Friday the 13th: The Game Review in Progress – IGN

By Daemon Hatfield

As someone who was Jason Voorhees for Halloween in fifth or sixth grade (probably not a great idea today), Ive definitely been looking forward to stepping back into the hockey mask in Friday the 13th: The Game. So it shouldnt come as too much of a surprise that Ive found taking on the persona of Jason and roaming around as an iconic invincible force of murder is the highlight of this asymmetrical multiplayer killing spree. Unfortunately, the large majority of your time is spent controlling the machete-fodder, who are much less fun.

Jason will be set loose on gamers tomorrow, but Ive been running for my life on the PC version for a couple days now. Note that a big part of why we do reviews in progress for multiplayer games is to test out servers in a live environment before we finalize our score. Usually thats to test and see if a game performs as well after release as it did before, but in this case Im hoping the servers stabilize in time for the official launch. Pre-release servers have been pretty shaky, and multiple matches have crashed due to server disconnects. Well keep playing and hoping for the best, but at the moment thats one of the scariest things about this game.

Let me start off by assuring you this is a much, much better game than whatever that crap was you might have played on NES. (Thats a low bar, granted.) The design borrows directly from the films which, when you think about it, were really asymmetrical multiplayer matches all along. Its Jason versus up to seven teenagers: Hes hunting them, and theyre cooperating to escape.

These powers are a good explanation of how Jason can seem to be everywhere at once.

The developers got the feeling of playing as this iconic character right, and its really fun to methodically hunt down your prey. As the match goes on you slowly gain more supernatural powers like Sense (think Eagle Vision in Assassins Creed) and Morph, which lets you warp anywhere on the map. Not only are these a good explanation of how Jason can seem to be everywhere at once in the movies, they make you feel powerful and in control of the situation. The situation being that there are some teens that need murderin.

The problem is that, like in the similarly structured Evolve, you cant choose to be Jason. One player is chosen at random at the start of the match, and with up to eight players that means there is a 12.5% chance of you being Jason. The other day I played all day long and only got to be Jason once.

The lucky jerk who gets to be Jason is out there having all the fun.

So you spend the vast majority of your time as a teenager, which isnt nearly as fun to play. On this side of the conflict, you have three survival options: escape by car, escape by boat, or call the cops to come rescue you. Each method requires finding key items in order to repair the escape route, but the items are spread across the randomly generated maprandomly. There doesnt seem to be any rhyme or reason as to how the items are distributed, so playing as a teen means just searching every drawer of every room in every cabin. The lucky jerk who gets to be Jason is out there having all the fun while youre rummaging through desks! You can hide in an outhouse or whack Jason with a weapon to stun him, but these mostly just buy you time. There is apparently some mythical, convoluted way to kill Jason, but the developers aren't sharing how just yet.

At least while youre aimlessly searching every corner of the map you can appreciate that a lot of love for the Friday the 13th franchise is on display here. Six different Jasons are playable, including the pre-hockey mask baghead version from the second movie. The differences arent just cosmetic, as each has strengths and weaknesses. Part 3 Jason can run but has weak stun resistance, for example.

But no matter which version of Jason is hunting you, his kills are gruesomely delightful and are totally on par with what you would expect to see on the movie screen. The unlocked kill descriptions are pretty great:

Head Punch: Not just a knock out, but a knock off.

Head Squeeze: Jason turns the counselor around and squeezes their head until it pops.

You get the idea.

The three maps (with randomly generated elements) pull from several of the movies, in particular parts two and three. Series fans will no doubt recognize Jasons shrine featuring his dead mothers shriveled head and the barn from Part 3s climax.

Even Jasons nemesis Tommy Jarvis a relatively deep cut for anyone but the biggest of Friday fans is included as a hero character that can be summoned by the teens to help finish the fight. A player who has already been killed is chosen at random to take control of Tommy, so this mechanic also gives players a reason to stick around after theyve been killed off and another chance to survive the night.

Speaking of those colorful kills, most of them are unlocked with customization points earned by playing. The same goes for perks for the teenagers that will help them survive, such as starting with a weapon in your hand or higher damage resistance. There are also numerous unlocks that occur automatically as you level up your profile, like new Jason archetypes and counselor outfits. I do like the progression system and am eager to keep playing so I can unlock the new kills and threads for the teenagers I have to keep playing.

Friday the 13th is not a polished game.

While there is a lot of welcome attention to franchise details, Friday the 13th is not a polished game. In fact, its quite buggy. Collision detection is terrible, and its not uncommon to see characters popping through walls, teens hovering in air, and corpses still flailing about after Jason has ended them. Each teen has a few lines of dialogue, but their mouths dont move when speaking. And every single match begins with the same shot of the preppy teens ridiculous face, which gets old fast.

Of course, polish isnt a necessary requirement for friends to have some dumb fun together you only need to look as far as something like PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds to know that a little glitchiness doesnt get in the way of a great game. But so far, Im finding Friday the 13th: The Game to only be fun when playing as Jason, so Im disappointed every time a match begins and Im not wearing a hockey mask.

Check back after Memorial Day weekend for my full review of Friday the 13th: The Game.

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Friday the 13th: The Game Review in Progress - IGN