D4; or Dark Dreams Don’t Die is an episodic murder mystery point and click adventure. The title D4 represents much more than the entire title of the game, but also the fourth dimension of time.
The first season of D4 features the prologue and two main episodes, playable either by controller or with the use of Kinect.
Much of it, being a point and click adventure, is done by moving backwards and forwards, and rotating throughout the scenes to find objects of interest and also fulfil puzzles and find clues.
One of the main disappointments when using the controller while having the Kinect connected is that if there is even some slight noise, the game tries to change the control method, which is sometimes pretty irritating. However, this is one of the only critical things I have to say about this game. In fact, the use of Kinect is pretty much the only thing that lets the game down, but since you can opt to not use it, it almost becomes a moot point anyway.
The episodes follow the story of David Young, private investigator and ex-police officer of the Boston Police Department. His wife was murdered in a strange way, and all he has to go on to find her killer are her final words. Interestingly though, he lost his memory upon finding her body, and this granted him a strange power. The ability to move through time using the powers of “memento’s”, artefacts touched metaphysically by people potentially involved in the murder, that it allows David to go back in time to re-experience various scenes within the timeline to hopefully narrow the list of suspects down. But when all you have to go on are the words, “Find D,” it doesn’t leave much in the way of hope. Perhaps rather than looking for someone with a name that starts with “D”, perhaps she’s telling him to go out and get himself a hefty dose of manly salami.
Much of the game plays out like a Telltale Games adventure, responsible for such games as The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. Peppered with QTE fight scenes, it breaks up the nearly tedious scene searching. QTE can be completed either with controller or with Kinect. There is something vaguely amusing and satisfying about winding up your own arm to hit at things with a fake mannequin leg.
Interacting with items within the environment earns a small amount of credits which can be used at the “shop”, a weird possibly anthropomorphic cat woman, who sells a variety of costumes to customise the main characters within the game, and stamina and life replenishment items.
Bizarre characters are very much in keeping with director SWERY65’s (Hidetaka Suehiro) style, and newest offering D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die is no different. SWERY does weird well. Anyone who has played Deadly Premonition will agree.
The Japanese themselves often opt for more memorable, if not stereotypical characters, favouring flamboyance to cement them within the albums of your memory. This isn’t limited to video games either. Many styles of Japanese animation heavily feature weird and wonderful characters.
If the weird cat lady isn’t enough, perhaps the giant, cutlery-wielding man with the vocal cadence of cooling lava will be more memorable.
£11.99/$14.99 seems fair enough for three episodes per season, with each episode lasting roughly 2 hours. But it seems as though SWERY doesn’t really know how many seasons there will be yet, so time will tell whether those kinds of prices per season will start to become a bit much or not. In my very humble opinion, it almost seems bad form to release a game that you have no idea which direction you’re taking it in, or how many episodes there will be, or that is for want of a better word, unfinished. I know it can be argued that all episodic games are unfinished, but when you take games like The Wolf Among Us or The Walking Dead into consideration, these are games that are finished in another sense; they’re a form of media taken from works that have already been released.
The game was mostly enjoyable, albeit in a somewhat mindless sense. It’s hard to see where the storyline is going yet, and I can’t really say for sure what I feel about the game. It’s not amazing, but it’s interesting, though I’m not sure that’s enough to keep people going back for every season.
It’s hard to write a full review for something that isn’t anywhere near complete as a game or story yet. Perhaps as more seasons are released, this task will become easier, but it remains to be seen whether the game will accumulate a large enough fan-base to warrant on-going development.
Lauren contributed 14 articles to ICXM between 2014–2016, covering game reviews, and Xbox news with a focus on hands-on impressions and verified-source reporting. Their bylines on the site span the run-up to Xbox One S and Project Scorpio, plus the broader Windows 10 gaming push. They post on X as @Lulzaroonie.