As an avid fan of the film, I love this game! Much funner than Friday the 13th in my opinion. Which I found was too heavily favored to Jason. He could find the survivors much easier and teleport around to the escapes without issue. In this game it’s much easier to get around as a human without being spotted and the Klowns don’t automatically know where the escapes are. Which makes the game feel a bit more fair and forgiving to casual players. The graphics are great. Particularly the detail in the Klowns. But Illfonic always nails the killers, so no shocker there. The humans could use a bit of work, but the customization is fairly nice. Hopefully they plan to give us plenty more options in the months to come to really craft something unique. So far I’m feeling the maps. They are very large and resemble scenes from the movie. They will take a bit of time to memorize and even then some of the machines randomly move around to keep things fresh. I wonder how crazy it would be if the entire map was procedurally generated? That way each play through would be chaotic and unpredictable. I guess that would bring its pros and cons but anything to keep the playing field even and to increase its longevity I say. I love seeing the circus tent space ship all lit up in the distance in some of the maps. It would definitely be a shame if we never get a map that incorporate the interiors of it at some point though. As well as other unique maps that weren’t even in the movie. The gameplay itself is pretty satisfying. Being able to kill the Klowns is a nice touch you don’t see in most of these types of games. The escape points are plentiful, each allowing three escapes and are pretty easy to learn after a few matches. It took my group 3 attempts to finally realize we couldn’t just run across the bridge lol. One of the most unique parts of this game outside the plethora of strange Klown oddities, is the mini games you can play when you die. These games give you items you can keep if you are to be revived as a human, or can be given to the remaining surviving humans to help them fend off the Klowns and/or to escape. Can’t say I ever seen this mechanic before and it’s greatly appreciated. I do think adding some perks to the humans could add to the depth and individuality. But at the same time I could see them just making the humans OP as the game is already fairly balanced without them. Though hunting for those in Friday the 13th was definitely an exciting journey. Minus the people abusing bugs to level quickly. I did experience one game breaking bug in my 5 hours or so of playing where I fell through the world after my cocooned body was dropped from a Klown that was attacked. I ended up dying when my life meter expired but that Klown went on to be completely broken and couldn’t do anything after. Looked like he was stilll holding the cocoon lol. The Klowns abilities are pretty sick. Each catered to their class and utilize elements from the movie which I really appreciate. Along with being able to upgrade their weapons which does help the Klowns eliminate more of the humans from my personal experience. Still nothing seems to be overpowered as the Klowns are slower and tend to run out of stamina quicker than the humans do. If I were to change anything with the Klowns, I would allow the user to zoom out a bit when they are using the jump ability. Right now its too zoomed in for how large the map is and it can he hard to quickly look around. I would also tweak how often Klownalities can be performed. This is one of the issues that plagued Friday the 13th. Some players love to spam instant kills and in my opinion it kinda kills the game. Maybe one per 30 seconds, or base it off how many cocoons you have successfully hung, as right now there’s not a ton of incentives to cocoon players. If you did give them a 30 second limit you should probably reduce the revive cooldown to 30 seconds as well to balance it out. But really basing it on the amount of cocoons I think is the best way. Maybe 1 kill per 30 seconds if you have 0-4 cocoons and then 2 per 30 if you have 5-9 or something along those lines. Also adding the ability for Klowns to use a straw on the human cocoons to get some kind of bonus would be pretty dope. Not only because its an iconic thing from the movie, but again it would entice more people to cocoon humans and not just instant kill them. The minions that spawn from hanging cocoons is a nice touch and also gives some incentives to hang more. But I feel like they could be a little more impactful somehow. Although they can attack players, and even help bring cocoons to the machines; I feel like more impactful functions could be added. One of the biggest issues I had with Friday the 13th, was people ghosting. You would get a group of friends and one of them would randomly be chosen as Jason and they would intentionally ignore all their friends and only go after the rest of the counselors. Or they would be told where those players were hiding, etc etc. It really killed the game in my opinion. This is why I wish there was a mode where the Klowns could all be bots or vice versa. Trained on thousands of matches with players of different skill levels to give you an accurate difficulty setting. But that is asking a lot I know. The reason I bring this up is because they really do need to add an option where your group cannot be split up though. Where it would just keep searching for a match if it can’t currently find one with enough open spaces on one of the two sides. Which is an issue that kept happening to my group of three and was annoying the heck out of us. Another thing that I think is gratefully needed is the ability to see your teammates names from far away distances. This goes for both the Klowns and the Humans. I get the game is supposed to be hard when it comes to really knowing where you are but many of times we kept trying to describe where we were to one of your teammates and we had a hard time finding one another. The flare works but anyone can throw one on the ground and cause your teammates to run to a random part of the map thinking that it was directing them to something important. Which happens a lot with strangers and trolls. Other than these things, I think the game is looking pretty solid. I’ve had a blast playing it so far. Hopefully we eventually see more things from the movie, like the popcorn snakes, and the giant parade float like cocoon vacuum the Klowns march down the street with. Also we must get Klownzilla to play a role somehow! The Terenzi brothers showing up in the ice cream truck is a nice touch though, despite me yet being able to witness it. Maybe more attention should be put on that event occuring, like a short cutscene to make people aware its occuring. Anyways, as the game stands right now on pre release. I’m giving it a solid 8/10. I really hope it will have some longevity unlike Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. These types of games notoriously die off pretty fast, sadly. You gotta get in early to enjoy the experience. But if they keep updating it then people will keep playing it! Maybe it will even inspire the much requested sequel or tv show to finally be made! 40 bucks is a bit steep for a game that will inevitably die. And 20 dollars for the small DLC pack is really a slap in the face. But for a true fan like myself, I think the potential here and the fun it provides is well worth the price of admission.
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