Friday The 13th: The Game’s single player mode was much hyped but was it worth the long wait? The success of John Carpenter’s 1978 classic Halloween inspired a wave of low-budget imitators, including My Bloody Valentine and Sleepaway Camp. The original Friday The 13th was another entry in this slasher subgenre and was a mystery thriller enliven by the occasional gory murder and a shocking final scare.
The movie proved to be a surprise smash hit for Paramount so the studio immediately commissioned a sequel. The problem was that the original killer, Pamela Voorhees, was very dead. The first movie revealed Pamela had been driven insane with grief over the death of her young son Jason due to the negligence of camp counselors, leading to her killing spree. The sequel instead brought Jason back as an adult to continue the massacre - which made little sense from a timeline perspective - but he soon became a horror icon to rival Michael Myers or A Nightmare On Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger. His trademark hockey mask, which he acquired in part three, also became iconic.
There hasn’t been a Friday The 13th film since 2009’s reboot and while the franchise is currently caught in a messy lawsuit, Friday The 13th: The Game for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC provided fans with all the gory thrills they could hope for. The game started life as a multiplayer-only experience, where players controlled various Crystal Lake camp counselors trying to escape another player controlling Jason. The counselors had to work together to survive or escape while Jason hunts them down and dispatches them in messy ways.
Friday The 13th: The Game was clearly made by developers who love the franchise; not only did they capture the mood and tone of the early movies, they also included iterations of Jason from over the course of the entire franchise. They even included Roy Burns, the Jason copycat killer from Friday The 13th: A New Beginning in an update. Fans had been asking for a Friday The 13th game single player mode since it launched, which was eventually added in May 2018.
The single player challenges mode once again put players in the boots of Jason as they have to carry out a series of killings. Friday The 13th: The Game’s single player also invokes the movie’s atmosphere a little more since the victims don’t know Jason is stalking them, allowing for some creativity on the player’s part. The mode also encourages replayability in the form of achievements and unlockables. Sadly, the Friday The 13th game single player ultimately plays like a mediocre Hitman game. Jason hunts some bot controlled counselors around Crystal Lake and while the murders are suitably grisly, it grows old quickly. It lacks the gleeful fun of the multiplayer and while the movies were hardly known for their deep stories, the lack of any kind of narrative is also a disappointment.
With no new movie on the horizon, Friday The 13th: The Game’s single player mode is probably the closest thing fans will get to a new Jason Voorhees adventure for a while. It’s just a shame it wasn’t much stronger.
Next: Why Freddy Vs Jason 2 Hasn’t Happened
