Better late than never.
After half a dozen Saw movies, torture porn finally gets interactive with Saw: The Videogame
“Want to play a game?”
Too bad, you don’t have a choice. The serial killer known as Jigsaw has kidnapped you (Detective Tapp) and intends to teach you the futility of trying to stop him. You awaken in the infamous bathroom, complete with a sawed off foot in the bathtub, and find you’re head trapped inside the jawbreaker helmet. Unfortunately, unlike the characters in the movies you won’t be making any moralistic choices such as hurting yourself or others in order to facilitate your escape, instead you’ll solve the same handful of repetitive puzzles ad nauseum, such as lining up pipes, circuits, and gears. With 6 movies worth of source material you’d think they could come up with better traps & puzzles.
The one exception is Amanda, who you find strapped to chair being injected with poison. To free Amanda you must strap yourself down next to her and alternate the poison & antidote between the two of you. Although your life is never in jeopardy when freeing the remaining 6 prisoners, it’s still game over if fail to save any of them, which makes absolutely no sense since none of them help you in anyway and they all quickly wonder off to get killed.
The atmosphere is truly terrifying, and not just because you’ve got the whole dark abandoned building thing going on. Traps are hiding behind every corner and he only way to spot them is either by creeping along or experience them firsthand (read: getting your head blown off). To make it even more difficult you can only carry one lighting device at a time, either a lighter that illuminates the entire room but is dim and goes out periodically, a flashlight that makes seeing where you’re going easy but has a narrow focus, or a camera that flashes for only a instant and gives you a distorted view (yeah whatever you do, don’t pick up the camera).
Traps aren’t your only concern though. Jigsaw has pit the other prisoners against you by surgically implanting a key inside of you. You can slug it out with them or get creative and make your own traps, but you’re limited to defensive traps like tripwires. After all, there’s only one Jigsaw.
Despite the game’s repetitiveness, it’s still a must have for fans of the series as you’ll get more insight into Jigsaw’s mind by reading psychological interviews scattered throughout the building. And while there’s only about 10 hours worth of scares, flashback allows you to replay any of 7 levels, even better you can continue from any of your last five checkpoints just in case you missed something helpful.
