Friday the 13th: The Game has hit the digital stores, and while it’s immensely popular among streamers and has already garnered a dedicated following of players, there are certainly still skeptics who aren’t sure if they’ll like it or aren’t sure if the $40 price tag is worth it.
Much of this skepticism likely came from Friday the 13th: The Game‘s Open Beta period that took place in late December. Beta Keys were given out to people who pre-ordered the game, but they also got a host of guest keys to give out to their friends. Many giveaways took place on Reddit to offload extra keys, meaning many people who didn’t pre-order the game got a chance to play it. Whether or not you liked what you played in the Beta of Friday the 13th: The Game, a lot has changed in these five months. Just to better equip your decision-making abilities, here are all the major ways Friday the 13th: The Game has changed since its open beta.
Fewer Bugs and Better Stability
I know, I wish I could say “no bugs,” but that’s just not the case. You’ll still see a lot of visual bugs, such as stretching, flying hair, clipping through doors, etcetera, but the big, game-breaking bugs have been largely addressed. You won’t see Jason’s freezing until someone else hits them, you won’t get stuck in the car if Jason hits it, etcetera.
In addition, matches are a lot more stable than they were in the beta, on PC at least. I remember matches dropping left and right before I could even get anything going. That limited my experience with the beta to a few, bug-filled matches. Since release, though, I’ve only had one match drop completely, and I’m able to find matches in no time at all – a matter of minutes, if not seconds.
Calling the Police is Harder
Apparently, everyone who played in the beta was just too good at alerting the authorities to Jason’s presence. While this never happened to me during the Beta, unfortunately, calling the police was easily the most effective and simple way to escape Jason. It still is, mind you, but that’s not without a huge change that happened after everyone in the Beta wore out the 911 keys on Camp Crystal Lake’s phone.
“Now the phone requires a fuse to fix it,” Gun Media head Wes Keltner wrote in the forums, describing how Counselors must find the fuse, located somewhere near the phone, and install it in the phone box before they are able to call the police. “In our internal tests, adding this extra step slowed down how quickly someone could call the cops … It cranked up the tension even more and made matches last longer.”
As we went over in this guide, calling the cops is still the best way to escape Jason, but it’s not the ubiquitous, unstoppable Jason counter that it once was. Get those police called, and get to safety. Just find that fuse first.
Jason’s Sense Ability Got Nerfed (Slightly)
Jason hasn’t seen a lot of major nerfs. Perhaps he has based on internal builds that never saw the light of day, but for publicly available changes, they’re mostly in his favor. That way, when he is nerfed, you know it was a real problem. That was the case with Jason’s Sense ability.
Jason has an ability that will detect where counselors are based on their fear. The more afraid they are, the easier they can be found. In the beta, Jason’s Sense ability worked for the whole map. Even the developers, who have repeatedly stated that they want Jason to kill everyone almost all of the time, call shenanigans. Posting in the forums, Keltner announced a big change to this ability. Instead of working for the entire camp, Jason’s Sense ability now works in a small radius around Jason that gets bigger as the match goes on.
“What this amounts to is that the first 2-3 minutes of gameplay, is a little slower, giving counselors more of a shot to find parts, find the fuse for the phone, or at least get a gameplan together,” Keltner wrote. It’s not a huge nerf, but as anyone who mostly plays counselor, which except for the lucky few, is everyone, can tell you, we’ll take whatever advantage we can get.
Jason Got a New Ability
Something was missing from Friday the 13th: The Game. Whenever Jason is nearby a counselor, it will start playing intense, high-pitched orchestral music to announce his presence. This gives counselors a fair shot at knowing Jason is nearby so he can’t just sneak up on people.
But, in the movies, this isn’t always the case. In fact, Jason can be very, very sneaky sir. As Keltner said in the forums, “There are so many moments in the films when the soundtrack dies down, the target has no idea what’s about to happen and BAM! Jason appears and kills. I wanted that, badly.”
Thus the “Stalk” ability was born. This is the last ability Jason gets in a match before his Rage ability. When activated, the music will stop for the counselors, and it will stay this way for about 20 seconds, if Jason is moving, but it could last as long as 3 minutes if Jason is standing still. You need to be aware of this about midway through the match because no music doesn’t suddenly mean safety.
Fences Can Be Broken
One of the problems that any cat-and-mouse type of multiplayer game can run into is creating what many people call an “infinite loop,” which is to say that someone can continuously make loops in or around obstacles to perpetual avoid their pursuer. In the Beta, many people used fences as their obstacle of choice.
Whenever Jason was pursuing a counselor, they could just get to the other side of a fence. Jason isn’t able to Shift across fences, so he’d have to just run around it or waste a morph teleporting to the other side, which would be very inefficient. To avoid this, Gun Media removed the indestructibility of fences in Friday the 13th: The Game. Jason can now break them with his weapons.
However, a counselor cannot break the fence. We don’t know why they would want to, but they can’t. Furthermore, this only applies to the smaller, “knee/waist high fences,” according to Keltner.
Jason Has Traps
Because Jason needed more ways to catch counselors, Jason now has traps. He can places these anywhere outside (not inside, so sorry Jasons), and they will be covered in a smattering of leaves, allowing them to blend in well in foliage, but not so easily with concrete.
This camouflage is pretty obvious to counselors if they’re looking for it, but the key is that they have to be looking for it. And, if they’re placed strategically, Jason should be able to chase counselors into them.
Counselors can disarm these traps, but it’s not as simple as disarming a regular bear trap that counselors can place against Jason. These traps are much more sensitive to motion around them, so they can snap very easily if a counselor gets too close. In addition, a counselor will also need a pocket knife to disarm them. Some people consider this a waste of a pocket knife, but Jason can hear you when these get tripped, so it could be worth it in certain situations.
More Jasons and More Counselors
In the Beta, you could only play as one of three Jasons and one of seven Counselors. Now, three more have been added. You now have access to Part 6, Part 8 and Part 9 Jasons in addition to Part 2, Part 3 and Part 7. Those who backed Friday the 13th: The Game on Kickstarter to a certain tier or pre-ordered it via their backerkit page also get a seventh Jason designed by Friday the 13th veteran Tom Savini. Remember that these Jasons all have different stats, making them better in certain situations and worse in others.
As for counselors, you now have access to Adam, a strong character who has decent Repair speed and composure, Brandon, a character with max strength and equally high speed and stamina, and finally Eric, a character with max repair speed and decent stealth, at the expense of almost every other stat.
It’s important to note, though, that you won’t be able to play these all from the beginning. Jasons and Counselors are unlocked by leveling up your character.
