Saw: The Video Game captures (as best a video game can, anyway) how it must feel to be caught in a trap from the horror movie franchise of the same name.
From the first moment Saw cedes control to the player, you're trapped in a puzzle and the only help available is an overview of the controls.
This third-person horror-survival title, which was released last month and adapted from the film series that debuted in 2004, was developed by United States-based Zombie Studios and published by Japanese firm Konami for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows-based personal computers.
Former police detective David Tapp (pictured) awakens in a decrepit, abandoned asylum, a captive of his nemesis, the Jigsaw Killer. Tapp must survive a gauntlet of tortuous traps and lethal puzzles to save innocent lives and escape.
Saw's puzzles aren't exactly mindbenders but they are smarter than your typical "hit switch to open door" gaming move and it's nice to see a game respect its audience's intelligence and expect players to figure their own way out.
This continues throughout the game, with end-of-mission brainteasers that have you racing the clock as the person you need to save screams in your ear for you to hurry up. Those with fragile nerves will find them frayed by these moments and other challenges in which you need to escape from a room before a trap goes off and kills you.
In later levels, Saw strings together several of these challenges in exhaustive succession. As the storyline explains, there are a number of people who need you dead so that they may live and the awkward movement controls and downright clumsy combat controls give those poor souls a fighting chance. The game occasionally places pitfalls near the next checkpoint. Passing through a meaty stretch of the game only to miss a single tripwire, die instantly and start over is as unsatisfying as it sounds and, if you're the impatient sort, it will drive you crazy.
When all these aspects - time limits, easy-to-miss traps, voices in your ear, your two left feet - work in tandem, Saw feels like an exercise in sanity awareness more than a video game.
But that's the point, isn't it? Playing Saw isn't a form of feel-good escapism: It's supposed to frighten you, stress you out and propel you into a continuous state of unease.
Pros: Succeeds at delivering frantic, engaging gameplay.
Cons: It has some awkward, unrefined action.
GAME ON
