Friday the 13th: The Game review

Gather around the fire, fellow pre-marital sex loving, pot-smoking, hotpants-clad campers. I’m going to give it to you straight about Friday The 13th: The Game. Now if you listen to the old timers in town, they’ll say the Friday 13th game drowned in 1989, in a lake of bad reviews and fan scorn.

That was 28 years ago. 28 long years it’s been dormant. But it’s out there. Hungry. Watching. Waiting to KILL.

Friday The 13th: The Game is an asymmetric multiplayer game: up to 8 people join, one chosen randomly to be the man behind the mask while the others become camp counselors trying to escape or survive the 20-minute round. This kind of hunter vs. hunted multiplayer experience is gaining in popularity, with examples like Evolve and Dead By Daylight drawing in gamers. Friday The 13th: The Game is easily the best example of this genre, providing players with tense, brutal and often hilarious gameplay.

One of the things I enjoyed most was the lack of hand-holding. You are thrown into the world without guides or tutorials of any kind. Instead you are told to SURVIVE and have to evade Jason on your own or with the help of fellow victims. The victims have different strengths and weaknesses and much of the fun comes from working out what strategies are suited to each.

Many of my survival techniques come from advice from other players, hints, tips and myths about how to evade the masked murderer. Even after clocking 20 hours of gameplay, I’m still discovering different things. Underneath the slasher-horror facade, it can prove to be a tight and complex game of strategy for both cat and mouse alike.

If you die, you go to spectator purgatory for the remainder of the match if you want to collect your 500 completion XP, unless one of the survivors finds the radio and makes a distress call. Then a random dead player is resurrected as TOMMY JARVIS.

Tommy swaggers into town already equipped with all items, a boomstick, a sweet denim jacket and the ability to sense Jason anywhere on the map.

The attention to detail that developers Gun Media and IllFonic have put in is staggering. I was constantly grinning ear to ear at finding details and references to the films which blurred the line between loving homage to obsessive compulsive. From Jason’s VHS glitch transportation, Kane Hodder’s trademark gait and intricate recreations of film locations, this is a game made by fellow Voorhees fanatics.

While playing as Jason, you can unlock grabs which trigger different kill animations. Designed with the guidance of FX maestro Tom Savini, these are all brutal, splattergasmic and reference the cult films perfectly.

They even included the insane Julius head-punch from Part 8. You know the one.

There are also environmental kills, such as the toilet-bowl-drown, the door-head-slam and my personal favorite, the sleeping-bag-bash.

The real MVP though, is the music. The soundtrack is cued by Jason’s proximity: if he’s far away, the camp is eerily silent. But as Jason gets close, Harry Manfredini’s legendary Friday The 13th soundtrack swells, starting with the iconic chanting “KI KI KI, MA MA MA,” then reaching its heart-pounding crescendo when you are being chased. The music is not only amazing in a nostalgic sense but adds real tension and drama. There are also in-game radios which you can use to distract Jason, one track being “Friday The 13th” by the Misfits. As a metalhead, I was stoked to discover the credits feature Alice Cooper’s “Man Behind The Mask” from Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.

One thing to address. Some might be aware of the fan abuse directed at the game makers on social media, mainly stemming from server-related issues which led to some (mainly console users) not being able to get their machete on. But playing it on Steam from the very first hour it was released, I encountered almost no outages, lag, or problems. I sympathize with people who have and I know how frustrating that can be, but when did any multiplayer game release without a problem? The level of entitled, troll outrage towards a company trying to do something cool for horror fans is embarrassing to witness and totally unacceptable.

That said, there are issues. During my initial matches, there were clipping errors and the collision detection could be dire. Sometimes Jason would prep for a kill, then the victim would magically jump meters away, leaving the rest of the death animation to be performed on thin air (It’s worth noting that many bugs have disappeared after the latest patches). The graphics are serviceable and at some angles quite stunning with moody lighting. While the various Jason Voorhees’s are well detailed, some of the counselors lack visual flair with wooden animation and basic texturing. Hilariously, when the characters become scared their faces look cartoony, like someone has cranked the facial settings right up to maximum ‘Jim Carrey.’

Worse are the glitches that get you killed, like door and item context icons that suddenly disappear, forcing you to spin around trying to find the sweet spot. Many achievements don’t seem to unlock when you are playing on public server, only when on a private match. And although it’s funny watching Chad shart out his bowels as Jason appears every match, a variation on the start and end cut scenes would be welcome. Regardless of the map, the opening animations are almost identical.

But you know what? Even the best Jason flick is far from a cinematic masterpiece. The films are unashamedly rude, crude, low-budget and fun as hell. Comparing Friday The 13th: The Game to a multi-million dollar AAA title is like comparing Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter to big budget films that came out in 1984, say Ghostbusters or Gremlins. My least favorite Voorhees movie was the ultra-slick 2009 remake which had the highest budget of the series. I like my 13th’s with rawness, energy and preferably with Crispin Glover dancing like he’s just had a wasabi enema. The developers have put gallons of camp counselor blood, sweat and tears into creating this game and, to me, the rough edges only make the experience more authentic.

It’s early days, but so far the Friday The 13th community is largely positive. Let’s face it, a healthy slice of the population are annoying douchebags and that becomes more exaggerated with the anonymity of online gaming. The usual racist, sexist dickbags rear their ugly heads, but thankfully you can mute individual players. A few times I’ve been attacked by other camp counselors, managing to kill them in self-defense only to lose precious XP. Some players will run around you making a racket, purposely luring Jason. Admittedly, wounding a fellow player in order to escape the ax-wielding psycho is a valid self-preservation technique. But if a large group works together, Jason can be easy to fend off and players have discovered at least one way to kill Jason for good (at least until the next sequel).

Going forward, I hope Friday The 13th: The Game follows the route of Dead By Daylight and expands the gameplay with DLC (given the price, I expect some DLC will be free). Sorely absent from the roster are Final Chapter’s hacksaw wielding killer, Fake Jason AKA Roy Burns from A New Beginning, the cyborg from Jason X, and Mrs. Voorhees herself. The weird purple-overalls costume from the NES game would also be a fun nod. And although I’m still enjoying the three summer camp levels, I’m ready to play the Jason Goes To Hell diner and jailhouse or the boat from Part 8: Jason Takes Vancouver.

Friday The 13th: The Game is easily the best thing to happen to the franchise in 14 years. If another sequel or re-reboot ever happens, I hope the filmmakers exercise as much love and loyalty to the series as the makers of this game.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.