#241 - Friday the 13th

                          Jason and his amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat!

                                     Paul and his powerboat to the rescue!

LJN games sure do try hard, don't they? Any other developer would have probably tried to make Friday the 13^thinto an straightforward side-scrolling action game. Jason would have chased you at parts, but a true fight would have come only at the end. You would have killed Jason only to find that ::gasp:: he wasn't the final boss! Jason's mother would be the last Incarnation and her true form would be something similar to the Alien Queen! How sweet would that have been? Only LJN would think to add puzzle elements, fetch quests, and a vague sense of progression. Goals range from collecting weapons to fighting Jason (or his mother's severed head), lighting fireplaces, collecting children, fighting Jason some more, and trying not to die. The environments – the whole game takes place in a campground, natch – are repeated throughout the entire game. The enemies are all mindless zombies, except for Jason who is a mindless powerhouse that can overtake you constantly. Truthfully – and I can't believe I'm about to admit this about an LJN game – the gameplay isn't awful. It's just obtuse. One can get lost in the repeating environments and it's incredibly hard not to die when Jason comes on screen. Even the walkthroughs over at GameFAQS don't help that much. If you have patience for death, death, and exploring what appears to be the same place over and over again, Friday the 13^th may reward you... and I feel a little dirty saying that.

B-