The various complications added onto the solving of puzzles is clearly meant to create a greater sense of urgency, but the end result is simply an arbitrary injection of frustration to force players to repeatedly replay the puzzles. This is compounded by the addition of “tension” to the puzzles by often putting in a timer or other requirements intended to force players into failure so that they can go back to the nearest checkpoint-which is often not near enough-and start the whole thing over again. The game also frustrates players by relying on puzzles that have a bizarre internal logic that harkens back to the early 80s of the adventure genre, when certain puzzle solutions only made sense if you were a particular person, at a particular time of his life with a particular mindset. When a game stretching several hours incessantly repeats six of seven basic puzzle mechanics, an overwhelming sense of monotony is hard to avoid. Players will find themselves going through variants of re-wiring circuits to open locked doors, picking locks, and playing games involving stepping on the right illustrated panel, memory matching games, and rotating colored knobs in order to complete circuits. Saw II’s chief problems lie in repetition, and confusion on the part of the developers between the concepts of “challenging” and “unfair.” For a game largely reliant on the adventure style of play, there is far too much re-use of puzzles. Where it all falls apart is when you sit down and actually try to play the game. The sound is similarly workable, with a similar industrial aesthetic appearing in the music.
Lighting is a bit on the iffy side, but the game doesn’t suffer much in the way of screen tear, pop up or frame rate issues. The graphics while never being amazing, still manage to work in interesting detail thanks to the industrial gothic design of the environments. On the technical front, Saw II is competent. It’s a promising premise that is ultimately let down by significantly flawed game design.
In this torture-porn adventure, Michael is kidnapped by Jigsaw and put through the paces of a series of sadistic traps in order to discover why his father apparently shot himself in the head.
Saw II: Flesh & Blood is a sequel to last year’s Saw: The Video Game, and concerns itself with the moral transgressions of Michael Tapp, son of David Tapp, better known as Danny Glover from the original film. Konami said they didn’t consider the two to be in competition and they were right Silent Hill has nothing to worry about from this inferior series.
When the Saw franchise landed in the hands of Konami, a lot of people wondered how the publisher would handle the intellectual property when some said it was in direct competition with their own Silent Hill series.