Saw Review

Despite the Saw franchise growing quite rapidly, until now, there had never been a fully-fledged video game tie-in. Saw: The Video Game, arrives just in time to boost the arrival of the latest film, Saw VI, but they do have completely independent storylines - so aside from the name and a few recurring characters, it's a completely new experience for fans. Since there has never been a game for the franchise, questions surely have to be asked about how successfully the formula that's made it a big screen success can adapt to the world of video games. Is this another game that goes down the same road as so many in the past?

Being written by original creators of Saw, James Wan and Leigh Whannell, expectations were high. Players take control of Detective David Tapp, who fans might recognise from the original film and he finds himself in Whitehurst asylum. After being shot during the original film, Jigsaw decides to heal Tapp, but while doing so, he sews in the key to escape the asylum. Jigsaw hopes to teach Tapp about his lack of appreciate for his own life, as well as others. Throughout the game, Tapp has various encounters with other members from the Saw universe, such as Amanda Young and Melissa Sing. The majority of them have some kind of grudge against Tapp, but he has to save them from Jigsaw's twisted traps.

It's actually a really good story in theory, but unfortunately there isn't really that much dialogue. The majority of it comes from Jigsaw's recorded messages or tannoy announcements, as Tapp rarely has any vocal engagement with anyone. There is plenty of back story available as well, through case files and audio messages that Jigsaw leaves lying around - it helps to involve players into the world of Saw and even helps the game become engaging for those who might not have had much immersion into the world of Saw before.

Unfortunately, this is where the positives start to fade. The gameplay is essentially split into two sections, puzzles and third-person action, but neither of them are overly good. Puzzles are the better of the two, but there are a finite amount of puzzles, and even the climactic (end of section) puzzles are sometimes simply reused, but regurgitated in a slightly more complicated form. It would have been nice to see much more variety with the main puzzles, because after a while they really start to get tedious. The only saving grace is the addition of timers, which help to add a bit of pressure to some situations. The less common puzzles in most situations aren't really puzzles at all, as some of them literally involve searching a table, or looking in a mirror. They won't really challenge anyone and essentially serve as an excuse to make the player go off on a tangent of some kind.