GamesHorrorFriday the 13th: The GameWeeks before it dies for good, Friday the 13th: The Game isn’t just surprisingly active - it’s the most fun I’ve had with a multiplayer horror game all yearWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesHorrorFriday the 13th: The GameWeeks before it dies for good, Friday the 13th: The Game isn’t just surprisingly active - it’s the most fun I’ve had with a multiplayer horror game all yearWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Gun Media)
For many months, I tried desperately to ignore the fact that Friday the 13th: The Game’s servers are shutting down at the end of the year due to an ongoing legal dispute. The thought of simply not being able to play one of my favorite games was too painful to bear, so I just turned a blind eye to the situation. There were other games to play,like the trio of behemoth JRPGs that swallowed the first half of my 2024, not to mention an unusually busy year for me personally.
But then Halloween 2024 rolled around, and I couldn’t ignore the expressionless, but somehow still sorrowful hockey mask beckoning from my PS5 library. It was time to do what was right and spend as much time with this dear ol' friend of mine as possible before Gun Media pulled the plug, sinking and anchoring Friday the 13th: The Game to the bottom of Crystal Lake.
A camp with no counselors
Jason squeezing the pixels out of some poor Chad’s head(Image credit: Gun Media)
If you can forgive the jank and free yourself from the pressures of competition, Camp Crystal Lake is a delightfully unbalanced free-for-all where nothing matters because we’re all going to die anyway. It doesn’t even seem to me that anyone is particularly interested in winning. It’s just all vibes, man. You’ll see camp counselors dancing around the fire, fully aware that Jason is approaching with every intent to decapitate them. Sometimes they get beheaded, and sometimes they inexplicably escape and continue dancing, whipping Jason into an enraged frenzy you can’t help but enjoy. Sometimes, you’ll die almost immediately, whether fairly or not, and have the pleasure of watching the most unhinged Friday the 13th movie ever (yes, even more than Jason Takes Manhattan) through static cameras and other players' perspectives.
This is as much an early in-memoriam for Friday the 13th: The Game as it is a PSA that we have less than four weeks to play this wonderfully janky gem of an asymmetrical horror game before it’s gone for good, and it’s still absolutely still worthy of your time. For me, I had heard and written about the death of the game for so many years (new content development first ended way back in 2018) that I wasn’t sure anyone would still be playing. I don’t know if I’m just playing at particularly active times for the game – usually West Coast evening hours – but my lobbies almost never fail to fully populate within mere moments.
His name was Jason
You look like you’ve just seen a wax figure of yourself!(Image credit: Gun Media)
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Now that I’ve dated myself into oblivion, let me unpack just how well IllFonic managed to capture the campy, trashy, extremely ’80s atmosphere that makes the long-running film Friday the 13th series so endearing and lovable. Visually, it’s perfect. All of the maps, whether it’s the iconic Camp Crystal Lake or Pinehurst Youth Development Camp from Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, are faithfully recreated to be oddly inviting despite the presence of a mutant serial killer hellbent on making sure no one has a good time.
It’s Halloween all year round when you marathon our list of thebest horror gamesever.
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1Nemesis review: “A magical sense of tension”
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