Flesh and Blood
For anyone who has heard of what the Saw franchise is like, Konami’s second title will be more or the less the same as all others that came before it. You’ve done bad things in life so now you are being punished in hopes that you will see the light and if by chance you do survive you will go on to lead a long and good life. You play as the son of Detective Tapp, the main character from the first game, a reporter who by using his writing capabilities ruined his father and thus stopped all cases he was working on. Thus the game of Jigsaw begins.
First of I’m going to say that their newest title looks much better than the first one but one of the downfalls is that it can get far too dark at times, and while that is used to benefit the atmosphere, and certain puzzles other times it too much of an annoyance when you can’t see what you’re supposed to walk on. The atmosphere and the mood of the areas are done very well, you feel the pain and intensity across the game and while it does make you wonder how Jigsaw was able to find an entire street filled with abandoned warehouses entirely stocked with everything he could need to build dozens of puzzles going on at the same time and some more elaborate than those in the films. Sadly the traps in this game aren’t much to talk about, all of the games puzzles, traps, and side missions are extremely easy, except the odd one that may make you scratch your brain out and not due to a sudden spike in difficulty but from a lack of any instructions. I get that they want you to think through everything but when they tell you nothing and there’s nothing you can really do but keep trying until you either die enough times and give up or you finally realize what to do, isn’t what I would call good game design.
While they’ve done more to make the game look better and act better, especially during the odd battle which was quite the chore in the first game, but they haven’t done anything to how linear the game is, if anything they made it even more so. While in the last game you were able to collect items that you could use in order to open locked doors and the like but now you will only fins what you need, there’s a locked door you will find a nail, an enemy is coming up you will find a weapon, everything is open to you but because of way they went around doing it the game seems lacking. Combat isn’t much to talk about hit button when told to, battle won. This game does try to add more to it by leaving a lot of collectables around that will reveal more about the franchise and the characters in it, and others are behind devilish puzzles but by the end of the game you will find most of them without any real trouble mostly doing nothing more than wasting a few seconds here and there.
While this game does do enough things differently to make it seems a bit more than the first game with a 2 slapped on the end but sadly they take out almost as much as they add in which is a bit upsetting. I did enjoy playing this game, every room you would enter would make you check everything hoping to learn more and see more of what you can do as the player, but with a 8 hour playtime and only really getting achievements/trophies as an incentive to play through again there isn’t much of a reason to come back except for the few perfectionists.
I give this game a 6/10