So again Jigsaw is up to his "life lessons" of kidnapping and self inflicted torture. This time to teach a lesson to David Tapp's son. Tapp is the character Danny Glover played in the first film and main character from the first Saw game. His son, Michael, is forced on the mission to find out what happened to his estranged father as both endings lead to his death in the first game. Michael must go through a booby trapped warehouse and hotel to uncover the truth of what has messed up his life and took his father's. Kind of a staple story for any iteration of the franchise.
So what is new to the series with Saw II? Well unfortunately not all that much besides story and some good and bad game play tweaks. In fact I can sum up the visuals and audio in a sentence or two. There are pretty much the same as Saw and the base use of the Unreal Engine. Not that it is a bad thing, but don't expect any major improvements in these two areas.
First the improvements. The biggest being the structure of the traps you have to disarm. I did not find one of them to be on the impossible side like I did in the first game. I'm not saying they were all that easy, but there were no traps that gave you seven minutes to search a bunch of rooms, fight a guy, almost die of poison gas all to diffuse two insanely hard puzzles all before you explode. Might sound easy in writing, but it was a huge pain before which is why I think Zombie Studios limited them in this go. This made things more enjoyable and less "WHERE THE FUCK DID ALL MY TIME GO?!?"
Another thing I found to be a vast improvement is the fact that they used the collectable to aid the story of the franchise and not just the game. While the games are not a direct tie-in to the films, they share a "universe" and it was expanded and explained throughout the game. There were reasons outside of Achievement/Trophy-whoring to find these things. In fact the collection element was used to explain off a few questions about the overall story that were left vague or unexplained.
Moving on, I will be the first person to say that the combat in the first game wasn't broken. It was insanely broken. For instance you could beat a guy to death, barehanded, by spamming the attack button even when they are wielding weapons that give them reach. To fix this it would seem they went the way of Heavy Rain and had QTE for ALL combat. It isn't even good QTE on top of that. To defend so you can perform a one hit killing blow with a weapon, I never found myself without one; you generally had to hit a button while a gauge moved. After defending, which is way harder than it needed to be, all you had to do was hit one or two buttons displayed on the screen. Then BAM, dead person at your feet. Good to see that all of these enemies can only attack and not defend.
Outside of the broken combat, the puzzle descriptions were also very lacking. Some of them leave you wondering what you have to do at all. I know it is part of how the antagonist works, but at sometimes there is absolutely nothing to "hint" at what to do, or even what you have to use to get things done. In some cases it was really trial and error then wondering what I did to make it all work. I can see this being frustrating for a lot of people, so why leave it so vague?
Now would I recommend Saw II for my readers here? I would if you are like me and enjoy the franchise as a whole. While the combat and game play was a little clunky at times, I felt I walked away from the game with a lot more of the whole story in hand. This for me can still make a game enjoyable. Let's also face it; this is a game for the fans and not for the masses. Not that general gamers couldn't find enjoyment here, but there is more fan appeasement here than anything.
Saw II: Flesh And Blood was developed by Zombie Studios and published by Konami on October 19th 2010 for the PS3 and XBox 360. The game retails for $59.99. A PS3 copy of the game was supplied by the publisher for review purposes.
