No doubt you have already covered yourself as if you were in the first row of a Gallagher show, because you expect some shit to be flung around all over this article. Well, we’re saving the shit for toilets and the bathroom floors of restaurants that have extremely bad service this time. You see, just like the movies it is inspired by…this game has a twist. This twist is even more unpredictable and much more satisfying than any of the ones in it’s cinema cousins…this twist is actually pretty damn shocking and doesn’t make you wonder why you didn’t just spend your $7 purchasing a real snuff film in an alleyway. I hate to spoil things for you, but the twist is as follows:

THIS GAME IS ACTUALLY NOT BAD!

Give yourself a few moments to collect your thoughts. Put your head between your knees if you need to. If someone else was reading, tell them to do the same. If the other person is stupid / drunk enough, tell them to put their head between your knees, and then pull your thang out on ‘em. I purchased this expecting a shitfest the likes of which the Saw films have been delivering on-screen for 6 years now. Instead, I got a pretty solid little “survival horror” game, with a heavy emphasis on puzzles and hitting people with nail-covered bats. It isn’t all great, and has some faults (which I will of course try to make the main point of this article since bitching is funnier than complimenting), but this game surprised me…and it might just do the same to you.

Sony have finally developed a device to MAKE people play their PS3...or DIE! Massive deaths ensue.

The “Story”

Yeah…I know. This has about as much of a story as anything in the Saw universe. You play Detective David Tapp (Danny Glover’s character from Saw 1), who awakens in an asylum only to be the latest player in one of Jigsaw’s “games”. The rest of the story carries out much like the Saw films. You progress along, get little bits of a progressing story and tons of back-story that form some sort of ghetto-assed, bad-writing Voltron that stumbles to a twist finale that you may have seen coming very early on. Not to say the story is bad or anything…but it just lacks A LOT. If you are a fan of the series, you’ll see a couple of familiar faces and recognize some of the voice actors. That is one thing I can say something good about at least, the voice-work is pretty good for a horror game. You’ll never be called the “master of unlocking” or wonder aloud “radio, what’s going on with that radio”.

Essentially you are being punished for the people you have hurt due to your near-insane obsession with capturing the Jigsaw killer. Tapp must save those who have suffered due to his actions, and some other random folks along the way. It makes it sound like you have a choice in saving these people, like you could just let their respective traps kill them if you wanted…but there is no choice. If the character dies, you go back to the last save point. Just a quick note for those of you who also may be misguided and then throw a fit because you get sent back after being a cold-hearted asshole.

A gruesome death, or a mini game/puzzle? It's up to you.

Along the way you face a series of increasingly challenging puzzles and enemies. Why do you have people randomly attacking you? Some are just insane, and others are after a key. You have a key surgically implanted into your body that apparently can free everyone else. Of course you can’t just make a little cut and take it out, but instead someone is going to have to go elbow deep up your ass (or I guess they could just slice you open if they were in a hurry) and yank that thing out.

That would have made for a great death scene.

Gameplay

No alleged gameplay here, but instead you get a fairly enjoyable survival-horror experience. In terms of the controls, think Silent Hill 2…the good and the bad. Your character moves a little stiff, but not enough to make moving around a chore. The combat is…okay you can put your protective coverings back on, I’ve got a big ol’ bucket of shit ready.

The combat sucks. You hold the trigger to go into your “Fighting Stance”, no doubt striking fear into the heart of your attackers. You then proceed to use two buttons, one for a STRONG attack, and the other for a not-so-strong attack. You start off with your fists, but can pick up a variety of items to use along the way. Molotovs, pistols, mannequin arms, bats, and the old faithful pipe are all at your disposal. Too bad that it is somehow harder to kill an enemy WITH a weapon. I honestly just went hand-to-hand most of the time, as the heavier weapons have a hell of a delay from button press to strike. We’re not talking a tenth of a second, but a full second delay as the weapon is swung. It sucks because the AI usually goes for weaker strikes, that will undoubtedly land before your strong attack comes down on them. My recommendation, if you don’t have a gun, just use your fists or use weak attacks with the weapons. Another problem is getting cornered. You can block attacks, and even counter-attack if you block at the correct time (when that is, I do not know), otherwise you are screwed. If a guy gets you in a corner, if you can’t counter-attack then it’s over. You will NEVER be able to get in a regular attack, heavy or weak. Getting cornered is instant death in this game, as is trying to fight more than one enemy at a time…which luckily doesn’t happen that much at all.

Just punch 'em!

You can step your offense up a little around the halfway point of the game, by getting a little defensive. You pick up spare parts throughout the game (trip-wires, shotgun shells, etc), that you can use to make your own traps. Some traps stun the enemy, while others unleash a horrific gas (for this one you need 1 Jeremy, 2 shitty Taco Bell ripoff tacos, and 4 beers), and then some flat-out explode. Just to warn you, these things don’t take away a lot of health, and I played through the game using traps only once or twice. You can also screw yourself over if you are close enough to them when they go off.

You are not the only person setting things up however. Much like the internet, there are some traps out there that will make you cry and cause you to spend the rest of the night vomiting and vowing “Never Again” as your try to proudly hold your head high over the commode. Trip-wires are everywhere, and usually result in a shotgun blasting your head off. You must carefully use your light-source to find these, which means that running should only be reserved for areas you are familiar with. To the best of my knowledge, traps are never set back up or newly set after you’ve been through an area. So if you go through once, it is pretty safe to travel through with a bit more speed.

There is another danger lurking out of view, as there is broken glass scattered across many of the floors. Why is this a problem? Because you are goddamned BAREFOOT! Forget the fact that you kill several shoe-wearing lunatics, you spend this entire game like a woman should, minus the being pregnant and in the kitchen part. When walking over glass you move slower, but your health-bar sure as hell doesn’t. I honestly think that you lose a bit too much health from walking on the glass, but then again I’ve never walked over glass..and if I had to I would take the shoes off the guy whose ass I just beat the shit out of with a pipe.

Then of course, you have puzzles. Oh, do you ever have puzzles. They are presented in a fairly decent fashion, and they are great in number. Though I am a bit let down by the variety. They are mostly one of the following:

1. Panels where you have to make gears move by adding gears of various sizes.
2. Circuit boxes where you have to direct power flow (which I have hated ever since Terminator 2 on the Gameboy).
3. A pipe puzzle where you have to make two ends of a pipe meet together by using some of the stiffest controls around.
4. Puzzles involving finding the numbers of a padlock, which are usually on the surrounding walls or area.
5. Sliding around racks of dead pigs.

Not joking about #5.

I’m not going to lie, these puzzles can get pretty damn rough. There are some in particular that just made me want to give up on life. The circuit box puzzles aren’t my favorite type of puzzle to begin with. But when facing down one that had maybe 10 or so tiles on it, that was okay. Though when I cracked open a box later in the game only to see what looked like a series of circuits complex enough to power the entire United States twice, I nearly shit myself. Mind you that with most of these puzzles you are timed, and if you don’t get it knocked out in that time…you’re fucking dead. Many of you will turn to the internet for help, but I have to warn you that the puzzles sometimes do not repeat. You could get a completely different layout the next time you try. Fortunately my girlfriend is a puzzle-wizard, and was able to assist me with some of the tougher ones while I sat on the edge of my seat and let out soft prayers toward the Gods of everyone religion I could think of. One of those 3 or 4 higher powers is real, but I can’t recall which one it was that got us through that circuit puzzle when I called out.

Oh yeah, a ways in you get knocked out and wake up with a collar around your neck. The collar is filled with shotgun shells and if you are near another person wearing one of these collars for too long it starts to beep and will eventually blow your head off. This is the point where you take advantage of bolting doors shut, making barricades, and doing other things to avoid these characters until their own collar explodes. You also have the option of killing them, which disables it…but you better have something heavy in your hands so you can do it in one or two shots. I never died due to this collar going off, but at the same time as soon as they strapped that thing on me I got so paranoid that I moved around at a crawl.

In Closing

I didn’t really go into depth about the graphics, because those really don’t matter much to me. But, they are serviceable. The character models are never bad enough to be laughable, and about 3/4 of the environment are covered in shadows anyhow. The sound is good, and knows when to be quiet…which is important with a horror game like this. Sometimes things are silent and you can hear a little rustling around in the background or possibly a voice, and it works very well. Music only seems to pop up and swell when you are being chased or in the midst of combat, or for the timed challenge puzzles. This also is a pretty good use, as it adds that little extra to your already heart-attack inducing rise in blood pressure.

If you are a fan of the film, you’ll be an instant fan of the game. You’ll get a little more back-story, because somehow 6 films haven’t already done enough apparently. It was stated that the game would also allude to the fate of several characters from the first film. I think it might touch on one or two, but really you don’t get much. It was also supposed to explain the fate of that dude in the first film who sawed off his foot (the guy who played Robin Hood that one time), but I didn’t see anything to explain shit about it. There is a foot and saw in a bathtub early on, but who hasn’t seen that before?

I also highly enjoyed the part where you have to shove your hand into a syringe-filled toilet bowl to retrieve keys (this happens more than once). I liked to think of it as a crack-addict simulator.

I have watched all of the Saw films, though I normally wait till they have hit the bin at Blockbuster and get them for $3 or so. Konami states that they intend to make Saw their new horror franchise…so we all know what that means…

See you again next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, and the year after that...