Friday the 13th: The Game

Great gameplay let down by bad servers but it can be very scary when you are in a cabin with Jason which is what we want in a game like this. Not for kids as the gore is an easy 10/10 and quite brutal. And if you have a full lobby of friends I am going to say that this is the most fun game you will ever play.

In 1989 I rushed over to Suncoast Video when I was a kid, on my bike, to get the NES Friday the 13th.... and got burned... like I always got burned when I or rented brought movie based games back in the day when NES ruled.

Meanwhile, fast-forward to my adult years, it's 2021, and... why not? My wife insisted on getting an Xbox so... why not.

This time I can play as Jason, and, if that doesn't suit me, I can play as a counselor and remember how much I hated the game back in the late 80s... only this time with better graphics, more carnage and... most importantly... nostalgia.

Only you can only play as a counselor on line and, honestly, no one plays it online. So you sit in a loading window with two other people, waiting for enough to actually have a game, and then watch them drop out as the wait gets too long.

So then you play single player, but you can only play as Jason, and offline single player, there isn't much of a plot to it, no real achievements, you just walk around and kill people... which isn't exactly entertaining for more than a couple of rounds of play.

It relied too much on being an online hit... and it really doesn't look like it was, so as cool as it is those three or four times you run around in offline mode because it wasn't popular enough to sustain online players.... it gets old really fast.

I recommend this game. It's easy to pick up and play, it incorporates all the best feel of camp crystal lake and none of the more questionable future instalments.

It's up to 8 players or you can have a private match, Jason is randomly assigned unless the host chooses, it's always random in the public match. If you're not Jason you gotta work together to escape by acquiring buildables, like a car battery, phone the police, escape on the boat or simply hide! Calling Tommy Jarvis brings a dead character back after two have been murdered in a variety of ways.

The developers are actively trying to improve the servers as currently one in two games will crash, leaving you with no XP to roll perks or unlock Jason's moves. This is the main downfall which hopefully will be rectified soon.

New content is due every couple of months which no doubt will improve the game further. The controls are fine, some of the mechanics are a bit ropey but that kinda adds to the experience! If you game regularly with 6 to 10 people then get this game, definitely a good laugh if nothing else.

It's a fun game but the flaws are floating right on the surface... I'd only recommend it to the hardcore completionist-type fans of the franchise (if it's still even active).

If you're going to buy this game, prepare for the most bugged up mess you'll ever see in your entire life. The only game I've ever known that actually gets MORE bugs when new updates release. At this point you'd think they were an actual feature of the game. Almost every single aspect of the game is filled with them, whether you're playing as Jason or a counselor, and doing something even as simple as searching a draw, or locking a door. In fact you don't even need to get in a game for them to start, they even happen in the main menu as well.

Then you get to the horrible changes they've made to the game over time. In the beginning it was a pretty fun game, but now so horribly unbalanced it becomes laughable.

On top of all that, the game is effectively dead. You'll be waiting anywhere up to half an hour for a lobby since nobody is playing anymore, and the Ft13th lawsuit prevents anything new from ever being added to the game.

The only slightly redeemable factor is the offline challenges you can do, but get very repetitive really quickly.

Might have been worth buying in the beginning, but certainly not now