lights. You can see in interior set, there is no shadows, only ambiant occlusion. And outside the guy has an animated shadow in real-time, meaning the light is calculated every frame. It seems that hey put major things in the Update function. Usually, bad code is dealt with the raw power of your PC, but when it's on switch you have to get smart with your rendering.

[@JoeCoolMaveric]

2:42-3:03 That also tells me that a lot people never really played the original Xbox 360 version of Deadly Premonition...

[@battleroyale1056]

@@kev1nno To be fair the PS3 Director's Cut has better Textures, but the Performance isn't good at all.

[@ClassicKrusty]

Battle Royale it also has first person driving which was a life saver for me getting the plat. Besides it’s not like DP is a combat oriented game so playing it while pretty unbearable if you’re sensitive to choppy stuttering frame rate u rarely if ever are inhibited by it.

[@Deliveredmean42]

@@kev1nno As far as I know, the PS3 did had a lot of bad ports since it is known to be hard to program.

[@battleroyale1056]

@@Deliveredmean42 Even the PC-Port runs unstable, because CAPCOM didn't have enough Faith in the Game. That's so sad, because we expect way more Quality from Publishers like CAPCOM.

[@Assassin199410]

Nobody should care about frame rate. Don't play a game for frame rate, play the game for the game.

[@ThibautMahringer]

I never thought I would see 0 fps in a game before.

[@Ryzen-gh1en]

how witcher 3 ran that smooth and it was so much demanding even my ryzen 5 1600 struggle to keep up above 70 most of the time with max detail just wow -_- lol they should optimize their fucking game before release, this is what happening in most games,some dev think they can get away with anything with less effort, this is the reason sometimes i pirated games cause some shitty dev they dnt deserve a single penny

[@ThibautMahringer]

@@Ryzen-gh1en Yep. With serious work, any game can run on Switch. The Witcher 3 is looks enough on it and it's a technical marvel indeed.

[@dnaielbradshaw296]

Play fallout 4 on xbox one

[@ThibautMahringer]

@@XZ-III Yeah but still, 0 fps isn't something I thought was real in the first place. I've seen games struggling under 10 fps but 0... I was shocked.

[@AliaNexisName]

It's already being emulated at twice the speed.

[@RicochetForce]

The humor in that statement is incredible.

[@ncb1397]

It really isn't. Game crashes almost immediately.

[@petrsauer8240]

Lol you can play it fine now on much better fps lol? Look it up or test it yourself

[@MrH-GB]

Nothing kills a game quicker for my than performance issues, 30 locked without any drops really should be the minimum for a game to be sold, I wish the platform holders would enforce some quality rules.

[@MrBenedick14]

The answer is stop releasing games on switch..not all games switch can handle.. Switch hardware spec base om the standard console is already two decades old..

[@noaharce6921]

No @@MrBenedick14, the actual answer is optimize your game until it's ready to get released. The visuals of Deadly Premonition 2 are a huge step below a game like L.A. Nior, which runs on the Switch at a far more consistent and playable 30fps at 1080p, there is no excuse for any game, no matter what platform, to run this poorly.

[@Mizgala28]

@@MrBenedick14 if we talk about certain new AAA games then I agree. But this game should easily hit 30fps, the bigger problem here is bad optimisation.

[@jackoski__19]

XZ III if it can run botw at 30 1080p or Mario odyssey at 60 1080p, yeah this can run. L.A. Noire looks way better than this.

[@Mizgala28]

@@jackoski__19 BOTW runs at 900p, SMO runs mostly around 810p. But even then, DP2 is a hot mess performance wise and graphically not inpressive at all (also you can't really compare BOTW and SMO with it as they use different game engines, above that BOTW is a Wii U game at it's core)

[@Not-Great-at-Gaming]

Wow, 4 FPS, that's lower than the lowest I've seen which is Dragons Dogma on PS3 (that got down to 9 FPS a few times).

[@JojoDigitalArtist]

I was literally just thinking of dragons dogma and said even though that one dipped at least it had better reasons and moments for its dips than just skateboarding or firing a gun.

[@khululyp]

Was that original performance of the game that bad? I only experienced the PC version which ofcourse runs like butter on a hot plate. Do you have any experience playing the game on the switch?

[@RicochetForce]

Oh my goodness, anyone who played Mystic Knight knows this truth very well. Magic Cannon is AMAZING at killing enemies... and the framerate.

[@snakeshepard9761]

@@khululyp no, it wasn't, maybe people are talking about some specific scenes or jobs with some messy abilities (like sorcerer and magic archer). I played it on PS3, and on Steam too, and I don't recall it having worse performances that the average game at the time...but I don't know if the uniqueness of the game blinded me in some ways (kind of like Dark Souls, which was "flawless" at its 15-25 fps lmao)

[@arrowknee7356]

Fallout 4 hit zero on consoles at launch at times.

[@specknacken6507]

"But that's why we like these wacky experimental types of games DUH!" **thinks about Killer7 and realizes that games like it will never happen again** :(

[@ericvisser5253]

Suda is thinking of making a director’s cut for consoles so not necessarily a new game but new Killer7 stuff none the less

[@DuncDog]

This needs to be put through the Modded overlay enabled Switch to see what exactly is being pinned.

[@ignaspincevicius3134]

It's crazy to see that there is completely no quality control these days when it comes to video games. Publishers charge full prices, and these marketplaces take a 30% cut from each sale for what? Unless it's an exclusive, performance is usually always subpar at best. This game in this state should have been rejected by Nintendo completely until it's fixed and runs stable. Or if they can't fix it, then should be completely trashed. How can something broken like this be sold? It's like films being sold in CAMRip, you can obviously play it, but there's no enjoyment at all.

[@billykotsos4642]

Lol. Cmon this is unplayable. How did they release this? Everyone should get a refund

[@TheMusic4Soul]

Swery fans will praise it as a part of the charm. Being broken is such a genius take. Wow, much impressive.

[@billykotsos4642]

@Moogle Midgar lol you're right

[@UNMERILLY]

I honestly wish I could have a refund, because to be honest, even the writing and plot is just subpar, it's FAR from DP1, characters are bland, York is a parody of himself, the game is trying WAY too much with his weirdness, even beside the attrocious framerate and graphics the game itself is a bad one, and I L O V E D the first Deadly Premonition

[@lucimon97]

@Moogle Midgar I'm pretty sure you could sue them for it in Europe, but nobody cares enough.

[@jarg8]

Seriously. It's like the one thing they needed to do was make the game play at a near locked framerate. No one expects a high quality game, just solid framerate performance.

[@pvsweetypie]

The outdoor environments look like a slideshow

[@Frellyouall]

It's a different developer with Swery at the top. He left after some controversy. Hikikomori Media has some great videos concerning DP and D4. Including a comprehensive comparison between all ports of DP.

[@Sabbalab92]

13:40 He scared me there for a minute. I thought he wasn't gonna do it.

[@LN997-i8x]

13:30 I don't think Perfect Dark ever dipped down into the 2-4fps range in the single player. Maybe in the multiplayer if things got complicated, but even then I'm not sure.

[@ncb1397]

Probably shouldn't use a comparison to a 97/100 metacritic game if you want to bash something.

[@SaturnTubes]

Nathan Meta critic means nothing, bad games get High scores and vice versa all the time

[@LN997-i8x]

@jose ramiro reynoso ruiz There absolutely are objectively bad games, particularly when they're unfinished like this.

[@SaturnTubes]

jose ramiro reynoso ruiz I’d argue there’s several “good games” that are bad mechanically, and where it actually matters, the gameplay. There’s way too many “cinematic games” that consist of repetitive tasks with little variation that get over praised because of the story when the stories wouldn’t even be sneezed at if they were a movie, book, or show

[@SaturnTubes]

jose ramiro reynoso ruiz I’m not saying this is an excusable frame rate at all. I thing anything below 30 is unacceptable.

[@frankjohansen3132]

15 fps for the ultimate movie experience.

[@ThibautMahringer]

0 fps for the ultimate death experience.

[@jackoski__19]

It’s CiNeMAtIc! Sorry I hate that meme but it fits the best

[@s0m3onesomewhere]

But its even lower. As i know truly movie experience is 24 fps.

[@serbenton]

"It's turned into a bit of a rabbit hole that I've been desperately trying to spend the weekends getting out of." I love the way this man speaks.

[@teero121]

oh wow. how was this approved?

[@zakixbox]

Nintendo Seal of quality 🤣

[@mauryj.3415]

Nope and never will, that's Nintendo for ya

[@jackoski__19]

zakaria MH they let a game all about masterb*tion on the eshop. I don’t think the curation could be any worse. They even let a game with Zelda music in, that’s Nintendo the guys who care so much about copyright.

[@Marren]

@@zakixbox The Nintendo seal of "quality" should be replaced by a "Seal of Failure" because that's the only thing their garbage hardware is garantueed to do

[@mauryj.3415]

@@jackoski__19 that's the Nintendo Seal of Quality alright.

[@mrs323]

The loading screen, at one point, ran at 3 frames per second. A loading screen. What an accomplishment!

[@RyugaHidekiOrRyuzaki]

Run it on a hacked switch and OC the CPU/GPU to figure out exactly what the bottleneck is.

[@musikalniyfanboichik]

the bottleneck here is skills of developers

[@Oceanandskylinevidss]

@@musikalniyfanboichik nice one

[@Ty4ons]

Perfect Dark and Goldeneye to their credit didn't have the stuttering seen here when the world has to load.

[@phreakinpher]

Around 4:55 when the captions are talking about the quality being a reminder of how things were...How meta...

[@leviharris6944]

Performance aside, I still sunk 26 hours into it since Friday night. Hearing there are patches coming, but don't think I'll revisit it for more than 20 minutes to see if it's worth a damn.

[@wes8723]

Man, I really hope this comes to the PC.. I loved DP1 on the PC, even with the port's problems

[@jmtrad1906]

The framerate is so messed up that really looks hard to play

[@KillianC1C2]

The fact people are defending the performance of this game is just absurd.

[@yellowblanka6058]

Yeah, if you're honestly going to defend something like this then you should never be allowed to discuss performance ever again. "But....it's portable and quirky!" is not an excuse for a game looking/running like shit.

[@parasolo89]

How the heck was this allowed to be shipped on this condition?! I really hope they can fix the framerate.

[@gaminggoddess85]

A shame you didn't show off the *multiple minutes long* black screen while DP2 struggles to load the second oracle cutscene. It's seriously embarrassing that it was left in there.

[@ItsDatCajunStuff]

We all like to chant that graphics aren't everything, but seriously, there's a limit.

[@arrowknee7356]

Graphics aren't everything. Performance however can be, once it falls below the playable line and your making suggestions as apposed to being in control, it becomes not worth ones time no matter how good it otherwise is.

[@Diego35HD]

They had the excuse that "Oh it was a PS2 game that was quickly made for the new generation" but now? this is bethesda/wb levels of trash performance

[@tuuudes3449]

This is far worse than Bethesda/WB levels of trash performance, unless you're only looking at Fallout 76 or Arkham Knight for PC. I bought Fallout 4 at launch and even with the stutters and crashes, it was far better than this.

[@rafterman5072]

It's much much worse than Bethesda. Say what you want, but most Bethesda games are fully playable at launch. This game is literally broken.

[@cookieface80]

This is made by a different dev team to the first one, it's made by the same team that made the ps3/pc/switch versions of the first game.

[@gex581990]

Why can’t this series just get the justice it deserves. It’s not that hard these days to have a steady frame rate, you’d think after failing with the last two ports of the original they’d make sure they’d do better with this.......how is this even possible. Very sad

[@MahdiJeddi]

As a game developer who shipped games with Unity on Switch, I can tell you that a lot of these problems are gonna be almost impossible to fix. For switch you have to plan ahead and test your game constantly to make sure the performance is good. Fixing something this broken would make the patch size bigger than the game itself.

[@recordatron]

I love that you subjected Richard to this John 😂. It's so so jank. I can only imagine Richard just shaking his head and being like...why do I do this job again?

[@Meisuko]

I was thinking that now people will demand Richard play more horrible games 😊

[@Etrius0023]

It was pretty entertaining. He didn't seem too sour on the 360 original though.

[@castrolias]

Rich is such a legend. Loved the first DP but seeing this scares me..

[@Etrius0023]

If it ever gets patched up (doubtful) or gets a decent port I'd recommend it. So far I prefer the first game but the second still has some sharp writing and interesting characters. It's also hard to give an unbiased opinion because the framerate is so torturous it sours every element of the game.

[@tarfaerhing7555]

0 fps, thats not even a picture lmao

[@RedStormPro]

Exactly, 0 fps is a black / blank screen

[@rupertocampo8965]

Yeah I'm feeling terrible for all the people who paid full price for this game only to discover this was a such a mess 😭.

[@Astfgl]

What I think we're seeing here is simply the lack of good open world tools for Unity. I'm seeing some telltale signs of Unity's stock terrain system, which is rather outdated and doesn't perform all that well unless you spend a lot of time optimizing LODs, occlusion, lighting and shadow settings. The developers probably added some bespoke level streaming systems to that, but failed to make asynchronous background loading work well while also running game logic at the same time. I bet the game runs almost entirely on a single CPU thread, which is a common pitfall when developing with Unity. I think Rich and John are right on the money; it looks like this was developed on PC first and foremost, where it probably ran just fine, and they moved it to Switch way too late in the development process. There the fundamental performance issues are laid bare and at that point it was probably not feasible anymore to rework the core technology. Even then I'd say they should have been able to get much better results than this if they had spent some quality time with the available performance profiling tools. This almost looks like they've published a debug build.

[@kubev]

The original Deadly Premonition on Xbox 360 definitely had performance issues in spots, though I do think those were significantly improved upon via Back Compat. Specifically, there were serious frame rate drops during split-screen segments within the otherworld, and the physics on the crates caused very noticeable hitches in performance. That said, it was perfectly playable. You'd see the occasional crash/freeze, and it was sometimes possible to fall through the level and die. While I do hope Deadly Premonition 2 gets released on more capable hardware, I honestly have to say that the bad frame rate would almost be tolerable if the game's other issues weren't so abundant. I've had my controls stop working to varying degrees while playing. Sometimes, that'd involve arriving at a location in the open world to find that I simply couldn't move or access any menus, leaving me with no other choice but to force close the game and launch it again, losing progress in the process. Other times, that'd involve just enough of my controls ceasing to work, causing me to get stuck in an otherworld segment from which there was no escape (since I couldn't crouch to go back in the level far enough to reload the current portion, nor could I defeat enemies to progress further). That said, I'm really enjoying the game for the most part. I just want it to be much, much better from a technical perspective, as Deadly Premonition 2 is easily one of the worst games I've played in years in that regard.

[@GeekdomCentral]

I just have to say that I love how "L I C H D O M B A T T L E M A G E" is still a thing. Cracks me up every time

[@geoffdb8118]

God that game was a dumpster fire

[@MJosephJr]

Oh boy....this really is a bummer. Maybe they can fix the frame rate.

[@MariaRodriguez-hb4ix]

Is almost on the impossible realm . The weirdest thing is : this is a game that run decently on Xbox 360 . Switch is supposed to be more potent than a 360 . One would expected it to run at least similar to 360 . .

[@franciscor390]

@@MariaRodriguez-hb4ix They just explained it, this situation doesn't have much with the consoles, it's more so their lack of experience using the Unity engine, thus the game is botched, with bottlenecks and memory leaks.

[@arbiter-]

Whoa... There are MUCH better looking games on the Switch that run at higher resolution and 60fps. How does this even happen?

[@mynthon0]

@Walther Penne Amazing reading comprehension.

[@SianaGearz]

Big-ish open-world. Big adventure game that tracks lots of state and lots of object. Unity Engine. Inexperienced, tiny team. No high end commercial Unity support. Low budget. It's an ambitious game for the team and what they're trying to do here is GENUINELY hard, and not so easy to fail at as you think. In fact i remember how terribly Dreamfall Chapters ran until they stopped for half a year to fully revamp the project, which is again a team of only a handful people and a similarly ambitious project, but they didn't have such a compressed timeline, they had a good monetary cushion and were in position to just apologise to the backers and do the necessary, which is unfortunately a luxury. And the way it is, Dreamfall Chapters runs OK on a PC - there's almost zero chance it could run nearly as well on the Switch.

[@JamesJose00]

Bad devs or not enough money to pay them to improve it

[@lillbrorsan]

Oh how I have waited for this video to show up! I've played about 8 hours of this game and enjoy it so far but the damn performance gets me every time. I hope they manage to get a performance patch out asap.

[@tonycrazy88]

Since the surprise success of Deadly Premonition, Swery has been extremely lacking with the fans. PS3 Director's Cut version did not iron the bugs of the 360 version but also added new ones. Switch version was extremely versatile. Now, DP2 is almost unplayable. WTF dude... Are we just walking wallets for you Swery?!

[@alexrushdy2751]

I'm a unity dev and my gosh... The gun freezing upon first shot likely has to do with sound loading- well known issue with loads of solutions... What the heck.

[@UndeadCollector]

Fans defending this as "it's a normal part of the Game". I see just pure lazyness in even trying to let it run stable.

[@DaveyBaby27]

I kid you not, the advert that played before the video started was a Nintendo Switch ad for Deadly Premonition 2 lol

[@zipzeolocke2]

I never would've imagined Digital Foundry taking the time to make a video on Deadly Premonition 2. I suppose it makes sense to take note of the worst performance gaming has to offer so that other developers can use the information for future reference what NOT to do when making video games :P

[@GasKasOnFire]

I would lobe to see this with your overclocked switched.

[@thegrimyeaper]

The ps3 version had a constant clipping noise. I don't understand how anyone was able to play it with sound on.

[@HikikomoriMedia]

Thanks for covering Deadly Premonition 2 guys. If you're interested, I put out a video comparing all versions of Deadly Premonition (all 7 of them) on my channel.

[@e.s.geasystreetgaming1367]

This isn't very good for a game in 2020. The Switch might not be as powerful as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One S but they should have done better. Maybe a patch will come later and sort out the issues.

[@guidorussoheck2100]

this game is praised as "good" for how the fucking "BAD" it is. is like that, is gonna be like that.

[@jackoski__19]

If the ps4 can run rdr2 and tlou 2 level of graphics at 30. The switch can run this at minimum 60. The switch can run the Witcher for gods sake. It’s not perfect but better than this.

[@machturtlepresents]

So when can we get a DF Retro comparing the 360 Deadly Premonition to the PS3 Director's Cut? The fact that it runs fine on 360 is honestly news to me, and since I know that the DX updates a lot of the textures, I'd be interested to see a direct comparison for the pros and cons of each.

[@gaminggoddess85]

I found a good video about that through this comment section: Hikikomori Media's Deadly Premonition Retrospective. It compares every version of DP1 in the second half of it.

[@machturtlepresents]

@@gaminggoddess85 Oh that's great! Thanks for the tip!

[@OMCGamesDiv]

It's obvious that they really didn't do much optimization with the NS version. Just looking at it, you can see they're using high(ish) resolution textures and no draw distance optimizations, either. It's like the raw PC game running on the NS.

[@Rad-Dude63andathird]

NS version? It's the only version of the game.

[@Etrius0023]

Uh, trust me. Those textures are really awful.

[@Der-Kleine]

@@Etrius0023 I haven't played it myself, but it seems more like the quality is highly inconsistent.

[@killer88327]

Technical difficulties is not part of the game itself, its what makes it function. Ridiculous that people tried to excuse this

[@darkpassenger2852]

Wow, what a freakin disaster!

[@jedijames5982]

I'd love to see this game on an overclocked Switch. I wonder if that would make it playable 🤔

[@djukor]

I hope they release the PC version soon.

[@markjames5535]

I'm pretty tolerant of fluctuating frame rates generally but honestly the performance of this game is outrageous. Having missed the first game, I was curious about the sequel but this, in combination with the poor reviews has put and end to that.

[@thecanucklehead3034]

People look at the switch ports and ask why theyre all janky, no one seems to look at the actual hardware. The thing has a 1.5ghz cpu (2ghz max in theory), 256 cuda cores and 4gb of ram *between cpu and gpu.* Frankly, looking at some of the ports out there like the Witcher, we're lucky it can run them at all.

[@gaminggoddess85]

So the Switch is worse than my ancient potato PC that could barely run Spore. That's simultaneously shocking and not shocking.

[@thecanucklehead3034]

gaminggoddess85 i know right. I love the switch, i know it was never meant to pack a ton of punch, but even then the specs made me raise my eyebrows a bit

[@darkmagiciangirl573]

Lighting is borked in the directors cut. PC has a reshade preset that fixes it.

[@ruok3351]

For a 2020 game this is unacceptable

[@METR0lD]

It actually dropped to 2 frames per second at one point in the outdoors scene. What the heck were they thinking!?

[@neilmallick20]

Hearing these guys laugh through their explanation is the best part.

[@Trillykins]

5:42 weird how the Xbox version outside looks kind of drab in terms of colour compared to the Switch, but then when going inside they seem to flip. Suddenly the colours on Switch looks drab and the colours on Xbox are more vibrant.

[@Frellyouall]

Been waiting for this. I cancelled my pre-order because of the framerate.

[@josieppe]

I got an ad for the game on this video What a contrast, marketing and investigation

[@timothykirby4406]

They should be so embarrassed releasing the game in this condition. They need to fix this asap! Would not pat for this!

[@Pewpewpew182]

I was looking forward to this..... damn

[@IkesDaddelbox]

From my experience Unity is generally a bad choice for low spec systems if you don't know how to properly work with it. It doesn't give much wiggle room for optmisation.

[@etay2k]

I hope rising star also plan to fix origins on the switch or lock it to 30fps. Can't imagine myself finish it this way. Maybe I had to keep my 360...

[@stabinghobo57]

Nintendo needs the return the Nintendo seal of Quality.

[@GuyOnAChair]

10:44 I'd say it's less of a warning and more of a Deadly Premonition! It's so weird that they really did seem to deliberately make it run badly.

[@pkaulf]

Richard, the audio levels in your videos are always way too low.

[@Sly2Cooper]

Deadly Premonition 1 runs perfectly fine on GPD Win 2 with 50+ fps at 720p. Glad I had an option to play better handheld version of the first game. I bet after tweaking the config files and graphics settings the second part would also run fine.

[@stevebob240]

The original is great. I don't know much about the sequel yet but the performance is painful!

[@itsGeorgeAgain]

Their problem is that they made a "toon" shader that also uses outlines. That just ramps up the calls needed on the shader... on a mobile chip that is also underclocked.

[@Kolyasisan]

Not necessarily. For all we know they might be CPU-bound, which itself (if we assume that it uses a separate thread for rendering) may be bound by the game loop not being fast enough (so render thread waits for it), or the render thread being way too slow with scheduling commands to the GPU driver (so main thread waits for it). If they're being limited on render thread, then yeah, having an outline shader would (although highly theoretically) reduce performance, but not because of the shader complexity, but because of a separate drawcall needed.