On Thursday, Friday the 13th: The Game players will be getting a long awaited update. Dubbed the Single Player Challenge update, it will include the aforementioned challenges as well as a new counselor, new skins, and balance tweaks and improvements to several other aspects of the game.
In the Single Player Challenges, players will take control of Jason and be tasked with hunting down the counselors across several "movie-like" scenarios. The missions will be replayable across different locations and each has a number of objectives, including those tailored specifically for the scenario and map in play. Cinematic kills will be introduced, and new voice acting and responsive AI has been added so that each map tells a story. You can get a first look at the challenges in the trailer below.
The new counselor is Victoria Sterling. She comes from a privileged background and usually gets her own way — others often see her as "bitchy and manipulative". You can be assured that when danger arises, she'll be looking out for number one first. She has low repair and strength but above average stamina pool and stealth. It isn't recommended she takes on Jason in a head-to-head situation without any help.
Another part of the update is a rebalancing of Part 7 Jason due to players perceiving him as an "underpowered or weak" character. Rather than reworking the character completely, the team is making a couple of changes to his strengths and weaknesses:
Change 1: We are replacing +Grip Strength with +Weapon Strength. This will help to make Jason’s slashes more harmful to counselors.
Change 2: We are replacing -Shift with -Stun. This change will allow for more mobility by Jason.
Other things that the update will include are new coverall skins for Roy, an upgraded Jason grab, PC key binding, and Jason weapon selection (unlocked at level 113) where players can swap out his default weapons. Finally there will be several improvements to the offline AI:
- AI will now be equipped with Perks that better match the selected difficulty level. Playing on Hard? The counselors might be packing a Perk that starts them out with a defensive item, just like their human counterparts.
- AI will be better at choosing a hiding spot, and what cabins they should enter based on the number of other counselors in the cabin.
- At higher difficulties, counselors will more carefully select and use weapons, especially weighing their chance to stun. They’ll probably ditch that stick for something that packs a bit more punch.
- AI might not be able to appreciate music, but higher difficulty AI will use the radios located in the cabins as a means of distraction.
- Higher difficulty AI can shoot more accurately, place traps, and will attempt to open Jason’s traps with pocket knives.
- They have become better at repairing vehicles and letting friends into a repaired car before they take off, as well as getting back onto the road in case they wreck.
- Counselors will react more realistically to sounds – broken windows, doors, walls – and depending on difficulty and the counselor you snatch up, they may have an easier time of breaking free of Jason’s grasp.
Originally scheduled to release last month, the delayed patch will now finally be making its way to the game on Thursday, May 24th.