There are two kinds of people out there. Those who enjoy torture horror and those who do not. I am in the latter. I did see the first Saw movie and thought the concept to be something new from the usual slasher flicks. The premise of the movie franchise and ultimately the games is simple. This maniac has a giant game of elaborate traps that are designed to kill you. You have to stay alive. After playing through this game, I am not sure I really wanted to make it out unscathed.

Saw 2 is almost an entire game of quick time events. Combat is done this way as are most of the traps. Depending on how well you pay attention determines whether you live. Since you have no shoes, you step on glass, just like in Die Hard and that will hurt you. In a game of elaborate death traps, they could at least give you shoes. The game pretty much gives you the impression they want you to die as much as possible so you see all the death animations which are not that cool and uninspired. Other puzzles offer different game play, but you will fail much more than you succeed. The game becomes trial and error. Suffering through poor design just to get past a checkpoint takes a lot of fun out of it.

The game is super dark. It has that horror feel to it like Dead Space does, but none of the polish. The levels are also linear so you won’t get lost. This also makes you experience all the traps all the time. There are no decisions here. Experience death a lot. Memorize a button sequence, pattern, pictures, etc. and then advance. Repeat. Remind me why I should keep playing.

The game is not terrible. There are traps from the movies as well as other homages that I did not even realize because I don’t watch them. Luckily my roommate watched me play and knew quite a bit. For this reason, fans of the franchise might want to rent it or scoop it up when it falls into the bargain bin after the holidays. There are collectibles to find on the way, but only if you want more story. As you may have guessed, I did not. Movie into a video game rarely works and this is a case of that in every sense. With so many other options right now, it’s hard to spend $50 on this.

[A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.]