Hello there! In an attempt to be more involved on this board, I'm going to do a new series of reviews of old games that I played back in the day and give my thoughts on them. It will be for good games, bad games, mediocre games, disappointing games, all of them. First platform we will start with is the NES, since it was the first one that got me into gaming, and one game that for some reason stands out to me for being truly a scary game when it came out, Friday the 13th.
First thing's first. LJN games were terrible. Not going to argue against that. But the thing was, they never developed these games. They just happened to publish them. Friday the 13th, for example, was developed by Atlus. Yeah, those guys who now are better known for the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei games. This, however, isn't a classic like those others.
In this game, you control six camp counselors scattered throughout Camp Crystal Lake. Each counselor has different attributes and weaknesses. Some are fast, some are slow, some jump high, some throw weapons faster, etc. The object of the game is to kill Jason Voorhees in three days before he kills off all the children at camp or all the camp counselors. If either of those things happens, game over.
You start the game on the path of the camp, fighting off zombies, birds, wolves, etc. Your first weapon is a lousy rock that does little damage and has bad accuracy. One annoying thing you have to do is jump around like an idiot to "uncover" items like weapon upgrades, lighters and medicine. Why lighters? Well, to stop Jason from attacking the children, you need to light the fireplaces of all the cabins. However, while you are doing this, Jason is on the prowl. Your Jason "alarm" will go off when he's about to attack either a fellow camp counselor or children. That gives you a set time to locate him and fight him off. The map will tell you where he is. If you make it to his location in time, you then must search from him in the location, and BOOM! He pops out of nowhere and it's time to fight. This used to scare the crap out of me! These fights are basically like Mike Tyson's Punch Out, where you need to stick and move, landing blows while avoiding his attacks. Get enough energy down, he gives up and the game continues. As all this is happening, day turns into night, and like Castlevania II, the enemies at night are stronger.
This all gets very monotonous and boring. Add to it that you need to also go into the woods to find a sweater by defeating Jason's Mom, who looks like Medusa, and then find the pitchfork for the final showdown with Jason, who grows faster and stronger the more energy you take down from him.
There are some decent ideas, but as a whole, it's a sloppy, repetitive game. It definitely has it's moments of being scary, such as when you are searching a house for Jason and he pops out of nowhere, or when you run into him on the road or while on the lake. The map is confusing and it's easy to get lost in the woods or the cave sections.
Overall, the frustrations of the game outweigh the fun or the challenge to be had. Avoid.
