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Publisher: Konami
Game: Saw
For a little background, Saw: The Game had a troubled development. It started off being developed by Brash Entertainment, but Brash went under. When this happened, Konami took the reigns. Konami, for those of you who don't know, where the geniuses (and I mean that mostly literally) behind the Silent Hill series. If you don't know this by now, I love Silent Hill... except that crappy sequel, Silent Hill 2, but that's a different story. When Konami took over publishing, the game was all ready near completion, and they went forward with the release date in early October. The question is, though, should it have been released, or is this a waste of time like Saw V?
The story takes place after the first Saw. You play as Detective Tapp, who Jigsaw fixed up from his gunshot wound, and trapped him in an abandoned mental asylum. Tapp must fight his obsession to catch Jigsaw, save the people he has "damaged" during his investigation (including Amanda from the series), and escape the asylum before being killed by others who are also trapped, and want the key sewed inside of him (and yet, no sepsis sets in, either). Other things hindering your progress are puzzles such as broken circuit boards and pipes that you have to align to drain gas out of the room.
The story is good by Saw standards. Where it falls apart, though, is the fact that the puzzles, which are randomly generated, are thrown in at points. About 25% of the time, I got a puzzle that was unsolvable due to having one too many pieces that I needed to get working, or on one instance, all the pipes aligned properly except for the last one. While that's annoying to say the least, it doesn't get in the way so much that the game is unplayable.
The controls take care of that, though. Movement and action buttons all work fine, but combat is a pain. I don't know if this was intended by story or if this was a glitch, but Tapp moves slowly when he attacks. Even with a light weapon, like a knife, he moves like he's in Jell-o. This means that before you complete the attack, the guy you're fighting hit you first, even if he's using a Nail-bat. What you'd have to do is press the "Attack mode" button, press attack, and run up to the guy while attacking. Even then, you'd be lucky to get the attack in without getting hurt first.
Graphically... what can I say? It uses the Unreal 3 engine... and its among the worst looking games I've seen with this engine, at least character-wise. All of the characters look the same, mainly because they all have the same "down-turned" nose that Billy the Puppet has. Animations are clunky and fake looking, and are downright unrealistic (no one moves their arms as much as these guys do when they talk). They come off as downright cartoony. In contrast, though, the backgrounds and atmosphere are done extremely well. You'd almost feel like you were in a Saw movie if it weren't for the people.
Finally, there's the voice acting. It's absolutely horrid. I was fighting a guy at one point who was calmly telling me that "There's a key inside you," and "This is the game. Let's go," all while he was chasing me with a timed trap on him. Only one person returned from the Saw cast, and that was Tobin Bell. He's the redeeming quality in the voice work, and without him, it wouldn't be a Saw game. But, it makes you think, what was Shawnee Smith doing that she couldn't voice Amanda?
All in all, this isn't a bad game, especially for fans of Saw. But, for anyone else, they may see a game with lackluster graphics, repetitive and annoying puzzles, and bad voice acting. It's easy to pass by, even if you are a horror fan, but give it a rental or wait for it to be available for $20. Trust me, that shouldn't take long.
Overall: C
+All right game play
+ Good story
- Bad combat
-Repetitive puzzles...
- ... that are unsolvable at times.
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