Friday the 13th: The Game

If you are like me, you spent the Saturday nights of your youth in your parents’ basement watching Friday the 13th movies, adoringly beholding Jason as he stalked sexually active teens, the kind of people who you could hear partying two houses down the block. To cancel the whoops and squalls of the partygoers, you would turn up the volume and whisper along with that disembodied voice of Jason’s mother as it alternated between heavily aspirated velar and nasal syllables that echoed chillingly in the surround-sound. You wanted to be at Crystal Lake, watching the carnage from afar, listening to the helpless screams of the beautiful people, because you knew that as long as you weren't having sex, you were safe. And when you went to sleep in your narrow little bed you dreamed, and in the dream you were in those woods and by that waterfront; sometimes you were even behind the hockey mask, stalking mightily towards a sex-sundered cabin.

Now, with Friday the 13th: The Game, you can take that dream vacation to Crystal Lake.* Depending on what personage the randomized character assignment offers you to at the onset of any given multiplayer death-match, you can be any of a number of fawn-eyed camp counselors ranging from lip-glossed jailbait to assertive jocks, or you can even become Jason Himself. Either way, you're finally invited to the party.

Of course, you're not really Jason, as the developers have elected for a third person view rather than the first person. This means you go behind the man-monster without going behind the mask, hulking and hoddering** after nubile teens to net-mind the confines of Camp Crystal Lake. In effect, you're more like Mrs. Voorhees, compelling Jason lovingly from beyond the grave. This is my only conceivable criticism of the game, and it's a minor one.

Some have condemned the randomized role assignment, stating that in a standard eight-player game one only has a 12.5% chance of drawing Jason, only a 12.5% chance of having any fun by way of a murderous rampage. This is immaterial. Let me remind the reader that there is no Jason Voorhees without the lascivious teens; the prey constitutes the predator, so even as a callipygian camp counselor you are playing, in your near-futile scrabble to escape Crystal Lake, a role equally as crucial as that of Jason in creating this cherished horror imaginary. It is the urge to make love that renders death essential. Play Friday the 13th in multiples of eight death-matches at a time and, over the long term, you'll eventually realize by the force of sheer statistics how it truly feels to personify the opposite of life.

If you are like me—and if you have read this far, you probably are—then even a 12.5% chance of being Jason is hope enough for a better Saturday night. In due time, the single-player will be released and it'll be Jason time, all the time. In a few short months, a dream—never a nightmare—will come true in full.

NOTES:

*Technically, Friday the 13th for the Nintendo Entertainment System also gave you the chance to take said dream vacation to Crystal Lake, but the game is not only primitive but also awful. Additionally, you can play as Jason in Mortal Kombat XL, but alas, your only potential victims are characters from the MK universe (and Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, compellingly enough).

**Thanks to Stephen Graham Jones for attesting this verb form. For all of you literate lovers of horror violence—and there are dozens of you—I'd recommend his novel The Last Final Girl, an uncompromisingly post-modern send-up of slasher films.