Beta Impressions — Friday The 13th: The Game

We were able to sit down and give Friday The 13th: The Game a run for its money in the latest beta. Here’s our thought on where Friday The 13th currently is

The beta for Friday The 13th: The Game has come and it has gone. A lot of gamers out there had a chance to check out the game that they helped pay Gun Media and Illfonic to build for them and in cases like ours, we also had a chance to share some of the gameplay from the beta for you all. Of course this is all based on the PC version of the game and this isn’t like other betas that we all hear about before a game launches. No, Friday The 13th: The Game is still actively in development so please keep that all in mind when reading through this and/or watching the attached gameplay. None the less though, here’s my thoughts on just how the Friday The 13th beta play worked out for me.

In Friday The 13th: The Game you get to play as both Jason and the counselor of your choosing before the match begins. Each version of Jason and counselor has their own different stats, perks, and drawbacks with some of them able to be set or mitigated as your level within the game goes up. The same thing for the extra counselors and variations of Jason from over the years. After selecting you are placed into the game map at a random location and with different other counselors. Or randomly placed in as Jason to start off the whole affair. It’s then up to you to survive or kill depending on the situation you get to start with. The match then ends with Jason killing everyone, or counselors escaping, a mixture of the two, or a hidden timer that has Jason end his spree and thus the match. Although it is still stated that there is a way to kill Jason but it has yet to be seen.

All of that out of the way, let’s start by looking at the counselors in Friday The 13th: The Game. I tried to mix it up to be sure I had a rounded experience here to see the strengths and weaknesses of each but I still seemed to navigate back to one as he fit my play style. Sadly, it looked like most everyone else kept going back to Vanessa Jones as she had the fastest speed and once a few perks were unlocked it was next to impossible to catch her. Even during the beta here she was nerfed a bit but that didn’t seem to hold up over time as well. It is good to see that Illfonic is trying but after looking at all of the stats for the other counselors I can see there is going to need to be a lot of work there to keep the game balanced.

Seeing as the stats should be something easy to fix, I think this is going to be an ongoing issue and nothing to game destroying in the long run for Friday The 13th. So we’ll move right along to some of the other core gameplay elements. At least for the counselors as they need to do a few things to be able to escape their doom and this could be anything from calling the police to fixing a car and driving off site. While I get the need to have all of this seem random or stumble upon in the game world, it seems a little too random and spread out for even seven players to accomplish with anything but luck. I actually think that if they mixed in a random chance for the car to be completely functional and only needing keys then it would give the players a bit more to do with Jason as is the case with calling the cops. At least every time I ran across that all that was needed was the phone to be picked up and not always needing repair of sorts.

Another thing that I seemed to keep running into as the beta came closer to the end was the fact that players began to ignore the core idea of Friday The 13th: The Game. By this I mean that it is completely possible for counselors to attack and harm each other in game. I get that it is something that could happen in the universe but when it comes to the game here I saw it lead to a lot of griefing that could have been mitigated by turning friendly fire off. We already have to fight over who will be getting the specific items to escape and survive, but why should we have to worry about someone who wants to go rouge and try to be Jason when they are not. It is something that can truly harm the game in the long run and I hope it vanishes as the builds continue.

It may sound like I have nothing but gripes about the Friday The 13th beta so far but that is not completely the case here. Especially when it comes to Jason I think that Gun Media and crew have nailed the gameplay rather well there. It would have been nice to have a tutorial at the start of it all but it’s not too hard to learn and understand the gameplay and his specials that can be used. It was so smooth at times that I found myself wanting to be the lucky one to play as Jason not to hunt everyone down but because the gameplay and everything else was so well done that this was how I wanted it all to play from the start. If this is an indication of where all the characters will be then we are in a great place with Friday The 13th and we’ll just have to wait now.

The most common abilities that I used with Jason here had to be the Sense ability and the Shift ability. The first giving Jason a sense of where everyone is in the near vicinity. The latter being the ability to cover ground quickly and invisibly to be able to set up for a solid kill. Not only that but when used right it is possible to shut down the car trying to escape with it in a truly Friday The 13th horrifying action. It would have been nice to be able to ignore some of the more basic landscape hindrances while shifting around as they did slow Jason down or completely block him even if it was just a very small rock in the game world. I seems odd but I guess it’s a good thing to keep things a bit fairer for all. Maybe it is just me though.

Speaking on hindrances, the counselors have the ability to try and bar Jason out of Cabins Friday The 13th: The Game and Jason the ability to smash them down with whatever weapon he has at hand. Or he can use his Rage ability and have the option to walk right through the doors and walls of a building to get the kill or a great shock. You would think that this would jump over to other smaller structures in the game world, like fences, but that just isn’t the case and a way to troll the Jason player instead of leading to any more fun. Why not have that be an option in the game as well, at least when the Rage mode is active? It makes sense for Jason not to be the walking juggernaut we know him to be in the game world but it kind of breaks things when something it expected in Friday The 13th but ends up holding us back.

Gripes all aside, I had a blast playing Friday The 13th: The Game‘s beta test and am sad to see it to have come to a close so soon. There is still some work that is needed for sure, but I think the whole game has headed down the correct path and we were at a great place that only needed a few more tweaks and basic alterations. I do hope that the team looks into the counselor on counselor violence in the game as I can see that ruining the game for players who want to have a great experience. It doesn’t seem like it would take much to fix that but it has to be the biggest gripe I ran into; besides the server pains but too should be fixed as we get closer to launch. At least that is how it always goes for multiplayer games in general.

Did you get a chance to play in the beta for Friday The 13th: The Game or did you miss out? Does it look or sound like the game that you’ve been expecting and/or hoping for? Do you think my issues are a bit much for the game or are they completely justified based on the experiences above? Let us know and then join the discussion down in the comments. For more on Friday The 13th: The Game as we get closer to its launch, be sure to stick right here as we’ll keep the updates flowing and hopefully another taste of the beta.