I've been holding off on this one because I knew the game was going to be not really what I wanted but was probably going to be enjoyable. Just probably barely so. You see, I'm a huge Friday the 13th fan. What introduced me to the series? I'll tell you what, THE NES GAME! When I was a wee tiny tot, I got to face Jason Voorhees in one of the mostly badly designed games of all time. Except, I still remember I beat Jason ONCE during one of the boss battles. That stuck with me and made me think I could someday play a great Friday the 13th game.
I was a Kickstarter supporter of this game and while I don't play on PC, I picked it up on Xbox One as soon as it came out. I had a somewhat mixed set of feelings from the beginning because, well, it was a multiplayer only game and I'm not a big fan of multiplayer. Still, I was ready to trudge on with the game because I have a spectacular love of Jason Voorhees. I was bitterly disappointed that the 2009 Friday the 13th movie didn't become a new franchise. I'd accept almost anything from the series because I want to see it continue. I also was happy Jason Voorhees was in Mortal Kombat and got more attention than being another boss in Dead by Daylight.
So what did I think of the game? It's okay. The premise of the game scarcely needs to be explained. There's a bunch of counselors partying at Camp Crystal Lake when Jason Voorhees interrupts with a murder of an unfortunate teen. The surviving counselors flee in every direction and Jason has to hunt them all down while they try to escape. You either play Jason or you play the counselors and matches take about 15 minutes to complete.
The game is presently a lot more playable than it was at launch with the addition of an offline mode where you can fight against a bunch of dumb-as-post bots. I actually had to turn up the difficulty to Hard to get any sort of challenge and I'm a perpetually casual gamer. They've also added a number of additional maps to the game versus the original, including some spots from the original series like the Jarvis House as well as the Higgins Farm. I'm looking forward to the eventual spaceship design from Jason X and hope we'll see the ship Jason goes to Manhattan on.
The developers have been pretty good about uploading free content but that's not something I can give them too much credit for because the game was barely complete at the start. The fact they only charged 40 dollars for it is a sign they knew this but I can't help but wonder what the game would have been like if it had managed to get full funding from a larger studio. Well, honestly, we probably would never have seen a Friday the 13th licensed game then so maybe I should quit my bellyaching.
I love the fidelity of the game developers to the franchise. There's every variation of Jason available from the movies except for Jason X (who is coming) as well as Jason vs. Freddy and the remake version (which is a rights' issue). There's even the NES retro-Jason which is just plain awesome. I also like the counselors, that include most of the archetypes found in the movie as well as a couple of homages to older characters. I loved the Jarvis and Voorhees Tapes that chronicle what passes for backstory in this game.
I was especially fond of the counselor Tiffany for being the pretty cheerleader type that usually gets offed quickly in these games as well as Chad, who is the rich doofus who has equally poor survival prospects. All of the counselors have different states which makes them a surprisingly variable character to play. I also appreciate they put in Tommy Jarvis as a character that "dead" counselors can play if they're killed during the match (or escape). It's extremely hard but possible to kill Jason using Tommy and that's extremely satisfying.
Surprisingly, the thing I enjoyed most about the game was the Virtual Cabin that contains a cornucopia of franchise trivia. Unfortunately, even that is sort of tainted because there's no clues except the internet to resolving the complicated parameters to "solve" the puzzle. Even so, I had a huge amount of fun with it in a 7th Guest sort of way. It makes me think a Telltale Friday the 13th game or outright adventure game would have been a lot more fun. Maybe I should write Telltale about
doing it. I also loved the soundtrack and am looking forward to buying it when it finally comes out.
As for bugs? Yeah, this game is buggy. There's clipping issues, dropped connections, missing hits, and more. Even logging onto the game was an enormous hassle. There's also a number of weird elements that render combat problematic. Jason can't reach through windows, cross over knee high fences, or crawl through spaces. This is meant for game balance purposes but it reduces Jason to doing a lot of tedious door chopping. I would have made the counselors faster and had Jason have multiple ways of entry to make the game more fast paced. Mind you, it just barely functions now.
Still, there remains hope for the game as they've got plans for uploading single player Challenges that will allow Hitman-like missions where Jason must kill his prey in a variety of interesting ways. If they can do these and maybe add something like a "Final Girl/Final Boy" single player experience then the game could go from being okay to something great.
In conclusion, Friday the 13th: The Game is okay. Slightly above average and playable. I feel like I got my forty bucks out of the experience but just barely. This is a game made for playing with headphones and those who don't have them or friends willing to play are missing out. The Offline version is just barely playable and quickly bores due to the fact the counselors are ridiculously easy to kill.
6/10
