Saw

I went on an end of year achievement spree and found a list of ‘easy’ games online. Saw was one of the games I picked up for a quick hit. I’m not a fan of movie/game adaptations and Saw was no exception to the rule. However it did have some good points as well as bad.

The story of the game takes place between the first and second movies and is quite well constructed in that it uses Detective Tapp as the protagonist assuming he didn’t die after being shot at the end of the first movie. Instead, he was saved by the serial killer only to be put into a mental hospital to punish him for his ‘obsession’ with catching said serial killer.

They put quite a lot of work into the story to make it fit with the series as well as work as a standalone. Detective Tapp has to face all of the people whose lives he has destroyed in his quest to catch jigsaw and, with a few notable exceptions, the characterisation in done remarkably well for a movie adaptation.

They have put a big emphasis on lighting as well. You need a light source to get through dark areas and you pick up different light sources throughout the game. One of these light sources is a camera which you can use the flash to light up dark places. This was great in the movie and really added to the ‘jump’ factor when Adam was being hunted by Pigface. However, in the game you cannot see where you have to go before it reverts to total darkness again so it doesn’t work as an adaptation. At one point I had to navigate through a bomb-filled corridor which would have been straight forward with the lighter, but it made me very angry when I switched to the camera just before having to do this bit and without being able to backtrack and switch to the lighter.

The gameplay elements consist of fighting bad guys and solving Saw style puzzles. The puzzle solving element was okay, but there were only five different ones throughout the game so after the first two sections, it became a bit repetitive.

The combat sucks a fat one too. It is unintuitive and the game would be better without it. The last fight is bizarrely flawed in that all you have to do is stand there and grapple with the boss for five minutes before he dies. Most bad guys can be killed in the same way despite their class differences – what is the point of have a ‘berserker’ type character that isn’t berserk and fights in the same way as a regular minion? I would have expected Tapp to have to employ different methods of dealing with different foes but it is all very samey.

In all games there is always a major element designed to piss off all gamers and in Saw, it is the booby traps. You can’t see shotgun trip wires until you’re dead and then you have to go back to the last checkpoint which, in some cases, can involve a lot of backtracking... only for me to forget the trap was there and die again!

Achievements – 1,000 points – 46 Achievements

The achievements in Saw are varied but not exhaustive. For example, there are achievements for getting kills with various weapons but not all the weapons. There is an achievement for finding your first asylum file but not all of them. By adding achievements such as ‘Find all asylum files’ could have added a little reply value.

The non-exhaustive achievements have good and bad points. On the plus side you are not going to be frustrated looking for that last file or trying to find the only weapon you haven’t killed someone with. On the negative side, it felt very unrewarding getting to the end of the game, almost like a hollow victory. This is a real shame because the achievements get everything else spot on.

All the secret achievements are unavoidable and story related. There are two achievements for both endings but you only have to replay the last section to get both of them. It’s almost like the developers have realised they have a repetitive game and don’t punish their gamers by making them play the whole game again.

The only achievement that required me to replay certain levels was stomping five evil dudes to death. This was mainly due to the inconsistency of evil dudes falling over when I was punching them and the horrendous quick-time events required to stomp them to death.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Saw is definitely good for farming the points but is not a great game and isn’t very rewarding for completion. I wouldn’t play it again for fun and it hasn’t changed my opinion towards movie/game adaptations.