There have always been terrible video games since video games first hit the wide market. However, up until recently, it was very common for any popular movie franchise to get a tie-in video game as well.
Despite video games mostly being seen for children for a long time, even the goriest of horror movies had tie-in games, yet these were often rushed just to quickly get them on the market. Other than these games not being scary, these games have terrible graphics, terrible gameplay, terrible design, or all of the above.
Jaws - Nintendo Entertainment System - 1987
While Jaws is often considered to be more of a thriller than a horror movie, it remains one of the great classics of suspense in cinema. Jaws for the NES is not that. This adaptation of the famous Steven Spielberg movie has players drive in a boat until the boat randomly hits something. Then players have to kill random sting-rays and jellyfish so they can collect shells that they can exchange for boat upgrades. If players hit Jaws, they can fight him underwater.
After Jaws loses all its health after multiple encounters, players can then try to finish the shark off by impaling them with the bow of the boat. After Jaws is finally killed, the game is over. If players fail to impale Jaws fast enough, they have to whittle the shark's health down all over again. This game is incredibly repetitive with the only things really relating to the movie being the final fight and there being a shark. The entire game is just grinding, which makes it an absolute slog to go through.
Saw the Video Game - PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 - 2009
Saw the Video Game serves as a continuation of the original Saw movie. While Detective Tapp was killed in the original Saw, this game has him having miraculously surviving and brought into a trap of his very own. This game is filled with fan-service pertaining to all the Saw movies out at the time of this game's release. That is the only good thing that can be said about this game.
While most of the Saw movies have the trapped protagonist go through a direct path of traps that they need to get past or help others escape from, Saw the Video Game has players go through that process, but with a bunch of filler in between these traps. This filler includes:
- Random people who want to kill Detective Tapp for a key in his body that players have to fight
- Countless gear puzzles
- Countless circuit puzzles
- Countless gear and circuit puzzles that are on a time limit so that they will kill players if they fail, but they're also randomly generated so players can't learn from their mistakes
- Glass on the floor that gives out damage
- Crossing beams across spiked floors
There are a lot of sections that require combat in this game, thus the game offers a large variety of weapons that can be found in the player's surroundings. They are all mostly useless due to them taking too long to swing, so players are mostly better off with just using their bare fists, which is the fastest weapon. The only exception to this is the revolver that is capable of sniping enemies across the map.
Saw the Video Game feels like being trapped in an actual Jigsaw trap and will make players more appreciative of every other game they own after playing it.
Friday the 13th - Nintendo Entertainment System - 1989
Before the days of the well known 2017 Friday the 13th game by Illfonic, the most infamous game with Jason Voorhees was the NES Friday the 13th that was released in 1989. The goal of the game is to kill Jason before he kills all the counselors or all the children.
Most of this game is a side-scroller where players control counselors with different stats as they travel to different cabins while fighting off crows, wolves, and zombies. Players need to pay attention if an alarm is going off in a cabin, as that means Jason is about to murder a child. After defeating Jason three times, he will stay dead. Pamela Voorhees can also be found as a floating head in a cave that players can also fight.
The game is overall frustrating to play with navigation being difficult due to players never being sure which direction on the map they're going due to the side scrolling portions' perspectives. Players' encounters with Jason are also laughable with his strange color scheme and Punch-Out like positioning.
Friday the 13th - Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum - 1985
What some fans may not realize is that the NES Friday the 13th isn't the first Friday the 13th game released. The 1985 Friday the 13th created by Domark was released on floppy diskettes and cassette tapes and is far more graphic that the NES game as can be seen from above.
Like the NES title, players were tasked with killing Jason before he kills everyone else. However, players may have trouble finding Jason due to his new ability to disguise himself as one of the wandering characters found throughout the game. Players can check and see if a person is real by hitting them, which will reveal Jason if he is disguised.
Jason however, doesn't look like Jason when undisguised. He just looks like a guy wearing black clothes and doesn't even wear the iconic hockey mask. The game is over once players kill Jason making a quick game that gets easily repetitive.The scariest part about this title other than the detailed gore in the Game Over scene is the digitized scream that is used when someone dies. It is incredibly loud and easy to catch players off guard.