“Would you like to play a game?<\/p>\n
For too long you have wasted your time playing awesome video games that thrill and entertain you. You have wielded interesting weapons, marvelled at fluid combat mechanics, gazed in awe at cutting-edge visuals, and been entertained for hours by varied and innovative missions.<\/p>\n
Well, that’s all about to change. You’re about to play something dark… something gory… something mediocre. Will you delve into this second-rate survival horror game, or will you trade it with one of your friends for something that’s actually enjoyable?<\/p>\n
Make your choice.”<\/p>\n
This is what the intro to Saw should’ve been. Don’t get us wrong though: it’s not a complete disaster of a game. But, for each element that Saw manages to get right there are twice as many that it gets wrong, which unfortunately finds Jigsaw’s transition from the big screen a repetitive and lacklustre title that will leave most gamers in the same state of boredom they’d likely experience after watching a non-stop marathon of all six of the movies that started this debacle in the first place.<\/p>\n
Saw wastes no time in hurling the player right into the thick of things within the first moments of the game. The protagonist, Detective Tapp, awakens in a dilapidated insane asylum with a large mechanical collar around his neck. Jigsaw appears on a small TV in front of Tapp, instructing him to remove the device should he wish to hang on to that part of his head from the jaw upwards. Players then have to perform a series of button presses and stick-wiggling to free themselves from the contraption before a timer runs out.<\/p>\n
Now, if this seems familiar, that’s probably because it is. In fact, there’s not much to be found in the game that hasn’t been seen once or twice (or six times) in the films. While we have to commend the authenticity of this, it dilutes the impact of the terror somewhat: seen one auto-decapitating headgear, seen ‘em all.<\/p>\n
Familiar mutilation machinery aside though, Tapp must continue to work his way through the asylum to rescue a variety of people from his murky past, disarming and disembowelling his way through Jigsaw’s variety of contraptions and twisted tasks. This is essentially the core gameplay of Saw: fight lunatics, save person from now-clichéd trap, rinse, repeat, repeat, and repeat.<\/p>\n
Like the poor victims in the brutal snares though, Saw’s developers apparently had to make difficult choices. Unfortunately, their decisions were between including exciting and inventive traps, and traps that are merely facelifts for the same tired formulas. For example, one such situation involves an electrified corpse hanging from the ceiling in a room filled with several inches of water. Players must then position themselves in a particular location to piece together a lock combination out of scattered wall graffiti and then unlock a cage to shut off the power before a timer runs out. Moments like these are tense, frantic, and offer a fair dose of terror making the game seem like it’s actually worthwhile…<\/p>\n
… until afterwards, when players have to perform the bland task of rerouting the power\/antidote\/pipes\/gears\/etc. on the next several sets of puzzles. In fact, this ‘rerouting’ mechanic is so overused that it’s guaranteed to induce vomiting long before the grisly puzzles do.<\/p>\n
Also double-edged is the combat between Tapp and the occasional inmates of the asylum. Following the traditional shtick of ‘pick up improvised weapon from environment and bludgeon environment’s inhabitants to death with quick, strong, and block attacks’, Saw features combat that at times is quite nail-biting, but then quickly degenerates in gorilla-like button bashing.<\/p>\n
A good example are the enemies with explosive collars on their necks. These lunatics will explode if they get too close, so finding one usually means a quick backtrack to a door which can be locked or a maze in which the nutcase can be evaded. But, as quickly as the jitters come, they quickly subside when the player is forced into combat which is so awfully clunky it feels as if Tapp’s arms are made of weathered rubber and his reflexes are about as sharp as a beachball. All it takes is a few pathetic flailings at these enemies before this poorly implemented system becomes infuriating, and we found ourselves wishing we could avoid the whole mess altogether rather than suffer through it.<\/p>\n
Fortunately there are booby traps which can be rigged to dispose of aforementioned enemies, but these too are repetitive (can you say, “shotgun ad nauseum”?) and unexciting after the first few dismemberments. Considering the alarming number of ways one could possibly dispatch a person given the variety of equipment laying around, we expected a whole lot more than just the titbits offered to us.<\/p>\n
Technically speaking Saw is not all that awful. Built on the Unreal Engine the graphics are adequate for the job at hand, but the grimy corridors and blood-soaked hallways do feel a bit recycled after a while. Limbs, guts, and suspicious shadows are all rendered fairly well though, and at times the atmosphere becomes genuinely creepy. An unsettling soundtrack comprised of a choir of painful screams and cries completes the mood, and Tobin Bell (the original Jigsaw actor from the films) provides some authenticity to the voice of the evil little puppet.<\/p>\n
Overall, Saw falls quite short of being the decent survival horror game it easily could have been. While the developers seem to understand what makes these type of games adequately terrifying they fail to implement their ideas consistently, and repetitive tasks combined with awkward combat just dilute the immersion to the point where it’s not even trudging through it. With games like Condemned getting the formula so perfectly right without a massive movie franchise to fall back on, there really is no excuse here.<\/p>\n
A faint glimmer of hope in the occasionally entertaining puzzles does make one optimistic about the sequel though, where we’re hoping for a lot more ‘excitingly horrifying goriness of our darkest nightmares’ and a lot less ‘lame-ass House of Horrors ride at the local carnival’.<\/p>\n