In honor of October, and of course Halloween, we have decided to give you guys and gals a sort of scary review to start the month out, and here we are.

The 13th Franchise

As a big fan of all things horror related, this game was a natural for me to pick up. I have always been a fan of the film series, even if some of them had become ridiculous over the years.

However, in this game, we are treated to a very set way this could go. Now, some of us will remember the old Friday the 13th game that came out on the original NES and was widely considered one of the hardest games on that platform.

The original NES game is still played today on Youtube or Twitch as a competition, most people trying to speed run through the game or something to that effect. While this was a decent game, it was a solo experience, not one you could play with friends.

Fast forward to 2017, and the developers of the newest iteration of the series have answered that problem.

Enter The Digital Era

On May 26th of 2017, the world was treated to the digital release of the newest Friday the 13th title, developed by Illfonic and published by Gun Media. This title answers the biggest gripe about the original title, multiplayer fun.

This title is an eight player game, seven of those players are camp counselors, while the last player is Jason himself. Your job as the counselor is to survive, and if you feel frisky, kill Jason.

Now, if you play as Jason, your job is to hunt down and kill all the other players before they either escape the camp or kill you. Simple right? So simple, yet it works so well. The game was later given a physical release because of the fan following on October 13th of 2017.

The Game

Let’s jump into the meat of this review, namely the gameplay. When you start the game, you enter a lobby with other players. From there, you vote on the different camps you can play at, all from the various films in the series.

Once the lobby is filled up, the game randomly picks someone to be Jason and then loads all of the players into the camp of their choosing. At this point, it’s your job to either survive or kill the camp counselors in graphic manners.

As the counselors themselves, you look for ways out of the camp, which may be as simple as restoring power and calling the police, or as complicated as repairing the car, finding the keys and gas, then getting out of dodge without Jason finding you first.

You can arm yourself with various weapons, from bats to a shotgun, the most powerful gun you will find in the game with only two shots. The developers were smart, they didn’t want this to be Call of Duty, Jason Voorhees edition, and they wanted you to know what it meant to have to run for your life, to be afraid of the dark and to generally feel the intensity of being chased through a darkened forest with a mass murderer nipping at your heels.

Be Jason

Now, on the other hand, if you play as Jason, then it’s a different ballgame. Jason, depending on the version you selected as your favorite, will have different abilities. Some are common across all the versions, while some are unique to specific versions.

For example, Jason has the ability to move from one place to another in an instant basically, another thing they wanted to make, seem just like the films. This ability is constant among all the variations of Jason, some of them he will have to throw blades or be able to set booby traps, how you play purely up to you and your taste.

Now, stalking your prey through the darkened camp areas is excellent, and once you find your prey, it’s even better. Jason has unique kills that he does on his victims, and there are a ton of them to unlock as you play through the game, all of them are very graphic and immensely painful looking.

You can customize your Jason too. You can change out his abilities as you progress so you can have that perfect feel to your Jason.

Running on the Unreal Engine this game looks fantastic. Campfires flicker in the darkness, glass breaks after you jump through a window, it’s a great looking game, though you won’t have the time to sit and admire the scenery.

Some of the environments are destructible, but you won’t be doing that unless you’re Jason. Our common enemy can burst through doors and walls, sending debris flying all over, and generally scaring the crap out of whoever is in the building.

The Design

Moving on from the graphics, we get to the gameplay itself. Now, some of you may find the task of surviving to be somewhat daunting, and let me tell you from first-hand experiences, it is.

You can hide under beds, and in closets, if you think Jason is close, the music is also a dead giveaway as well. The closer he is, the more intense it is. While you can try and hurt Jason, there is a specific way to kill him, and I will not be spoiling that in this review.

Let me say that it takes a lot of legwork and cooperation between players for this to happen. If you are lucky enough to be playing with a group of friends, then you are doing great and have all the chances in the world to make the death of Jason happen, if you are not, well, it’s going to be a lot harder.

Also, that leads me to the next section of this review.

Argh, People!

The only gripe I have about this game is the random people you play with all along. Some of them are new to the game and don’t know what to do yet, and either will quickly die or learn what they need to do in a hurry.

Then there is the other player, the ones that are helping their buddy who is Jason, letting them know where you are so he can win. The only way to communicate with other players in the game is for all of you to find the radio hidden about the area to talk to one another, but some people will start a party so that they can tell whoever is playing Jason where to find the counselors.

That takes a bit of the fun out of it.

Lucky Number 13

 

All in all, this is a great game, especially for the horror film fans in your home, and very much worth the thirty dollar price tag. I’m sure either Sony or Microsoft will put the game back for sale on their digital stores, with Halloween getting closer the game may end up cheaper than what it is at the moment.

Drawing this review to a close, I say this game is a solid 4 out of 5.

Beyond the issue, I mentioned previously, my only other complaint is the fact that it takes forever to get into a game sometimes, especially if you don’t have any friends playing the game, though you can find communities on either the PlayStation or Xbox to help find more players.

So, there you go folks, another review in the can and my sights are already set on the next review I will have in store for you in the coming weeks. So, until then, and as always, I will see you in the games.

*** Anyone with PlayStation Plus can get the game for free this month. ***

Edward Hale

PSN ID: BatEd700
Xbox Live: SENSEIZEEANBEE