Friday the 13th

Developer: IIIFonic

Publisher: Gun Media

Genre: Survival Horror 

I was pretty skeptical when I first heard that Friday the 13th was getting a multiplayer-based survival horror game. The previous entry based on the franchise came in 1989, and it was developed by LJN, who were notorious for craptastic cash-ins disguised as movie licensed games. When Friday the 13th-The Game hit steam last month, the internet exploded with gut-wrenching murder animations featuring everyone's favorite psychopath: Jason Voorhees.  

In Friday the 13th-The Game, you play as either Jason, or seven other unlucky 'counselors' who try their best to escape the map. The game is about $40 on Steam, but I was way too excited for it after binge-watching hilarious gameplay videos on YouTube to consider if it was worth it or not. When I first booted up the game, it took me half an hour to find a match. For comparison, I'll tell you that on Valve's worst day, you will still find a Dota 2 match within 7-10 minutes. Even though the server improved over the next week, at the moment it is still very much work in progress. I dealt with around 150-300 ping while I was playing, and I can vouch that it was not an issue regarding my internet.

Coming to the game itself, the roles for the player are selected by the game at random and an online match usually lasts twenty minutes. Essentially, if you're lucky enough to play as Jason, the game will be a breeze. Jason has supernatural powers which he can unlock over the course of the game: morphing, a heightened sense of locating his victims, invisibility and an ability to stop the music that the players are alerted by when Jason is nearby. It took me eight or so matches to be able to play as Jason, as the rest of the occasions had me haplessly looking for shelter hiding from him. As one of the counselors, the player is supposed to roam around the map scavenging for various pickups, weapons, maps and other items but honestly the game does not implement these rules that well. You will find yourself ignoring all the objectives and hiding for twenty minutes straight. For a game that emphasizes on coordination and teamwork as a requirement to survive, it does very little to reward those, pushing the players to just hide in a singular spot until he is either found by Jason or the player himself dies of utter boredom. To my utter dismay, as a counselor I had to stay and watch the rest of the match after I died.  

A bulk of the enjoyment of the game comes from the gory death animations triggered when Jason finds his unlucky victims. They are consciously over-the-top, but it will get pretty annoying when you're watching him axe a hole in you in the same way he has done for the last 35 times. Essentially, it is way more fun to watch the YouTube videos featuring amusing bugs and glitches that Friday the 13th has to offer. If you're an ardent fan of the franchise and have to buy it, wait until a steam sale where it is sold for like $5.