Friday the 13th: The Game has always done things differently. Trading killer diversity for single-source integrity, it never did catch up to fellow multiplayer slaughterfest Dead by Daylight in terms of widespread popularity when it launched a year later in 2017. Still, with its myriad iterations of Jason Voorhees stalking doomed camp counsellors (and Tommy Jarvis, of course), Friday offers up tense asymmetrical gameplay with a laser-tight focus on one particular kind of monster.
It's been fun avenging Pamela, but publisher Gun Media is hanging up the hockey mask and calling time on Camp Crystal Lake when its licence expires in 2024. I'll be sad to see Jason go, but it also makes sense – the game hasn't been on our lips for years now, and with Gun taking another stab at asymmetrical horror with upcoming The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, clearing its plate is only logical. What's interesting to me is that now Friday the 13th: The Game is on sale for cheap, and all players have now been vaulted to Level 150 automatically, its Steam player count is slowly but surely ticking back up. Players old and new are making their way back to Jason's domain, and I'm thinking Friday might be gearing up to return from the grave yet again for one last big scare.
Kill for mommy
The best horror games will have you leaving the light on at night.
They say you don't know what you have until you lose it, and I think the same can be said for Friday the 13th. Sure, being a Jason-centric game with maps, characters, skills, and kills all unique to one slasher franchise in particular, it is very much an acquired taste due to its specificity. I would argue that this focus is something that deterred many players once the initial novelty wore off – myself included, I'll admit – but it's so specific that it's also irreplaceable. How ironic would it be if the very thing that turned people away from it becomes the driving force behind Friday's death rally?
Gun's machete-wielding maniac is the sole star of his show, and it's also the only one you'll see him at. Dead by Daylight offers a variety of both original and licensed Killers and Survivors to choose from as you ready up for your 4-v-1 matchups, including The Shape (Michael Myers), The Nightmare (Freddy Krueger), and The Ghost Face (do I really need to explain this one?) respectively. However, Jason is not among them, and despite fans' best attempts at corralling developer Behaviour Interactive into acquiring it, a Friday the 13th licence has long been off the table.
That's part of what makes Gun's game so unique. It's the only one of the vast many asymmetrical horror games out there that allows you to play as horror's most doting son, donning classic Jason guises to hunt down counsellors and avenge what they took from him that fateful night in 1984. We took it for granted before, but now that tide could be shifting all too late.
The maps are comprehensive, massive, and give you plenty to get on with whether or not you're playing as Jason. The only thing about Friday that doesn't hold up quite as well today is its graphics. Unreal Engine 4 isn't enough to save Friday from shiny, poorly-rendered textures aplenty, with all those helpless counsellors sporting a comically waxen sheen during cutscenes and kill animations. Jason himself is looking mercifully less damp, granted, thanks to his beloved hockey mask, but I'm not going to judge the book by its dewy, eyebrowless cover. The impressive breadth of in-game mechanics is what makes Friday truly lethal, and it's reason enough to give it a go before it's gone for good.
Not just a bloody face
It's so specific that it's also irreplaceable. How ironic would it be if the very thing that turned people away from it becomes the driving force behind Friday's death rally?
What the game lacks in character and map variety, it makes up for with inventive kills and customization. Nothing beats spotting a counsellor hiding in a sleeping bag and thwacking them against a tree, and there's always a trusty window nearby. There are 62 unique kills to collect in Friday the 13th when playing as Jason, with some equipped before your match and circumstantial ones found across the map once you load in. Now that XP is moot, all unlockable kills outside of the paid DLC offerings are available for your loadout.
Compare this to Dead by Daylight's single mori kill per Killer, and Friday is already beating it by more than half. As for Saber Interactive's Evil Dead: The Game, its kills depend upon your weapon. There are 29 weapons to choose from, so that makes 29 unique weapon finishers to inflict on the deadites. Again, these numbers don't even come close to the creative carnage that Jason can leave in his wake. Sorry, Ash Williams, but Friday the 13th is still the king of 80s horror asyms when it comes to all-out brutality.
Not to rag on Dead by Daylight at all, but I love how Friday gives its counsellors a way to fight back against Jason. You can still loop him around cabins and through windows, but it feels much more like an interactive horror movie when the counsellors tool up to get their own back on the bad guy. They can stun him with fire crackers, shoot him with guns to temporarily wound him, or use a melee weapon to break free from his grasp once grabbed. These counsellors don't just run – they can stand their ground, too.
With up to seven counsellors going head-to-head against Jason, Friday keeps the cat-and-mouse game interesting by giving counsellors multiple objectives to complete, ways to escape, and places to hide. True, Jason can always smash radios to prevent them calling for help, or break the fuse boxes outside cabins to scare them all silly, but the larger maps paired with Jason's slower movement speed means that you can frequently outrun the big brute even without a firearm handy. If he catches you then, well, at least getting thrown headfirst into a fireplace treats you to a fun little animation. It beats being plopped onto a hook and getting sacrificed to The Entity in any case.
Like a faithful friend at the other end of the phone, or an unchained mask-clad monster rising from the deep, Friday the 13th: The Game was always there for us, and Jason's been waiting oh so patiently for our return. It's been a blip on many-a-radar for years, but Friday's shuttering has made many of us more wistful than we expected to be. I do regret not giving the game more time in its heyday, and I can't say that I'll be playing it every day until December 31, 2024, but hey: at least I have two Halloweens on the horizon to make up for it… and to make Mother proud.
For everything that goes bump in the night, the best horror games have plenty to sink your blade into.
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