New 'Friday The 13th' Video Game Footage Puts You Behind The Hockey Mask

I'm not sure if we're living in a golden age of horror video games or if good horror video games are just abundant right now, but gamers who want to jump out of their seats and yell at their televisions after getting the crap scared out of them by a jump scare have plenty of options. While these games may vary wildly in style and execution, they all tend to have one thing in common – they put you in control of the victim. You are the hunted, looking to survive an encounter with something much more powerful than you that means you harm.

And that's why Gun Media's upcoming Friday the 13th video game, which just revealed five new minutes of gameplay footage, is so intriguing. While it will offer you the opportunity to run and hide and cower and everything else you do in modern horror games, one lucky player gets to step behind the hockey mask of Jason Voorhees himself and hunt down everyone else.

These five minutes of footage, which arrived online while E3 is in full swing and dropping more fresh video game news than anyone knows what to do with, showcase a game that beautifully simplistic in concept. One player takes on Jason and everyone else plays camp counselors. It's the Jason player's job to execute every drunk, stoned, horny teenager in his path using gruesome executions. It's the camp counselor players' job to evade him and try to survive as long as possible. The counselor footage feels like a third-person version of Alien Isolation or Amnesia, with the player using subterfuge and trickery to stay hidden and escape from the unstoppable monster that can kill them without breaking a sweat. Of course, this is a scenario where that unstoppable monster is played by another human, which adds a fresh new twist to a familiar formula.

The footage comes from an early alpha version of the game, so note that the finished version should have improved textures and more fluid animations.

While Hollywood struggles to figure out what it wants to do with the Friday the 13th movie series, this game seems perfectly happy to run with the basics. Even though the one-versus-many game design is unique for a horror game, all of the familiar tropes are present. It's a throwback, but it's a throwback covered in a fresh coat of new paint and transplanted to a new medium. The gruesome nature of the game may ruffle a few feathers, but this whole endeavor looks gloriously old-fashioned.

Of course, this isn't the first time humanity has been graced with a Friday the 13th video game, but the less said about that, the better.

Friday the 13th is scheduled to arrive this fall.