Let me get this little fact out of the way first and foremost: I have never seen any of the Saw movies. I like horror movies as much as the next guy (especially if the next guy likes horror movies) but I have never really been attracted to what has become known as the “torture” genre. I thought, however, that my unfamiliarity with the franchise would help me appreciate the video game version of the popular horror film as I would have nothing to compare it to. I don’t think it helped.
The game begins as your character, Detective David Tapp, awakens in a nasty looking bathroom with a terrible contraption strapped to his head. A creepy doll on a video screen informs you that you must remove said device before it snaps shut and kills you. You complete this task with a quick time event and I hope that you enjoy it because you will be seeing more of them. A LOT more of them. After you attain your freedom you are informed that there is a key inside your stomach that will grant you freedom from what you learn is an abandoned insane asylum. The problem is that the building is populated with other captives that are all after you and your precious key. You will also be tasked with freeing a handful of prisoners that you apparently have some sort of past with. After another puzzle, you leave the bathroom and step into one of the most elaborate and repetitive crazy houses you’re ever going to see.
The bulk of the gameplay in Saw is made up of solving puzzles. Nearly every objective you must complete, be it escaping from a gas-filled room or saving a life, will depend on your ability to solve some sort of puzzle. The good news is that the first time you come across any given puzzle is that they are fairly enjoyable. The bad news is that after the first hour or so of play you will have pretty much seen all the creativity that this game has to offer. Some of the puzzle mechanics will have a tweak here or there but on the whole it’s just the same thing over and over again. The irritation of this aspect is compounded in the latter portion of the game when the difficulty of these segments is ramped up and you’re given a limited amount of time to complete them. What make it so frustrating is that the added difficulty never seems like an organic process of your time in the world, but rather a way for the game developers to give you the illusion of tension. Any tension that you may derive though, is quickly washed away as you fail the same puzzle for the twelfth time and throw your controller in disgust. You are also unable to learn from your mistakes and apply what you observe for the next time you try because every puzzle changes itself with every failure which turns the whole affair into a guessing game. That’s not creative game developing; it’s just annoying.
Some of the time you spend in between the repetitive puzzles won’t be completely wasted however, as the asylum itself is actually pretty creepy. The Unreal 3 engine is put to some fairly good use with some nice textures and appropriately nasty looking rooms. Throughout the game you will walk by rooms with the remnants of other poor souls who weren’t as lucky as you when it comes to escaping traps. It’s a rather creepy ambiance that gives off a satisfying feeling that there’s more going on in this world than just you. As with all other aspects of this game though, for every positive it attains it brings with it a negative. While the environment is spooky and nicely rendered, it all looks exactly the same. The creepy doll that talks to you the whole time will inform you that you are in different sections of the building such as the living quarters, cafeteria, basement, etc. but it’s very easy to believe that you spend the entirety of the game in the same location because I honestly can’t tell one room from another. Character models are also ugly and hard to look at which is bad enough but they are also recycled to the point of silliness so you are forced to look at the same horrid models throughout the entire game. I think I must have killed the same five guys about seventeen times apiece. Unfortunately, even the killing is no fun.
One might think that a game based on a movie franchise that revolves around killing people would get that part of its game right but it does not. I can say without the slightest bit of hesitation that this game employs the absolute worst combat I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with. It makes Silent Hill look like Devil May Cry as you try fruitlessly to swing a nail filled baseball bat at your attackers only to find thin air even though you assailant is right in front of you. That is, of course, assuming that your character swings the bat when you press the attack button; which it will only do about half the time. You can achieve some pretty creative kills by setting booby traps around the place but again, there are only a handful of them to access and they get old very quickly.
I never had any sort of desire to see these movies before I played this game and now that I’m done with it I dare say that my desire has even lessened. I didn’t understand anything that anyone was talking about, I don’t know who the jerk in the pig mask was and I have no idea who any of the people were that the doll kept referencing. Had I been familiar with the movies I suppose I may have had a better understanding of the story but I can almost guarantee that I would not have enjoyed the game any more than I did. There are a few fleeting moments of fun to be had but they are all buried beneath layers and layers of blood soaked repetition and frustration.