The Haunted Hoard: Friday the 13th: The Game (Xbox One)

The Friday the 13th series of films helped codify the horror movie trope of a group of teens picked off one by one at a cabin in the woods, but when the series began things were on somewhat even footing. Whether it was Jason Voorhees or his mother responsible, the dynamic wasn’t as skewed in the killer’s favor until Jason had to keep coming back to life for repeat performances, turning into a hulking menace that could easily bounce back from incredible injuries. Quite appropriately then in Friday the 13th: The Game the goal of the campers is not so much to take down this indomitable masked killer but to merely escape him alive, but not every player is left in this desperate survival scenario. In this Friday the 13th multiplayer game, one player gets to play as Jason, everyone else trying to outmaneuver this fearsome horror icon who is under the control of an intelligent human player.

 

In a typical round of Friday the 13th: The Game, a group of up to eight players will be placed in a lakeside forest full of cabins and other buildings to enter, but for most of the players, their goal will be to get out of there as soon as possible. Playing as the camp counselors Jason hopes to kill, most of the players will be running around searching for tools to help defend themselves as well as useful items for helping to work on their escape. They can’t just safely leave the campgrounds, but if they can get the right parts they can repair vehicles to escape, and if they can repair the phone lines then the police will eventually show up and give counselors a safe place to run to in order to escape. As the counselors scour the map though, one player is the masked killer Jason and all he needs to do to win is kill everyone he can. Rounds can end with some people dead and others having successfully escaped, but while the counselors can find weapons that can sometimes stun or incapacitate Jason briefly, the odds still feel heavily skewed in Jason’s favor and this can lead to interesting social moments. Someone might get a car working but they might be too terrified for their own life to let others hop in before they drive off, but working together can mean even if Jason gets his hands on someone there might be others nearby to knock him around to force him to release the player.

 

It does feel like without a big enough group of players, Jason has too much of an upper hand. This is primarily because of how the process of making your escape as a counselor unfolds. Once a round starts you need to search inside buildings for things like gas for the vehicles, parts like a fuse to enable the phones, or useful items like a map that will let you more easily find where your means of escape are. A mini-map does at least mean you aren’t wandering around blind before you find one, but you do spend much of your time entering a cabin, looking through drawers, and hoping you stumble across something useful. Since item placement is somewhat random, some rounds can you have you striking out again and again as each new cabin search provides nothing fruitful while other rounds maybe you can find a useful part early on, but Jason is always going to be active and hunting for players with quite a few advantages to help him out. The Jason player can detect sounds from fairly far away, and once he has reached a counselor, their chances of making a clean getaway are fairly small. Even if they hit him with a weapon they found he can often track them immediately afterwards, and in larger matches the number of players can split his attention enough that maybe you won’t be doomed if the Jason player finds you.

There are some things in place to try and help the normal humans survive this supernatural threat’s ability to kill you pretty easily once he’s got his hands on you. Jason needs to enter buildings through the door, many of which can be barricaded so Jason must slowly chop his way in if he’s hoping to reach the person within. However, counselors can exit through windows, and even if Jason smashes them to make that more painful, it still gives them a way to squeak out of being cornered. A round does end if twenty minutes have passed and Jason hasn’t killed everyone so stalling for time is a viable if risky and slow option, but it does at least raise the chances that the Jason player might go seek easier prey. When a coordinated group is working together against Jason though things can become a little more exciting, the pressure from both sides allowing for close escapes or surprise losses as both parts of this deliberately skewed scenario need to think more cleverly or choose their moments to act. It can’t relieve the toil of counselors having to spend so much time searching drawers, but when your group is actually making decent progress on achieving one of the survival conditions you can start to get some nervous excited energy as you try to pull everything off without being the one on the end of one of Jason’s brutal cinematic kills.

 

Rather unsurprisingly though, the most entertaining part of the experience are those rounds where you get to play as Jason Voorhees. The towering killer of Crystal Lake has a set of tools and abilities to help him whittle down the counselors’ ranks, but he doesn’t have all of them available right off the bat. You’ll be able to teleport to anywhere on the map with your starting ability, but your map doesn’t show where people are so you do need to start investigating the sounds around the area. While you are walking around dark forests you could blend into easily, the game does have some mercy on the counselors, there being audio and visual cues when Jason is nearby. A distortion effect similar to an old VHS tracking error will notify them Jason is probably close enough to start trying to carve them up, but even before he’s that close they’ll hear music kick in. Starting with the iconic understated whispering voice saying “Ki ki ki, ma ma ma…” and ramping up to more terrifying high energy music as Jason gets nearer and nearer, it instills a level of dread in Jason’s potential victims but gives them a chance to start to try and counter or escape him as best they can. In a rather nice touch, each different Jason identity, be it the bag-headed one from Part 2, the more monstrous zombie of Jason Goes to Hell, or the fun gaudy purple recolor of Part 3’s iconic hockey mask look to match the NES game’s odd depiction of him, has unique versions of their music for when they approach, ensuring it doesn’t get stale even if the map designs might.

 

Jason is admittedly rather slow, leading to some slow speed chases and people giving him the runaround in moments that kind of dull the terror of the situation, but to make up for it Jason soon has other abilities come online during a round. Stalk removes the clues to Jason’s presence for a time so he can actually sneak up on people, Sense will highlight nearby players or the building they’re hiding in so the Jason player doesn’t have to rely so much on the rings representing nearby noises, but Shift really gives him a major edge. Shift lets you disappear and fly forward at incredible speed, reappearing the moment you stop. Aim it well and you can appear out of thin air and immediately grab a counselor, this often a death sentence for them as you can then activate one of your gory execution methods to put them down. Counselors can escape, mashing A fast enough sometimes working provided they have enough time before Jason’s executions become available. A counselor with a pocket knife can strike back, and allies can smack Jason to force him to release the person, but oftentimes the grab is a death sentence and thankfully Jason has to be very close to hit with it so you at least can see it coming. His weapon attacks though aren’t a guaranteed kill, it actually taking a while to wear down counselors with your normal attacks but they can often start to slow down or stumble both as their health wanes or the fear mechanic punishes them for spending too much time near Jason. The Shift does skew things in Jason’s favor once he has it and a Rage effect will activate near a round’s end so he can start smashing doors down easily while shrugging off weaker weapons so people don’t try to stall too much, but the Jason player still can face barriers to a successful killing spree so it doesn’t feel like the counselor players are just there to indulge the lucky Jason’s slaughter.

 

Again though, some elements of the deliberate skew certainly feel off. Both side of the conflict can place bear traps, but Jason can booby trap the few objectives like the car or electrical boxes and unless you’ve lucked into finding a rare pocket knife that can disarm them, you have no choice but to step into them to make them disappear. The trap springing alerts Jason, and then your number is probably up. Death isn’t always the end though, as a counselor player can reappear after someone on the team has found a radio to call in Tommy Jarvis. A powerful human character armed with a shotgun, Tommy can better hold his own in a fight against Jason but still likely won’t kill him, but having Tommy on your side gives a guardian to the counselors that can make some dire situations easier to escape. It feels like the counselors do have a small bag of tricks to ensure they’re not helpless, but they’re still not going to have nearly as much fun as the Jason player whose powers allow him to do far more during a confrontation or give him advantages like the bear traps the counselors can struggle to counter.

The hunt-or-be-hunted play of Friday the 13th: The Game is meant to be played online, the developers even patching the game after they stopped work on it so it can be played so long as other players are seeking a match as well, but some parts of the structure get in the game’s way again. Players will often leave a match if they don’t get to play as Jason or immediately leave the moment he kills them, this problematic if they’re also the host player for the round as it will immediately end the round afterwards. Experience points are earned for doing certain actions during a round and are only rewarded if you stay until the end, although since another end-of-life lead to another reason to leave early. Experience points and the CP currency were pretty useful, leveling up earning you new counselors and even different versions of Jason from across the horror movie franchise, but that last patch made them all free so there is no motivator for a host player to stick around after death save being a good sport. Every Jason has the same basic abilities but depending on the version picked he’ll not only look different but have unique advantages and disadvantages. Some can’t run, others can break down doors more easily, and there’s quite a bit of variation with how long their abilities might last or take to rejuvenate after use, but they all also have unique weapons with special execution methods. Players used to use their Customization Points to buy new kills for Jason to utilize that are sometimes even homages to kills from the movies, the game putting a lot of care into giving you both familiar executions and unique ones as Jason can find many areas around the game’s five unique maps and their smaller variations to get an environmental kill.

 

Counselors all have their upsides and downsides as well, some more skilled at repairing for example so they need to play simpler minigames to fix the car or boat for an escape. You can equip perks that can lightly tip things as well such as making the cops appear sooner if you’re the one to call, but the counselors are mostly original characters for the game with only a few being actual Friday the 13th characters. Admittedly many people in the films are there mostly to be killed and Tommy Jarvis, one of the few memorable recurring characters, is already present, but it is nice at least they got characters like Shelly and Fox beside the original ones, and some like the rich boy Chad have such goofy expressions when they’re terrified it’s hard to be upset that he’s in over some reference that likely wouldn’t land. There is a large degree of love for the franchise though, the different maps not only based on different locations feature in the films but containing interesting finds and even collectible audio tapes to add a little story to this otherwise gameplay focused experience. The Virtual Cabin is the most impressive area though, an interactive museum with behind the scenes info on the game and unique representations of elements from the movie series to make exploring it more fun than just a basic extra gallery.

 

Continuing the sort of mixed effectiveness that permeates this title are the game’s solo challenges. Playing as Jason you’ll be presented with a scenario where game-controlled counselors are obliviously living their lives that you must swiftly and secretively end. These challenges are more about stealth as well as special kills, the counselors often idling about near equipment perfect for violently killing them once the conditions are right. Luring someone to a boat motor to tear them up, entering a room where a couple is in bed together to spear them through for a double kill, or ramming a woman’s face in a boiling pot of water all feel like or even are inspired by the kinds of kills the films focused on, and the game even incentivizes seeing these special kills with the challenge mode goals. A checklist will hint at interesting ways to kill the targets and give you CP and special emotes if you figure them out, but the skull system is far more important. Unlocking the next challenge requires earning at least 2 of the 3 you can earn in the current one, these skulls being earned by killing all the counselors, doing so without being detected, and earning enough points. Points are earned through the ways you kill and act as Jason and often require doing the special kills, but that’s where things get a little rough. Brilliantly brutal though they may be, these kills sometimes require excellent timing to avoid alerting others or missing your brief window of opportunity, and with each challenge introduced with an unskippable cutscene, being made to retry when things go awry becomes aggravating. Friday the 13th: The Game isn’t built for Jason to be stealthy so trying to even wait around a corner can be difficult as you can’t really peek around it properly, and while you can try to do just the full kills and point total if you are spotted, the AI is flighty and can too easily notify other counselors to lead to the challenge being unwinnable. When these work they are interesting twists to the play that let the game focus on more cinematic kills, but replaying some to learn the perfect way to manage a killing schedule is made too clunky and this singe-player element ends up unfortunately uneven.

THE VERDICT: Flashes of excitement keep Friday the 13th: The Game from being bogged down by its struggles in giving the hunted counselor players interesting things to do. Jason definitely has the advantage both in his abilities and how entertaining he is to play, but when you are being hunted that fight for survival can have its moments that are dampened only slightly by some elements that can slow those down to less thrilling conflicts. The constant scavenger hunt through cabins is certainly where the counselor work is weaker, but Jason’s abilities make the hunt pretty interesting for him even if the challenge mode is harmed some since he’s built more for hunting human players out in the open rather than the flighty AI teens of that more precise way to play. It can feel like Friday the 13th: The Game asks you to spend too much time doing rather dull tasks, but when things kick off, they do so with enough heart-pounding energy to ensure that there is at least some payoff worth that time investment.

 

And so, I give Friday the 13th: The Game for Xbox One…

An OKAY rating. Hunting people down as Jason perhaps quite obviously comes out as the highlight of this asymmetrical horror game, the game making him work for his kills a bit while giving him quite an imposing presence thanks to how quickly things can turn when he exploits his advantages properly. Unfortunately, his fun often comes at the expense of up to seven other players, but funnily enough they are likely to find things most thrilling when they’re in peril since their activities otherwise are going to be popping into cabins to look for car batteries and gas cans otherwise. The random distribution of important items for the counselors to find puts a little too much of their ability to enjoy a round up to chance, the process of working towards the escape sometimes taking far too long without interesting interruptions. Some rounds things can click early of course, and trying to surreptitiously get your means of escape operational is when it is exciting to be a counselor. You aren’t totally helpless either, the different weapons, be they the single shot of the very effective shotgun and flare gun or the machetes and fire axes you can swing multiple times, actually able to help you stand your ground but not so reliably you can bully the undead killer you’re meant to be fleeing from in terror. However, Jason being able to bear trap vital areas also begins to tip things into an unfortunate direction, Friday the 13th: The Game feeling like its balance of good and bad ideas are all over the place.

 

Seeing the love for the film series, utilizing different Jasons and flashy kills, playing the challenges that aren’t too demanding, these all work to endear the game to you a bit more, but then spending a round scouring the area unsuccessfully as a counselor for ages before Jason to slowly and ineffectively chase you for a while makes you wonder why you’re popping in to play at all. The lows are at least more bland busywork or little exploits of Jason’s limitations while the highs can be more engaging battles where the counselors actually coordinate some decent opposition against the masked killer, but the fact you need to roll the dice on which one you’ll get does lessen some of its appeal. Still, there is something compelling about its concept and things aren’t horrendously imbalanced, so sometimes taking that gamble will pay off with an exhilarating round or two that brush away the bad memories of the weaker ones.