“Hello, (insert your name here). You’ve spent your entire life playing games the way that they are not meant to be played. The things that are given to you in life for enjoyment are taken advantage of and raped by your own greedy agendas. Today, we shall see how important your life is to you, rather than gamerscore. I have placed a device in front of your seat. After activating the device you will find 7 levels full of puzzles, deadly twists and even deadlier adversaries, as you attempt to solve your way through and survive this final test. Also, you have 60 seconds until the room is detonated and you are blown to pieces.”
Anyone familiar with the SAW film franchise should understand what I’m getting at, and should be able to hear the Jigsaw voice reading it to them.
SAW is exactly what it looks like, a game adaptation of the SAW universe. The game takes place soon after events of SAW the movie, with Detective Tapp’s carelessness leading to the death of his partner. If you are coming into this game expecting an honest SAW experience like one you’d see in a movie, this game will be exactly what you’re expecting, for the most part, that is.
You play as Detective Tapp, the Danny Glover-portrayed character obsessed with the capture of the Jigsaw killer. Jigsaw has captured you and placed you in an abandoned insane asylum, leaving you with the SAW-clichéd audio tapes that give you hints and missions. The storyline features seven chapters, six of which involving Tapp saving various characters that series fans will more than likely recognize.
Hey, I think I know that guy!
The game play is pretty simple in that the game is a very puzzle-pounding survival horror. There are 4 main puzzle types: circuits, gear puzzles, pipe linking, and quick time events. While at first, these puzzles (although extremely similar in format to the hacking minigames in Bioshock) seem fresh and intriguing, they soon become extremely repetitive and end up annoying you more than anything.
Circuit minigame
The game also has an awkward feeling combat system, which you will use to defend yourself from the random combatants trying to get the key that Jigsaw has surgically implanted inside of you. To activate it, you’ll need to hold the left bumper while pressing X or A to attack. While this isn’t a bad system by any means, it just feels weird and kind of clunky at times.
Personally, the character models in this game are superb. The blood is pretty well done, but the gore rarely reflects the action being done. While sliding past a slamming blade, being too slow and getting sliced in half, the dead character model is simply beheaded, and not completely sliced in half like the action would have suggested.
While this game is a sincerely true-to-form SAW counterpart, it isn’t very long. The superbly written story lasts roughly 7 hours, and most of the accompanying achievements are either story-related or easily achieved by using each weapon once and picking locks. Achievement difficulty: 1/10
Konami has really hit the nail on the head here.. SAW is a truly accurate representation of the SAW film franchise. Although the game play gets overused and a little clunky, I think this is a must play for any fan of the franchise, and a must play for anyone who is a fan of unique puzzle games. SAW is truly one game that I would be ecstatic about playing a sequel of, as long as Konami can polish up the experience. 8/10