Friday The 13th: The Game Update Bulks Up Jason Voorhees

Most Friday the 13th: The Game matches end with a pile of dead teenagers, but many players still felt recent updates had transformed Jason Voorhees into a weakling. The problem wasn’t so much play balance as it was sensation. Sure, it was still possible to wipe out a summer camp full of screaming counselors, but it was hard to feel powerful when players were able to dance around Jason, knock him down or, most frustrating of all, stab him in the neck again and again with pocket knives. On Thursday, Friday the 13th: The Game publishers Gun Media announced changes that should buff Jason back up and get a little more pep in the murderer’s step.

In a post to the F13 forums, Gun Media announced several upcoming balance changes coming for Jason. “We’ve seen your reports; our Jason characters aren’t scary,” the post reads. “We’ve seen the videos of counselors running circles around Jason and smacking him upside the head, repeatedly, while he quietly resigns himself to his fate. We’ve even seen videos of Jason being forced to run away while being chased by 4 Chads with baseballs bats. That’s not cool, and Chad is a dick.”

Here are their announced fixes, coming in the next Friday the 13th: The Game update:

• Each Jason will be gaining a small speed increase - this is not so fast as to make it impossible for counselors to escape from a Jason player, but it is enough to make Jason feel more relentless.
• Each Jason will start with two additional throwing knives.
• Jason’s grab reach and radius have been looked at and reworked - this should help alleviate the issues players are reporting of counselors slipping through Jason’s fingers, while still retaining a fair grab range for counselor players.

The fixes mostly seem geared at discouraging players from feeling safe near Jason. It will continue to be the case that counselors can outpace Jason while sprinting, but now he’ll be quick enough, with enough of an expanded grab, to increase the danger of letting him get too close. The additional throwing knives are also welcome, enabling Jason to hobble players a little more easily.

The next update doesn’t have a release date yet. According to the Friday the 13th: The Game twitter account, “We will be entering the cert process tomorrow. Best case scenario would have the patch dropping sometime next week.” More changes coming in the next update will be announced in the “next few days,” so it’s possible there may be additional tweaks and nerfs to the counselors as well.