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COLUMN: Camping and video games often don’t mix

I spent Father’s Day in Squamish at Alice Lake, camping with my family. It was an awesome experience, setting up the camp, fishing for the first time with my eight-year-old son, and sitting around the campfire roasting marshmallows.
steven

I spent Father’s Day in Squamish at Alice Lake, camping with my family. It was an awesome experience, setting up the camp, fishing for the first time with my eight-year-old son, and sitting around the campfire roasting marshmallows.

The problem for me arose at night, after the embers of the fire had died down, and my wife and kids were sound asleep. That’s when my mind wandered to the new video game I’ve been playing – and I couldn’t sleep a wink.

You see, I’ve been playing a new PC game based on the Friday the 13th franchise. You know, the horror movies with the hockey-masked serial killer terrorizing camp counsellors in their tents and cabins? Yeah, not exactly the game I should have been playing obsessively right before a big camping trip. But, it’s such an addictive game.

As a self-affirmed and borderline annoying and know-it-all geek, I’ve played pretty much every kind of game out there, and they boil down to the same four or five types (shooters, role-playing, military strategy or hack-n-slash) and once you’ve played one, you’ve played ‘em all.

Not so with Friday the 13th. This isn’t about running around shooting anyone with military-grade weapons, or playing an elf performing quests for the queen. Friday the 13th is all about terror, and survival. Unless you’re Jason. Then it’s all about performing the most gruesome and hideous kills on crazy-scared people you don’t even know. 

Like the movies, the game takes place at a summer camp (one of several randomly generated maps). You are randomly matched with seven other players – who could be anyone from around the world – and thrown into a life-or-death situation together. Seven of you are selected randomly as camp counsellors, while one lucky player gets to be the machete and hockey mask-sporting Jason Vorhees. Game play is pretty simple. If you’re a counsellor – survive. If you’re Jason – kill everybody!

As a counsellor, you do have options, though. The camp’s cabins are littered with useful items, such as car keys, batteries and gas, with which you can repair vehicles and make an escape from the carnage. Alternately, you can repair a telephone and call the police, and then rush to their location before Jason hunts you down. Cabins also have maps, walkie-talkies, and various weapons, firecrackers and pocket knives you can use to navigate the camp or get away from Jason if he happens to surprise you.

As Jason, you can sense the counsellors’ fear, and teleport around the map, so you can stalk and frighten your victims at will, and perform some really, really not-for-family-viewing finishing moves on hapless counsellors… just like in the horror movies.

For me as an avid gamer, Friday the 13th is a fresh type of game. It is team-based, and you really need to work together to survive. If you’ve got a bad team, people who don’t communicate… nobody is getting out of Camp Crystal Lake alive! Alternately, a good match – with fast-thinking pickup players – can be exciting, and adrenaline-pumping. I liken it to adult hide-and-seek/tag… except in this game if you get caught you are likely to get a spear through the head, or an axe. Or a machete. 

Anyway, you get the idea. Don’t get caught. And as much fun as it is to play as serial killer and mask-devotee Jason – scaring, surprising and skewering screaming students (wow, that was a lot of “s’s. There’s virtual spit on my keyboard.) – ultimately it is the heart-pumping, I-could-die-horribly-at-any-moment role of counsellor that is more satisfying. If you’re looking for a different type of game, I would heartily suggest the scares and laughs you get from Friday the 13th: The Game, which is available for PC, PS4 and Xbox.

Just don’t play it for a week straight and expect to get any sleep on a dark camping trip in the woods.

 

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