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Saw II: Flesh & Blood
I never had the opportunity to play the
first Saw game, so I went into this game with fresh eyes, with no
expectations based on previous experience. For those who have not seen
the movies Saw is basically a series of traps for people that have been
taken captive by Jigsaw, and these people must escape from these traps,
the catch is that in order to escape from the traps they must cause
tremendous pain on themselves. It is a very strange movie to make game
from, and one that greatly limits the game play options the developer
can play around with.
The
game play in SAW II is rubbish; it essentially boils down to finding an
item, generally a key or fuse and putting it in a door or a fuse box.
Walking around is not very good either, the controls feel very clunky
and the camera does its best to make things hard to see where you are
going. This point was exemplified during what I can only describe as a
boss battle, without giving too much away, you have to make the boss
charge at you and miss when there is something behind you. This
exaggerated just how lacklustre the controls are.
The
combat is Saw II is possibly the most irritating part of the game; these
are just more quick time events, with the opponent being beaten after
only pressing a few correct buttons. And inexplicably every weapon is
only able to defeat one opponent, I was not aware that a baseball bat
broke so easily and consistently.
The
puzzles, which should be the main component of this game, are simply not
up to par, they either seem to boil down to simple quick time events or
memory games. Those that do not fit into the two previously listed
types, are very difficult, they are simple in nature but the game
provides no explanation of what you are supposed to do to beat the
challenge, this combined with tight time limits known within the Saw
franchise create a very dissatisfying experience. There is some good
use of lighting with some of the puzzles, which involve revealing
combinations through shining your torch on the wall. Most of the
combinations that you will recover will come from looking through small
holes and finding some numbers.
Graphically, the game is not too bad; the characters have that very
shiny appearance that seems to curse so many games that utilise the
Unreal engine. The surroundings are suitably drab but are also very
repetitive and it can be difficult to distinguish from one room to the
other. There are also the old invisible walls scattered throughout the
entire game. The models of the characters are not too bad, it is not up
to the same standard as the high budget titles but at the end of the day
they are passable.
The
sound is probably the best aspect of Saw II, the voice acting is pretty
good and actually does a good job of drawing the player in, until the
actual game play starts again that is. The ambient sounds are also good
and again can draw the player in. The music does a great job of setting
the tone for each area.
Saw
II: Flesh & Blood tries to bring a great deal of emotion into a game,
this is something that developers have been trying to do for years and
very few games have accomplished this effectively. Saw II fails to
deliver this, it is difficult to become attached to the lead character
and without this attachment it is difficult to be overly concerned about
the characters. Saw II has good sound but the other aspects of the game
cannot be overlooked and make this game difficult to recommend to anyone
who is not either a massive fan of the Saw movies, and even then it is
hard, or those who enjoyed the first game. |
