RipTen Review: Saw II: Flesh & Blood (Xbox 360)

Ever since the success of the first film in 2004, a new Saw movie has been released around Halloween every year. Konami seems to be picking up on this strategy and have released Saw II: Flesh and Blood on October 19th, not only just because it’s around Halloween, but to tie in with the release of the seventh movie. Last year’s Saw: The Videogame took the concept of the first movie and built upon it. The story followed Jigsaw-obsessed Detective Tapp (played by Danny Glover in the movie) and featured all the same types of ridiculous handmade traps Jigsaw would use. The game forced players into some gruesome situations, like doing a giant puzzle in time before a pendulum slices your friend’s guts out.  The game was intense and had some good moments.

Saw II: Flesh and Blood is no different and builds upon the story of the first game.  Unfortunately, it has also taken out some original ideas.

Saw II: Flesh and Blood’s story picks up sometime after the original game and is set between the second and third movies. The story revolves around Michael, the son of Detective Tapp. Michael is a shady newspaper reporter, obsessed with searching for the real reason behind his father’s death (despite his father committing suicide in his apartment). In doing so, Michael becomes a target for Jigsaw and finds himself put through his own Jigsaw test. This “test” consists of being able to solve harmful puzzles in order to reach dirty cops he is associated with that supply the city with prescription drugs and the nurse that provides them.

Saw II’s gameplay slightly mimics the Silent Hill series. Once Konami purchased the license for the Saw game series, they wanted the game to have the same feeling as Silent Hill, without competing. The first Saw title’s combat suffered from being unpolished and didn’t work well. It consisted of poorly implemented melee attacks and the very rare ability to shoot an enemy. The game focused more on setting traps like trip wires with loaded shotguns, forcing you to trick enemies into killing themselves. This made for an interesting style of gameplay as it didn’t focus on offense as much as the character’s defense. Saw II has redesigned the whole combat system, but not for the better. The new combat system has taken one step backwards. Now, every combat situation is just a simple quick-time event. Each enemy has a button sequence to kill with whatever weapon you are holding at that time. Weapons include things like a nailed baseball bat, axe or pipe.

Other combat situations require you kill enemies such as a Bullish-Man, which is a pissed off maniac with a spiked helmet. Usually these bosses are killed by tricking them into falling down an elevator shaft, running into an electric door or dropping a crate on their head. These guys aren’t very bright. In other sections, a cop that is chasing you throughout the game will force you you duck into cover to avoid his bullets until you escape. To be honest, these sections aren’t very fun and hurt the pacing of the story.

However, the game does do an excellent job recreating the dreadful environment and atmosphere of the movies. The game makes Michael visit the dirtiest, most diseased-ridden places you can possibly think of.  The environments are very detailed and are full of debris like old newspapers, boxes, rusty tools, old computer monitors and broken desks. While exploring, you must constantly look out for trap doors, easily avoided by doing a quick-time event to make Michael dodge the blade or shotgun hidden behind it. After exploring and reaching the next part of your test, you will come face to face with puzzles. These puzzles include aligning colored electrical wires, matching images on TVs, mixing chemicals, playing Lights Out, picking locks and many more.  These are all of a smaller scale, only serving as a distraction in Michael’s way to get to the real puzzles. Each chapter is split up into a character’s main trap and once you reach that trap, that is where things become more complicated.

These traps will have you doing things like running around lining up walls to stop blades from cutting off a man’s hands, lining up spinning pipes to stop a woman from drowning and doing some simple math to stop a woman from being ripped in half by a falling elevator.  (ouch) The puzzles aren’t the most complex, but some will leave you scratching your head for a bit.   Saw II takes some of the same puzzles from the first game, but makes them a little more accessible by giving you more time to complete them. They are perfectly mimicked from the movies and are just as gory and gruesome as you’d expect.

Overall, Saw II: Flesh and Blood is a pretty decent survival horror game. Anybody that is a fan of the movies or the survival horror genre will like the game. It’s definitely not for everybody as the game is a low budget title, but manages to definitely outshine its predecessor. The graphics are highly detailed, but the game suffers from very poor character animations, cheesy dialogue and terrible voice acting.  Yet, these are things that survival horror fans such as myself have been overlooking for years, as most aren’t AAA titles.

Any fan of the SAW movies will find tons of extra backstory through collectible audio tapes and journal entries. Fans of games like Silent Hill and Deadly Premonition will also have a fun time solving puzzles and exploring the dreary and gruesome environments.  I fell into both categories and actually really ended up liking this game. It kept me fully entertained the whole time through. Saw II felt like a game I haven’t played in a long time and that was a major selling point for me.  It certainly is different, just like the movies. The game’s experience isn’t perfect, but it is interesting enough to warrant a playthrough. Once you find yourself burnt out on other genres, Saw II serves as a great way to play something truly different. Turn out the lights and turn off your brain … live or die…make your choice!

Here’s The Rundown:

+ Immersive, highly-detailed atmosphere
+ Constant on edge feeling; very intense
+ More accessible difficulty for puzzles from first game, yet not too easy
- Poor character animations and voice acting
- Not enough contrasting events to keep it fresh all the way through
- Boring combat system; downgraded from previous title

Saw II: Flesh & Blood 2 was developed by Zombie Studios and published by Konami for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game was released in the United States on October 19th, 2010 with a retail price of $59.99.  The copy used in this review was for the Xbox 360 and was provided by Konami  for review purposes. The game was played on Normal difficulty to the end and took around seven hours to complete while collecting everything in game.  It was scary, I wet myself.