A bit rough around the edges, but there's fun to be had here.
Saw the game puts you in the boots of Detective Tapp, played by Danny Glover in the films but looking decidedly un-Danny Glover here. It takes place after the first flick in which he is shot, but here is patched up by Jigsaw and put through a gauntlet of deadly trials.
The game revolves largely around exploration and puzzle solving, with a little bit of combat thrown in there to keep you on your toes. You'll explore the asylum looking for clues and so forth as you hunt down Jigsaw and free other victims.
The puzzles that make up a significant chunk of the game come in a fairly large variety, though there's nothing that hasn't been done in other games before - except in other games failure usually doesn't result in grisly deaths.
You'll come across everything from Pipe Dreams-esque puzzles to block pushing puzzles.
While there's a decent variety of puzzles the game still has a dreadful habit of using the same ones over and over again. To stop poison from leaking into the room you'll always do the kind of Pipe Dreams thing for instance. They make the playing area larger in order to make it more difficult as well as place tighter time constrictions upon you, but it's still basically the same thing from beginning to end.
Even the traps in which you must save Jigsaws victims from suffer this trouble.
Only a couple of them are unique and the rest are taken from other puzzle elements in the gameplay.
In typical survival horror fashion combat is a clunky affair, suffering from severely unresponsive controls.
It's fortunate that there is so little of it. Combat is largely melee based using whatever mundane items you find in the asylum, though there are sections in which you might happen upon a revolver and it's in these parts that combat becomes a less frustrating affair.
Aside from hitting and shooting enemies you're also capable of setting traps of your own, such as pre-designated areas in which you can set up tripwires to set off shotguns and blast enemies heads off. There are also boltable doors which you can lock up to either hide from foes or funnel them down a path toward your traps. Other games have done stuff like this but it offers a nice, more suitably cerebral alternative to the clunky melee system or the easy-mode shooting.
Visually the game isn't exactly technically impressive but the gritty, muddy look perhaps works in the games favor. It certainly captures the atmosphere of the films, the asylum in which the game takes place is suitably run down. With little exception the character models are adequet, people look like people even if none of them look like Danny Glover. I'm sure there's a good reason he doesn't, but it does kind of bug me.
Game has a pretty great, ominous sound track when it does pops up.
They're pretty minimalist with the sound overall, but it works in the games favor and serves up a somewhat tense atmosphere.
Despite being a bit rough around the edges I had a pretty good time with the game.
I'm generally not big on survival horror, it's never really been my genre but I feel like at the very least SAW the game is a good companion piece to the films. If you liked those then you owe it to yourself to at least give it a rental.
