Originally Posted by
IGN
July 24, 2009 - A reasonable person would expect Konami's Saw, based off the movies, to be terrible. After all, it's a movie-licensed game based on a horror franchise. Everything about it screams "Must be awful!" Guess what? It's not. I played a good bit of Saw, far beyond what was available at E3. I'm not a fan of the Saw series -- I prefer my porn to include naked women grinding on men, not dude's having their heads lopped off by an ingenious trap. But I like Saw: The Videogame. It has its issues, but it definitely has a shot at being a good game.
You play as Detective Trapp, captured by Jigsaw and forced to make your way through his deadly labyrinth in hope of finding the truth (or at least getting out alive). Saw features some of the classic traps from the five films, but some new ones as well. More than traps, though, there are a lots of puzzles. This is, at its heart, a classic adventure game. It's about exploration, solving puzzles and avoiding traps.
The game begins with Trapp stuck in the film's signature deathtrap, the bear trap headgear. When I first played Saw at Konami's pre-E3 event the escape commands were too obscure. This has been corrected. Clear button prompts flash on the sides of the bear trap. This ensures you'll beat the first trap, which also means you'll miss the first grisly death.
I'm not going to walk you step-by-step through the demo, but it's fairly lengthy, a good half-hour if not more. Your goal after your initial escape is to find and rescue Amanda, Jigsaw's apprentice from Saw III. She's due to die if you can't get to her and, of course, she has some of the answers you need. Along the way, I came across several of the puzzle elements that show the diversity of Saw.
The simplest are booby-trapped doors. As you open one of these doors, the camera comes in close to show a pulley dropping down. A button combo is pasted on its surface. Hit the buttons before the pulley drops and you avoid the trap. Fail and your head is blown off. That is certain to get you to appreciate life a little more. Kudos on teaching us all a valuable lesson, Jigsaw!
Another simple, but interesting interactive element is when you have to shove your hand into something in search of an item. Like when you reach the morgue and find four bodies that all appear dead. Inside one of these is a key you need to get through a locked door and onward to Amanda. The catch is that only one of these bodies is a cadaver -- the rest are actually alive. Choose the wrong body and the victim lets out a howling scream that awakens one of Jigsaw's goons, who will come after you sometime later in the level. Once you cut open the proper body, a mini-game commences. Given an X-Ray view, blades float around inside the cadavers guts along with the key. Move your hand over the key and snag it. Fail and you get a hand full of blades and lose a little life.
Mini-games are a big part of Saw. Some of these allow for mistakes, others are on timers and can really put the pressure on you to perform. One has you rotating different types of connectors until all sets are matched properly. In the earliest parts of Saw, there's no time crunch to this, but that could (and hopefully does) change. A lockpicking challenge has spinning button icons in each corner with your task being to hit the buttons when they are facing the proper nodes. You get the idea -- lots of mini-games, lots of death traps, and plenty of exploration.
The traps aren't the only danger. There are minions of Jigsaw along with other captured victims who give you trouble. The combat is basic but oddly satisfying. There's a modifier button to switch from exploration to combat stance. In combat stance, any weapon you have can be used to block, perform a light or a heavy attack. Enemies in the earliest part of Saw go down quickly, their necks snapping and heads bursting with a well-placed crack of a lead pipe.
All of this is occurring while Jigsaw is giving you guff through a variety of monitors placed throughout his sprawling dungeon. The atmosphere is suitably creeping and there are some rather traumatic flashbacks even in the first 30 minutes that should put some folks on edge.
Saw is far from perfect. Your character moves sluggishly and navigates the environment like a Star Wars action figure. There are some bugs (mostly with broken text prompts), some sound issues and at least one event that doesn't always engage when it's supposed to. Some of these things can be fixed before the game launches in October, but I wouldn't expect the movement issues to be fixable. At least this isn't a straight action game, so my concern could prove insubstantial.
All those issues aside, Saw is fun. I wasn't expecting to want to play more, but I'm definitely looking forward to charging my way through Jigsaw's gauntlet.
Sneak Peak
enjoy.
