Oh Jigsaw you never cease to amaze me with your ability to watch people 24-7, know their most intimate details, find abandoned buildings that still have electricity intact, and turn them into incredibly complicated death traps in what seems like no time at all.  Despite Jigsaw’s ability to amaze me I didn’t feel his counterpart game SAW was capable of the same.  Don’t get me wrong the game is extremely amusing and entertaining but by no means amazing, even if in a sarcastic manner.

The game puts you in the shoes of detective Tapp and surprise, Jigsaw has kidnapped you and placed you into another one of his games, all in an effort to teach you a lesson about life and make you a better person.  However you aren’t alone in this (the world’s largest abandoned insane asylum) game, there are others that have been placed there with you.  The problem is you are the key to their freedom, literally as Jigsaw has placed a key deep inside of your chest that if retrieved will allow the others to exit the building.  The most amazing part is its not until Jigsaw tells you this that your character finally realizes he has been cut open and sewn back up.  Call me crazy, but I kinda feel like that’s something I would notice as soon as I woke up, but I digress.

Like the premise in the movies, you make your way from area to area all the while solving puzzles and constantly trying to stay alive as Jigsaw has placed numerous traps all over, all of which will end your life instantly.  The game certainly does keep you on your feet and will instantly punish you if you start to slack off and think you can just run through this game.   After about the 20^th time of having my head blown clean off by a shotgun I learned my lesson that I need to always have some kind of light source going.  The game is full of traps that will constantly kill anyone who doesn’t pay attention to every part of their surroundings. 

As I mentioned it’s your goal to find an escape and hopefully take Jigsaw down once and for all. Along the way you will come across other unfortunate people that should be recognizable to any fan of the movies.  You will need to save them in order for Jigsaw to grant you access further into his game.  None of the puzzles you encounter are exactly Mensa quality but as you get further the pressure to solve them quicker and quick increases.  In each case you will be racing against the clock to either save your life or someone else’s and game certainly does a great job of making you feel the pressure to succeed.

The game has an overall Silent Hill (when it was good) feel to it, from the eerie surrounds to the hellish death that surrounds you, you can’t help but have an uneasy feeling while playing it.  The game is powered by the ever great Unreal engine and while it’s no Gears of War 2 when it comes to the quality of the graphics they certainly aren’t horrible by any means either. The controls are pretty solid as well and the third person view works well for the game and I never felt once that the camera angles were a problem. 

The game is surprisingly entertaining in a challenging sort of way.  Like I said before most of the challenge doesn’t come from the puzzles themselves but rather the external pressure that gets applied to you to complete them as quickly as possible.  Any fan of the never end movie serious will find plenty of fan fare to love in this game.  The sad part is this game is single player only and holds no surprises at all with a second play though.  The game is a lot of fun, but it’s only a lot of fun once!  Because of this it makes buying this game at its full 60 dollar asking price rather hard to swallow.  The game is best as a rental or purchased later once its price has dropped down.