SAW

In cinema today it seems you can make just as much money by shocking your audience rather than just entertaining them, the Saw series being one of the more successful. It was only a matter of time before a game came out to follow the series. I am going to talk about plots of the films in this review so if you don’t want to know Jigsaws journey, I suggest you read on carefully.
You play Detective Tapp (the guy who got his throat sliced open in the first film) trying to oust Jigsaw with his partner who unfortunately had his head blown off a row of shotguns. However, your in game character looks nothing like Danny Glover (the actor who plays Tapp) but I suppose it would have been a tall ask to expect the expensive license to be acquired for one character. The plot of the game is not based directly off of a film, though it does reference them – the first one rather heavily – but considering the plot is the best thing about this game I would expect most players to know what’s going on. I would not recommend this game to anyone that isn’t a fan of the films because if you don’t like them or know about them, then you’re going to think this game is terrible. The game plays like a survival horror, go to door X and pick up the key Z completing a puzzle on the way, which to be honest is pretty tedious even for the seasoned Saw fan. There are only a handful of variants which are soon repeated and none of these are very hard. The actual fighting is pathetic; the two button combat system is unresponsive and tired. If you get the first punch in then you can just spam uppercuts regardless of what weapon is being used against you. There are a variety of weapons including bats, mop handles, syringes and bricks but you never need panic – just rely on the uppercut of death!
Still, the game is not all bad, the story is the most important thing and most will want to play through to the end just to delve deeper into understanding Jigsaw. However, there are very confusing messages about the traps and the plot. Any one who knows about the films will know that Jigsaw is an anti-hero, trying to achieve respectable things but with insane methods. Most of his ‘victims’ are people that ‘do not appreciate the life they are gifted with’ or simply are not fulfilling their potential. In Tapps case it is fine as he is being tested because of his obsessive desire to capture Jigsaw. The 40 or so people you end up fighting (and killing – there is no choice) are meant to kill you to find a key in your gut and therefore escape. Jigsaw doesn’t really aim to slaughter a person, that’s his get out of jail card. The victims have the option to free themselves but they fail. In this game though it seems that people cannot help themselves and rely on someone or something else – it is not in the spirit of Saw at all. The traps are also unoriginal, many are recycled from the films or very slightly modified and given that many people watch the films in a sycophantic pleasure, seeing something you have seen viscerally clearer before is a disappointment.
This game could have been given so much more importance and so much more originality. The game fails on several key aspects. There is no fear and disgust from traps, the gore is minimal compared to the films and you never feel the panic beyond the first minute of the game. The fighting and tension in between puzzles is not dramatic, it does not cause your heart to race you just think ‘I’d better not wonder into a shotgun trap or I’m gonna’ have to do those bloody puzzles again’. I would say that any Saw and gaming fan should check it out; worst case scenario is that you spend 4 hours getting an easy 1000G. A disappointment but worth the journey, worth a rental – it’ll only take you a day or two.

5.4/10

Achievements:
This is one of those games where you actually question what the hell is going on as strange things happen like you kill someone and up pops ‘3 for 45G’. Nice for gamerscore but curious as to achievement design. An easy 1000G, complete the game on normal and then kill at least one person with each weapon – done.