Developer: IllFonic
Released: May 26th, 2017
Platforms: PC, Xbox One, PS4

I’d like to tell you that this is going to be a calm and observant review of a horror game, but it won’t be. Why? Because this game is my shit. I’ve been playing the game for MONTHS and WILL NOT STOP ANY TIME SOON.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about the game. I was interested in it from the moment I saw it. I wasn’t able to get in on the Kickstarter, unfortunately, but I got the game and that is all that matters.

It is the early 80s, you are a councilor at a summer camp. All of the kids have gone home for the summer and it’s just you and the other counselors for a couple days before you return home. One evening, between your premarital sex, drinking and marijuana smoking, JASON APPEARS OUT OF FUCKING NO WHERE AND MURDERS SOME GUY YOU’VE NEVER MET. Five minuets later, you collect yourself and it’s time to survive.

Fucking Chad

You can play as either a counselor or Jason. Matches consist of 8 players, 1 killer and 7 survivors. If you are a survivor, your goal is pretty simple. Survive for 20 minutes, escape the map using the car or police, or kill Jason. If you are Jason, your goal is to kill everyone.

There is a character for everyone. I haven’t played them all because AJ is my favorite. She has a high stealth and high repair skill. These are most important to me. She runs like a pack a day smoker, which would fit the character. I did play Tiffany for a bit because of her high stamina, but she is awful at repair and that is constantly what I am trying to do. Fix the phone or fix the car and GTFO. There are several female and male characters, with ethnic and social range. Just don’t play Chad. I can’t stand Chad.

You can use earned points to buy perks as either killer or survivor. Characters unlock as you play the game. You can also unlock different movie versions of Jason, each with different strengths and weaknesses. You can buy different kills as Jason and perks as counselors. Perks range from a faster arrival time with the police, a chance that Jason won’t notice you in a building, easier repairs, faster sprints and more. The possibilities are huge. Each come at different levels (common to legendary) and can have different pros and cons (like a boost to your sprint, but a reduction in stamina).

As a counselor, you can change your clothing some. The more you play a specific character, the more you unlock.

There are various ways to survive as a counselor. You can work together or lone wolf it to survive. You can find the phone fuse and repair the phone box to call the cops. You can repair one of the two cars, a two-seat or four-seat vehicle. They both need a set of keys, gas and a battery installed. (Who is taking the batteries out of cars in this damn camp?) When repaired, you can hop in and hope to escape before you are stopped. In the same vein, you can repair and escape in the boat (not all matches have boats, though). You can survive the entire 20 mins without being killed or you can kill Jason. I named each of them in order of ease (in my opinion). Calling the cops and waiting, at most 5 mins, feels like the easiest when there are plenty of other people to distract him.

The car is up in the air and can require cooperation. Surviving is hard if the killer isn’t new to the game and I have yet to kill Jason, however I will fix that soon. To kill him, you need to have knocked off his mask, a female must be wearing a dusty old sweater that can be found in Jason’s shack (hidden somewhere on the map) and Tommy Jarvis must have the machete. Or so I’ve been told.

Can’t believe I forgot about Tommy. You will find a radio in the camp, using it gives you the ability to alert Tommy Jarvis. When people escape or die, there is a chance one can come back as Tommy. He is pretty handy at everything (straight 10s on all skills) and comes with a shot gun, map and walkie talkie.

Maybe people think that Jason has too much power over the counselors and use it to criticize the game, but I disagree. I find it hard to kill the counselors as Jason. There are many factors against you and I can’t use the shift power well. I only play basic Jason and recently got my first 8/8 kills.

As Jason, you have 4 abilities. You can stalk (the music won’t play when you are near your victim), you can shift (become incorporeal and dash around, popping up behind people), you can sense where people are (making buildings bright red if someone is in them) and you can morph to any spot on the map. As plain Jason, I also have an ax and some traps, and I can pick up knives from around the camp and throw them at people.

You have four different executions, if you’ve spent your points on them, and once you grab someone, you can chose one of those ways to kill (choked to death, axed in half, jaw ripped out, etc). There are environmental kills, also. You can crush their skull against a wall, drown them in a toilet, impale them with a bird bath and straight up drown them in the lake. (Oh, the murderous possibilities!)

I will note that I am disappointed that there isn’t word yet about Pamela being a killer option at the moment. She was in an underachieved stretch goal for their Kickstater, but I want to see her soon.

That is the basics of the game. It’s difficult to master and oh so much fun to play. Kill your friends, kill strangers, kill everyone! I love this game and I play it weekly. I’ve made friends because of this game. It is easily one of my favorites, but it’s far from perfect.

Before you go shelling out $40, let’s chat about the cons.

The community isn’t great at all. I wouldn’t go as far as to call it Overwatch toxic, but there are some salty players out there. They can make the experience pretty awful. I typically mute everyone that I don’t know personally when entering a match for several reasons. First, so I don’t have to hear their cursing, nonsense, racists/sexist hateful bullshit. Second, because hearing 8 year olds play this game disturbs the fuck out of me. Finally, the lobbies aren’t separated by native language. No matter how much I don’t mind playing with someone from say Russia, if we can’t speak to each other, there isn’t a point.

Let’s also talk about the assholes who are so salty that they got killed by Jason that they will leave the match mid-execution, meaning that the Jason player doesn’t get points for the kill. If you do this, you are going to the deepest, darkest level of Hell full of atrocities that even I can’t fucking imagine. Or they will leave before the end of the game, which is just annoying as fuck, especially when you’ve got no one to come back as Tommy Jarvis.

There is currently no way to report people in game. Of course, in-game reporting can also be a slippery slope of abuse by salty players. Oh, and don’t get me started on those assholes that use the car to run over other players. The only deterrent is a loss of 1000 exp, which, honestly, they don’t give a crap about. How about match timers? Killed a teammate? Can’t match up for 30 mins!

The game is also buggy as hell. Not horribly so at the moment, but enough to cause issues in game play. I’ve been bugged out and killed when I shouldn’t have been, my hair has gone wonky and there are plenty of disconnects. Nothing so major that I won’t play. I will, however, protest the choice of colors for AJ’s bathing suits (available in the Summer DLC). They all have pink in them. Seriously, wtf? She’s GOTH.

Should you get this game? Hells yes! If you can afford the $40 price point, go for it. It’s a great game with endless amount of fun, and hey, you can kill your friends. Do you play the game? Who would you like to see make an appearance? Is Freddy Kruger a viable option for the game? Let us know in the comments below!