Welcome to SAW the videogame, as the title says, a diabolical game and it can't even use the excuse of 'rushed production to match film release' excuse so many poor film to game conversions use.

I say its bad, but I really need to qualify this statement by saying it's bad, as a video game, HOWEVER, it is an excellent representation of the film series.

This game sees you play through as Detective Tapp (Danny Glovers Character froma couple of the movies), who has been taken by Jigsaw to be part of 'the game'.

I won't go into too much detail about the story etc as, just as with the films, the plot that unfolds is the most rewarding part. Suffice it to say, that even though the game itself is poor as hell, the story is excellent, hugely worthy of the series and brilliantly written and played out.

It is in the faithfullness to the series where this games high points lie. A number of characters from the films return, the traps are very true to the 'lethal but fair' ideal Jigsaw believes in, and the atmosphere is suitably dark and menacing as you would expect from the Saw licence.


I started off really liking the game. I personally think the puzzles are excellent, but they soon become repetitive, then they become boring and redundant in swift order. Even the 'big' traps in which you rescue characters are just eloborate looking versions of the puzzles you've already played, and this is dissapointing. Yes the puzzles that solve the traps are excellent in and of themselves, having to do them dozens of times over during the game is just too much. There is also the problem of the time limits. Yes this is very true to the films, no doubt, but some of the time limits the game gives you are extremely harsh requiring multiple retries.

The combat is incredibly poor fair. Slow, unresponsive and incredibly redundant. There really isn't anything more to say about it. Yes this game isn't primarily a combat game, but combat being present with reasonable frequency means that the developers should have taken some time to make it at least serviceable. As it is, the combat is very very poor indeed. There are a plethora of weapons ot choose from, but they all work in exactly the same way, even the ranged weapons are essentially the same. After a couple of hours playing it I was only using weapons to inlock achievements and the rest of the time I was fighting unarmed as it was faster and better.


More than anything though, right now what I'm hating the most is the targetting.

A trap a lot of games fall in to is making its targetting system haphazard, on the one in SAW is no different. You spend a lot of time looking for items, keys, health, wepaons etc and the problem is that there is no way to move through items in the game world one at a time, or to focus specifically, all you can do is just move around in an awkward little dance with the scenery hoping you manage to focus on the thing you need. It quickly gets very irritating, especially when combined with traps and their timelimits.

A good example of this (minor spoiler, nothing important) is from early in the game. There is a room you wander into which starts to vent poison gas into the atmosphere. You have to find 2 items by rummaging through about a half dozen containers, then beat the puzzle on the trap before your timer runs out. I tried the puzzle a couple of times and realized it just wasn't going to happen unless I got insanely lucky, and it wasn't worth the effort. I was fortunate on this occasion that there was a weak wall in the room I could break down. I dropped the revolver to punch down the wall (didn't want to waste the bullets and there is no inventory system to allow me to 'unequip' the weapon) but whenever I tried to pick the revolver up again, it keeps swapping between it and the hole I'd just made in the wall for me to crawl through. I didn't have time to faff about because of the awful time limit and faffing is exactly what was on the cards because of the poor targetting and the rapidly dropping time limit.

Admittedly it's a small thing really, but it is quite frequent and these little things build up to become hugely annoying after a while.


Overall I find it difficult to recommend this game.

If you're a fan of the movies, then I DO think it's worth playing at some point as it is a hugely faithful representation. Also despite the flaws in teh game, the achievements are hugely easy to earn, so if you're of the mind to play a game just for it's achievements, this is one of those games that you will appreciate.

However, based on it's own merits as a video game, there is very little to recommend this at all. The poor gameplay and bad design choices totally undermine the effort put in to be faithful to the source material.

It's a shame really as this game could have been spectacular had the game engine and design choices been up to scratch. As it is, it's one for the fans and few others.