Deadly Premonition is a hard game to score but I'll try.
Graphics - 4/10. The game looks like a mid to late PS2 era game despite having been put on PS3/360/PC. The visual glitches sometimes have animals running off into the distance about fifty feet above the ground, the frame rate drops like crazy at various times which make the characters look like stop motion and overall it just looks sort of bland. The original release was far worse but the DC spruced up some things and added some introductory cutscenes that look nice. Overall, it's still pretty bad. The facial animations in various scenes will have you laughing your ass off though.
Controls - 3/10. Oh boy. The controls are clunky, awkward and stiff. Originally there wasn't supposed to be any battles in the game but they were forced in before launch and it shows. Aiming is slow and you'll miss like crazy. The cars handle like a tank on an oil slick going down a sheet of ice. You will crash and it will kill your car's health. Yes, your car has health and a gas meter. No driving forever on a single tank of gas like in GTA.
Audio - 6/10. The game has some weird audio choices. Like the squirrels you see at the start of the game. They make monkey noises before running off and that's just the first thing of many you'll find bizarre about this game. When you find the (very well hidden and difficult to unlock) fast travel mechanic then you'll hear a car screech when you use it. Considering how massive the map is, you'll be hearing that car screech quite often with no way to stop it. On the plus side, the music for the game is amazing and you'll find yourself humming along as you go.
Story - 10/10. The story is a Twin Peaks rip-off no matter what the creator (Swery65) says. You play an unusual FBI agent named York brought in to a small town due to a murder of a local girl under strange circumstances. The agent has odd methods of investigation, acts slightly insane and is obsessed with coffee due to getting hints about the future in it. He also talks to a voice in his head constantly. Meet Zach. (That would be you.) He'll talk to you, ask you for advice and tell you trivia about old movies while he drives. You'll find yourself loving the insanity that is this game due to just how much detail was put in. Turns out that the Japanese designers came over to a small town in America and recreated it inside the game with their own twists. The characters make the game though. Every single named character has their own history, personality and flaws that make them interesting. You'll find the grieving mother of the murdered girl. The former rocker that settled down to run a general store with his family and he'll sell you maps to ghost spots in the city where you can get amazing weapons. The sort of creepy twins that found the girl's dead body. The rich old man that owns most of the town and wears a gas mask all the time. The goth guy that works in the cemetery. Everyone has their story and you can either do missions for them and/or help them out in various ways. York can and will comment on every single one of them and sometimes talk to you out loud about them right in front of them.
Gameplay - 8/10. As said above, the controls are difficult even once you get used to them. You'll be fighting with them from the title to the end credits but it somehow makes the game work. You'll learn a mechanic at the start of the game (holding your breath) that you'll use the one time and forget you had until the game forces you to use it. You'll be forced to kill hundreds of 'ghosts' that kind of look like a black and white version of Heath Ledger's Joker from The Dark Knight but you'll get tons of weapons for fighting them. They'll range from handguns to flamethrowers to wrenches and everything else. There's dozens of sidequests that help expand the lore of the game and let you find out little things that make each and every named character into a fuller person than most games do. The head doctor of the hospital? He's a chess nut and his nurse has a crush on him. The love interest is an awful cook to the point that her stove looks like it caught on fire a dozen or more times and when you bring her ingredients to cook with, she has trouble making Mac n Cheese. You can unlock sidequests to get incredibly powerful weapons that make the game easier or you can try to figure out when the gun store opens and where the hell it is. (Hint - Go to the Milk Barn and buy the first ghost map. Infinite machine gun is the best). There's a lot of things that could be fixed like the wonky item placement/identification that sometimes won't let you pick up plot critical items unless you stand in exactly the right place but overall, it's pretty amazing.
Overall - 10/10. Somehow, despite its flaws, the poorer parts of the game meld into the best parts and make this one of the most memorable games I've ever played. It's a sort of horror/drama/intrigue mashup like Twin Peaks and it puts most other games that pride themselves on having great stories to shame. (Looking at the crap you put out David Cage) I've gotten all the trophies/achievements on 360/PS3 and if they released it on PS4 then I'd do it all over again with a smile. I got it for $15 at a Gamestop on 360 a few years back when I was looking for a decent horror game. My disc tray broke a month later so I bought it digitally then when I got a PS3 I got the DC.
I honestly can't say enough good things about the game and I highly recommend it to everyone. At $20 it's a steal.
Just a warning though - Have York in bed before midnight. Strange things happen when he doesn't get his sleep.
5.0