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Categories: Review
Tags: horror, puzzle, saw, survival horror, xbox 360
SAW
Developer: Zombie Studios
Publisher: Konami
Platform: Xbox 360 (also PC and PS3)
Released: October 6, 2009
Test Freaks’ Freak Score: 7.0/10You wake up in a wheelchair with a spring-loaded trap attached to your head. You have only seconds to disarm it before goes off. Good news: if it goes off, you’ve just picked up the Darwin Would Be Proud achievement. Bad news: if you survive, you’re still trapped in an insane asylum.
SAW follows the events of the first movie, with players playing as Detective Tapp, knifed, shot and nursed back to health by the Jigsaw Killer. Tapp’s reckless pursuit of Jigsaw led to his partner’s death and Jigsaw wants him to face this truth, and more. Locked in the asylum, Tapp will have to survive a series of traps and fellow inmates seeking the exit key surgically implanted in Tapp’s chest. Tapp will also face those whose lives he’s impacted, and – ultimately – decide whether to finish his hunt or walk away.
SAW is probably most reminiscent of the Condemned series – dark interiors, unreliable lighting and brutal combat conducted with makeshift weaponry. You’ll be beating inmates with pipes, stomping people to death with your bare feet, or performing quick kills with successful (and graphic) counter attack quicktime events.
Would you like to play a game?
For how much combat is in the game, it would be nice if controls were tighter. You have to hold down the light/heavy attack buttons for the animation to carry out hoping you actually connect. Tapp isn’t the fastest on his feet — realistic based on he’s been through — but there are alternate means to kill your opponents.
Scattered throughout the asylum are tripwires attached to shotguns. Expect to see your head blown off many many times. It’s hard to call these cheap instakills because the tripwire is visible, but the third-person perspective means your body may block your view. Luckily enemies are never cautious, so disarming and rearming traps works to your advantage.
As the game progresses, you’ll have the ability to create your own traps: stun, gas, and explosion, but at the same time Jigsaw’s tests become more rigorous.
One of the results of Jigsaw sitting the director’s chair is that the game has great pacing. Frequently you’ll be racing against a timer, surrounded by explosives as you try to solve a puzzle – or a room will fill with choking gas giving you less than a minute to find and close the valve. Even the slower moments will have you sticking your arm in a barrel of acid or fishing around a toilet bowl full of syringes looking for a key or puzzle part.
Puzzles. It would be easy to dismiss SAW as a compilation of deadly minigames, especially since three puzzle types keep popping up, but SAW excels with some well designed puzzles based on observing your surroundings, toggling lights around you, or figuring out the right place to stand. I have to admit, some of the puzzles would be worth serious picarats in a Professor Layton game — Obi 5-6 for example, which combines multiple hacking games with explosives, a gas chamber, crushing walls, a brute with a nail bat and a too-short timer.
Tobin Bell returns as the voice of Jigsaw, which is all you need to nail voice acting in a SAW game. Detective Tapp doesn’t sound like Danny Glover, but he doesn’t look like him either – and while his voice should be raspy, there’s little enough dialogue anyway. Ambient noise, effects and music are all reminiscent of the movies and work too damn well in establishing the asylum’s atmosphere.
When it comes to graphics, character models could use an upgrade, but the environments look great. There are some smart touches, like rats running from light sources and dust falling down from footsteps overhead. Corpses in various states of disrepair, pig carcasses and sinister medical devices deliver the expected disturbing visuals.
Disturbing images abound.
Silvercube:
I like the Saw series, and I do think you should watch the ones you have not seen.
They are all good in their own ways. I’ve been meaning to check out the game, it’s on my Gamefly Q but it’s on low availability.