'Saw' - Want To Play A... Couple Of Games?

Hi, and welcome back to Second Chances where I drag the maligned and forgotten off the torture racks.

Those who have been following my work here for the past five years know that I love horror, both games and movies. Followers also know that I can give even games based on movies the benefit of the doubt. That's what I did when I gave a try to the two games based on the Saw franchise, and I was pleasantly surprised. They may not be up to the level of Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay or Alien Trilogy, but they're certainly better than most licensed garbage.

Both Saw and its sequel Saw 2: Flesh & Blood, released on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 in 2009 and 2010, take place between the first two films chronologically, and they assume the player already knows the general premise of the films, if not the plot of the first. For those who don't know, the Saw franchise revolves around a serial killer known as Jigsaw who doesn't actually kill his victims outright. He instead sets his victims in elaborate deathtraps where they can escape, but only if they're desperate enough to do the reprehensible. Unlike most killers in other movies, Jigsaw's motivation is actually relatively positive. His goal is to make the victims restore the value in the own lives. It would be heartwarming if failure to escape his contraptions wasn't so gruesome.

The first game sees Detective Tapp (played by Danny Glover in the original movie) trapped in an abandoned insane asylum by Jigsaw. His obsession with trying to catch Jigsaw left victims in its wake, and Jigsaw wanted to teach Tapp a lesson in priorities. The second picks up right where the first left off with Tapp's son Michael investigating what happened to his dad. The original creators of the franchise were brought in to help with the script. As a result, the plot of the games feels like a direct continuation of the first movie, more so than the sequel films which largely abandoned Jigsaw's motivations in favor of more elaborate and gorier deaths.

Gameplay-wise, the quality is split right down the middle like a victim of a pendulum blade rigged to a door. The major positives are the level design and the puzzles. While Konami's big horror franchise Silent Hill had tougher puzzles than most survival horror games, the Saw games made the puzzles the focus which fits in with the franchise perfectly. While there are a couple of spots that just involve finding an object to use in a certain spot, most of the puzzles are legitimate brainteasers that make effective use of the environment like glow-in-the-dark codes and rigging fuse boxes. While the puzzles often have time limits that can lead to seeing your character's head pop a few times, they were legitimately fun to solve. The level layouts are full of grungy room and corridors that add to the sense of dread, especially when the tripwires start coming into play.

Unfortunately, the negatives are rather large: the combat and the quick-time events. The first game had a very basic combat system that was very similar to Silent Hill's. While there are plenty of weapons to pick-up, the control is very poor. The delay in readying weapons makes it a pain when enemies bear down on you. Fortunately, most foes go down in only two hits when playing on normal difficulty, and you can even lure enemies into environmental hazards to dispatch them more easily.

Quick-time events show up very frequently, enough to get annoying. They're mostly used to survive booby trapped doors, but they also come in at key plot points. They get even more invasive in the second game where they completely replace the mediocre combat system of the first game. Seriously, they're more annoying than in the Shenmue games!

The Saw games are definitely a couple of mixed bags, but I found myself enjoying them. While the poor combat and excessive amount of QTEs can be problematic, the clever puzzles and great stories easily made up for those issues. If you want to try them out for yourself, make sure you have some extra money. Neither game got a big release, and finding copies now can be expensive, especially for the second game. In fact, I even started a new series on my "Cool Media" YouTube channel to look at rare and expensive games, and Saw 2 was the first game I featured! (Check it out above this paragraph.)

What do you think? Had a chance to try these games out yet? Let me know!

Game over!