Saw II: Flesh & Blood

The Saw film franchise has always been something of an acquired taste depending on your liking for torture porn and gore. While the first film gave moviegoers something new and interesting in a genre overrun by hokey remakes and cheesy b-grade films, each further iteration of the franchise has become more and more diluted to the point where it has become its own worst enemy. However, that hasn't stopped Konami from releasing a sequel to the above-average original, with Saw II: Flesh & Blood.

Konami are no strangers to the horror genre, with their Silent Hill franchise heralded by many as the redefinition of the survival horror genre thanks to the addition of a puzzle-based element, so you know Saw II is in good hands when it comes to creating a tense and unnerving atmosphere, with something extra in the form of a puzzle element. The first Saw game was very much a series of mini-games and puzzles wrapped around the Saw mythos with players taking the role of Detective David Tapp as he makes his way through an insane asylum in the hope of finally apprehending Jigsaw. The sequel follows a similar pattern, set between the second and third films, with players taking on the role of the detective’s son, Michael Tapp, who has been abducted by Pighead, Jigsaw's apprentice, while searching for clues as to his father’s apparent suicide.

Right from the start of the game you’ll get a feel for the nature of the puzzles - as well as an idea of just how gory this game is - as you have to cut open a character's eye to remove a key embedded in his skull to unlock a "Venus Fly trap" that's poised to kill him. While it’s a basic quick time event (QTE), the clever use of visual and audio cues successfully heighten the anxiety as you frantically hit the correct buttons to escape. I’m usually dead set against the use of QTEs in games, but here it is cleverly integrated, with the button prompts forming part of the scenery rather than being an on-screen distraction.

Unfortunately, developer Zombie Studios got a bit carried away with the idea, and pretty much every single action involves a QTE. Every trap you encounter is a QTE, and even the fight scenes are just QTEs stringed together. While they may be cleverly integrated in the game’s aesthetic, by the third hour of dodging a scythe with the same series of button presses you’ll surely tire of them as they lose their effectiveness. Speaking of dodging, controlling your character can be somewhat frustrating as well, with input lag leading to numerous deaths as your character reacts too slowly to your button presses.

Other than the QTEs that have been liberally sprinkled throughout the game there are also numerous puzzles and collectibles to be found in the game's corridors and rooms. Many of the puzzles are optional but carry some reward with them. For instance, you can pick the lock of a weapons locker in order to gain a better weapon for upcoming fights. For the most part, the puzzles themselves aren’t very difficult, although some are made more difficult due to the lack of guidance, and usually requires players to be attentive to their surroundings. The puzzles are probably at their most devious when it comes to unlocking rooms or areas containing the collectible Billy puppets, with the numbers to padlocks being hidden in some ingenious ways, such as requiring steam to reveal them.

The levels are laid out in such a way that you'll be moving from puzzle to puzzle in order to progress through them and it's here where you soon come across the repetitive nature of the game. The first time you encounter a new puzzle you'll find them to be tense and nerve wracking, exactly what you would expect from a game based on the Saw franchise. But when you encounter them for the hundredth time they'll have lost any sense of anxiety and become just another obstacle to completing the level. That being said, there are some ingenious once off puzzles that make up about 10% of the game's content and will have you frantically trying to figure them out before you are killed. It's just unfortunate that you have to wade through the remaining 90% of repetitive puzzles to get to them.

The collectibles scattered throughout the game serve to flesh out the game’s story by giving players background information on the case Tapp's father was working on before he took his own life, as well as details on the characters he met and how they came to fall into the clutches of Jigsaw. Case files, audio tapes and the like are usually easy enough to find lying around but at least add to the back story of the game and are a welcome break from trying to escape another room full of spikes that is threatening to crush you.

The atmosphere throughout Saw II is perfect, with a dirty, grimy look that is very much inspired from the movie Se7en, and characters that look suitably desperate and worn from the trials and tribulations they’ve been put through at the hands of Jigsaw and Pighead. The use of light and dark is also put to good use, with many areas causing you to jump out of your seat when you stumble on something particularly grotesque that you may have not seen at a distance. Character animation is where the game falters though and would sometimes see your character getting stuck in scenery or struggling to perfectly line up with interactive objects necessitating the need to move back and forth until the on-screen prompt appeared.

There’s not much to be said about the audio side of the game with only a few lines of dialogue accompanying Jigsaw’s constant taunting. Tobin Bell reprises his role as Jigsaw and gives a decent performance, and most of the incidental characters are also not too bad. The musical accompaniment uses the original movie’s theme tune as the main menu music and inspiration for most of the other tracks on offer, but the music is very much in the background during the game itself so you’ll more than likely not remember it after you’ve turned the game off.

Saw II: Flesh & Blood sticks very much to the formula of the first game barring a few tweaks here and there, but for the most part manages to present players with a tense experience that evokes the themes from the movies. Despite its unpolished edges and repetitive nature, Saw II offers a somewhat entertaining alternative for survival horror fans, albeit not much different to what we've seen from the first game.

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