Does the Movie Series Justice...Take it For What It's Worth
Originally scheduled to be released by money-heavy but talent-lacking developer Brash Entertainment (creators of such gems as the games Jumper and Space Chimps), Saw seemed to be DOA when the developer finally died under the weight of their suck. Konami, however, stepped in and released the game.
And the game actually does the movie series some justice. It is a gory affair, with some rather unpleasant deaths...but the overwhelming game dynamic isn't violence, but puzzle solving. The game is a puzzler, basically, with some combat mixed in to the equation.
You play Detective Tapp, who was the pursuer of Jigsaw in the first movie. It turns out that your pursuit has had a rather negative impact on several others and you have to free them while trying to escape the hellish asylum of Jigsaw. There are some minions out and about and a lot of traps...but violence is, surprisingly, not in the foreground here.
Not to say there isn't violence. There very much is. It's just that you'll spend more time puzzle solving than pummeling suckas. You do have a wealth of different weapons to use to slaughter the enemies in the building, but there seems to be so little reason to use them outside of garnering Achievements when simple punch and kicking works so well. Heck, the big boss you have to kill is killed with your bare hands far easier than with anything else.
The main negative, though, is that the puzzles become redundant quickly. The puzzles aren't bad at all...it's just that they are done to death quickly and become a tedious slog at the end. You also have to do such things as dig through toilets full of dirty syringes and barrels of acid to retrieve keys, but the mechanic wasn't fun the first time you did it and certainly became no more enjoyable with repetition.
The final level puzzles to free the kidnapped actually aren't that bad. They are quite challenging and usually have strict time requirements that you are reminded of as they inch ever closer to death while you seek to solve the puzzle. It's one of the better design decisions in the game and gives a sense of urgency that puzzle games have a hard time providing.
I can't say the game is bad...but it's not a revelation, either. The building looks suitably nasty and the character models aren't bad. It's just that you do the same thing over and over and no matter how much they try to add tension to the basic puzzling, it just lacks enjoyment the third time through. Not a bad game to try, but it's nothing one should rush out to get.
