Five Nights At Freddy's is Overrated

It's Halloween, which means it's time for the obligatory horror game review. Tonight's game is Five Nights at Freddy's, the latest indie sensation to wet the pants of YouTube "let's players" proclaiming it to be the scariest game they've ever played. Hold it there, chief, you're telling me a game about friendly animatronic animals at a children's pizzeria/playground/arcade is supposed to be scary? What's that? They come to life and roam the building's halls at night attempting to murder anyone they find so they can stuff the human remains into an empty animatronic suit? Well, that's a start, I guess.

In Five Nights at Freddy's, you play a security guard tasked with spending the night at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza to keep an eye on the robotic band members, who're set to "free roam mode" every night because they (supposedly) need the exercise to keep their servos from locking up. Except, really, they're trying to murder you. You have to survive six hours each night (roughly eight minutes in real time) by flipping through camera feeds to keep track of where each animatronic character is so that you can close the doors to your office when they get close. What's stopping you from keeping the doors closed all night, I hear you ask -- a limited power supply. Using the cameras, turning the lights on, and locking the doors all consume power.

Therein lies the game -- a simple matter of clicking through camera feeds, watching the screen, and closing a door at the right moment without using too much power -- but can such a simple game succeed at eliciting genuine horror, or are the masses simply overreacting? The answer is a little bit of both, but more of one than the other. How much you'll be scared by Five Nights at Freddy's depends heavily on how much of a wuss you are, and on how much you can suspend your disbelief and immerse yourself in the security office's confines.

I'll cut right to the chase on this one: I don't like Five Nights very much, and I think the amount of "buzz" surrounding this game is way out of proportion. This game's success and popularity seems to be the direct result of it being primed for social media, because it's short and has a bunch of jump scares. Jump scares always get the easiest and most animated reactions out of people, which makes for good entertainment value watching someone else get scared, and the game's eight minute survival scenario is the perfect length for getting quick satisfaction before moving on to the next video. To put it simply, the scares in Five Nights are cheap and easy, which makes for cheap and easy YouTube videos, which makes for cheap and easy exposure, which makes for cheap and easy success. 

The security office, checking the light at the left door.

I don't mean to completely demerit Five Nights, though, because it is, in fact, an interesting game that does some things well. For such a simple game that consists almost entirely of still images, it creates a pretty immersive atmosphere that can really bring your imagination into the experience. With few exceptions, you never actually see the animatronic characters move, which makes them seem like lifeless, inanimate objects, and yet they quite obviously move from location to location, always when you aren't watching. You basically have to watch each one in order to keep it from moving, but you can't keep an eye on all of them at once so you always have the dread of not knowing where one or two of them are at any given moment.

The robots can do some pretty creepy, unexpected stuff as well, which helps to set up the jump scares by putting you just a little on edge. You might, for instance, be looking at the three band members on stage, look away, and check on them later to find them all staring directly at the camera. You might flip to a random hallway and see one of the robots' heads spazzing out like it's been possessed by a demon. You might notice that a poster of Freddy on the wall changed to show him ripping his head off. The robots themselves look uncanny as hell, too; some of their idle expressions are weird enough to make you feel a little uncomfortable. In fact, the whole atmosphere with the dark lighting that casts subtle, ominous silhouettes of the animatronics, combined with the static-filled camera feeds and the ambient sound effects is just a little bit creepy, too.

Then you've got the "phone guy," a security guard who worked there before you, who left daily recorded messages to guide you through the job. He serves as kind of a tutorial for how the game works while also filling in some of the game's backstory, like explaining that the animatronics used to be allowed to roam freely during the day until "the bite of '87," which apparently resulted in the victim losing his or her entire frontal lobe. His nonchalant tone of voice juxtaposes the implicit horror you're supposed to feel, adding to the game's uncanny atmosphere as you try to picture what horrible things are happening on the other end of the phone while his own situation quickly escalates from bad to worse, while he barely breaks his nonchalant, professional tone and behavior.

Foxy's peeking out of Pirate's Cove, getting ready to pounce.

Having the game set in a children's party restaurant is a pretty clever idea, since many of us have memories of visiting ShowBiz Pizza or Chuck E Cheese's as a kid. This game plays on your childhood memories by bringing out the genuine creepiness that actually existed (whether you felt it or not as a kid) and/or by twisting your recollection of fun times into something sinister and terrifying. Furthermore, these restaurants are places we all have some experience with in real life, which makes the setting feel that much more plausible. It's equally impressive how much lore there actually is in this game, too. At first glance, the game seems like a simple, straightforward facilitator of jump scares, but you can piece together an actual backstory to explain what's (possibly) going on in Freddy Fazbear's by listening to the phone guy and reading newspaper headlines that randomly appear on the walls. 

The central gameplay mechanism -- managing a limited power supply -- is not something unique to Five Nights, since most horror games worth their salt implement some kind of resource management, but it does the job well enough here that I welcome and appreciate its presence. You already have the problem of not being able to keep an eye on each animatronic at all times, but the limited power supply is the type of thing that forces you to lower your guard because you just can't afford to keep your defenses up constantly. Sometimes, you just have to take risks and hope for the best, which can be some of the most tense, gripping moments of gameplay in any video game. This is a game that leaves you feeling vulnerable, as survival-horror games should, yet still leaves you with enough agency to stem the tide so that you feel like you're in control of whether you live or die. 

So, there's enough reason to like Five Nights at Freddy's and I respect it for being a clever, simple game that is, surprisingly, quite effective for what it is. The biggest problem -- and this is a big one for a horror game -- is I just did not find it scary. At all. The animatronic characters aren't inherently frightening or menancing; they're just a little weird and creepy, and nothing in the game actually depicts anything greusome or violent. You could just as easily pretend that these robots are harmless pranksters attempting to give you a wedgie or even a friendly hug. 

Chica hanging out in the dining area. Let's eat. 

The jump scares -- the source of anything remotely scary in this game -- are as basic as you can possibly get. It's always a loud, high-pitched screeching noise accompanied by something jumping directly at the screen from out of nowhere during a moment of quiet downtime. It's a one-trick pony, one that admittedly masks itself well with some unexpected twists on its one scare tactic, but a one-trick pony nonetheless. I felt a little startled once, and then never felt like I was actually in danger of anything, because the jump scare just signifies a "game over." You only have two player-states, alive or dead, so there's really nothing the robots can do to harm you except to make you replay such a trivially short scenario over again. 

Should you intend to finish the game, and not just play one or two nights and call it quits, you're going to run into two problems: the game is going to start feeling really repetitive, and the gameplay is going to become incredibly dry and mechanical. Each night involves the same gameplay and the same eight-minute scenario -- it just becomes harder each night, with power draining faster and more animatronics coming to life. By night five, there are certain things you simply have to do in order to survive, which involve following a pre-determined script because each of the four robots has its own set behavior pattern with a set counter-measure. Beating the game basically requires you to dissect it to learn how it works; once you've done that, suspension of disbelief goes out the window and all immersion is lost. 

It didn't feel like there was much of an actual challenge involved in the gameplay, and the scares had no effect on me. I felt essentially no emotion whatsoever while playing this game. Not to mention, the game is short, simplistic, and repetitive. I therefore can't recommend Five Nights at Freddy's in good conscience. There are worse ways you could spend $5, but to me, this is a game that's only worth watching someone else play -- preferably someone who's a complete wuss who'll emit operatic shrieks whenever something scary happens. That's where the game's real entertainment value stems from. For that, I direct you to YouTube and its approximately 1.4 million videos, which you can watch for free. As an actual game, Five Nights is really kind of boring -- you basically just sit there watching camera feeds and waiting for jump scares. I don't see what the fuss is all about. 

Impressions of Super Smash Bros 3DS

The Super Smash Bros series has been a longtime staple in my party gaming lineup, ever since the original was released for the Nintendo 64 back in 1999. Super Smash Bros: Melee was the one reason I absolutely had to buy a Nintendo GameCube; my friends and I enjoyed that game so much that we played it nearly every weekend over the span of three years. When Super Smash Bros: Brawl came out in 2008, I found myself underwhelmed by its slow movement and clunky physics, yet friends and I have continued to play it on occasion to this very day.

By now, my enthusiasm for new Super Smash Bros games has waned to near non-existence, since each new game has been the same as the last but with more characters, new stages, and new tacked-on game modes. After 15 years of playing essentially the same game, it feels like I've been there, done that, and bought the t-shirt, but I simply could not resist the allure of the appropriately-yet-unimaginatively-named Super Smash Bros for Nintendo 3DS. After all, it's a timeless formula that I can now play when I'm away from home, on a platform I already own. What's not to enjoy about that combination of features?

I've had my copy of Smash 3DS for a couple weeks now, having unlocked all of the characters and stages and having tried each and every game mode, and I feel pretty confident in saying I like Smash 3DS a lot more than Brawl, and perhaps almost as much as Melee. It feels faster and more responsive than Brawl, and the controls feel right at home on the 3DS. The new characters are all really fun to play, and the plethora of unlockable content is enough to ensure a long lifetime of playability. And yet, after about nine hours of playtime, I've basically lost interest.

That's exactly what happened with me and Brawl -- I started playing the game and got super excited about all the new bells and whistles, feverishly racing to unlock content and to develop some semblance of mastery over my favorite characters, and then felt completely bored with it once I'd unlocked all of the important things and realized all I had left was to repeat the same instanced matches over and over again. At least Brawl had some kind of appeal in addition to the staple party-gaming multiplayer modes and mini-game challenges with its Subspace Emissary mode, a loosely story-based adventure campaign that admittedly wasn't all that good but still showed a lot of potential; Smash 3DS, by contrast, comes purely in bite-sized chunks of exclusively party-gaming scenarios.

Mario, Luigi, and Wii Fit Trainer battling on the Paper Mario stage.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that, mind you -- each game in the series has been, by definition, a party game, and the "bite-sized" gameplay format matches the sporadic nature of mobile gaming. Smash 3DS accomplishes what it set out to do and is, in fact, a pretty solid game in its own right, even compared to its (arguably) beefier predecessors, but what Smash 3DS set out to do really wasn't all that ambitious. Smash 3DS feels more like an iterative update to the Smash series than a full-fledged sequel, one that simply adds more characters and stages while refining its various mechanisms and game modes. The game's "killer feature" is simply the fact that you can play it on the go; otherwise it's basically just more of the same with a requisite new layer of polish on top.

One way that Smash 3DS differentiates itself from its predecessors is the new Smash Run game mode, put in essentially to replace the missing Subspace Emissary from Brawl. Smash Run challenges you to a five-minute race to upgrade your character's stats (such as your run speed, your defense, the strength of your special attacks, etc) by exploring a metroidvania-esque map in search of treasure chests, challenge doors, and tough boss enemies. Once the five minutes are up, your stat bonuses are applied to a final challenge against either three AI-controlled opponents or up to three of your friends in local multiplayer, with the final challenges ranging from various types of smash battles (300% smash, team smash, multi-man smash, etc) to non-combat challenges like "race to the finish" or "tower climb."

Smash Run takes the fun PVE-style gameplay of Brawl's Subspace Emissary, where you get to use the core combat mechanisms of Super Smash Bros to run around 2D levels beating up common and stronger enemies, and condenses it into an intense rush to explore and to rack up as many stat boosts as efficiently as possible. It's really engaging, because every second matters, and the randomized nature of what enemies will spawn where, where you'll find treasure, and what random events you'll encounter ensure that you'll never know exactly what to expect. It's almost like playing a roguelike, except the map itself doesn't change from game to game, and it has the same addicting feel of playing a roguelike just to see if you can do better next time with another roll of the metaphorical dice.

Bowser in Smash Run mode with his stats and power-ups.

What's even better about Smash Run is that you get to custom-tailor each and every character to your liking before every single run. Each character now has two alternate special attacks for each directional combo (ie, three types of triple jumps, three "down B" moves, etc) that you can unlock by playing the various game modes. You can also swap out stat-altering equipment like boots and gloves to focus your character more on speed, attack, or defense, and you can equip different types of special abilities and power-ups that you activate from the touch screen menu, like dropping a power bomb from Metroid, or toggling brief invincibility, or summoning blades that spin around you and damage opponents. The more you play, the more and better customization options you unlock, so you're always improving and there's always some kind of interesting reward.

Besides modifying existing characters, you can even create your own custom Mii fighters by choosing from three archetypal templates (gunner, brawler, or swordsman), picking their special attacks (three options for each directional combo), and even customizing their appearance with outfits and hats. Otherwise, they use the exact same Mii avatar you created for yourself, so it looks just like you. Most of the Mii fighters' special attacks are variations of existing moves for existing characters, which basically lets you pick your favorite moves from all your favorite characters -- you might, for instance, choose Samus's charge shot, Zelda's stealth burst, and Fox's reflector. This, to me, is Smash 3DS's best feature because it allows for such a wide range of possibilities and makes you feel a more personal attachment to your own custom character.

Unfortunately, none of these cool customizations work during online play, which limits online multiplayer to the default, "vanilla" Smash we've been playing for the last 15 years. While playing online you can either choose to play "For Fun," a casual party game mode that turns on all the items and stage hazards, or "For Glory," a more competitive game mode that turns off items and plays exclusively on "Final Destination" level variants while recording your wins, losses, and various stats. Both are timed matches, and you can't change any of the options in either game mode. It's a little disappointing, because I don't care much for the chaotic fustercluck of "For Fun" (I especially don't like playing with Smash Balls), and I don't care much for the bland "Final Destination" levels of "For Glory" either; it's just two opposite ends of a spectrum with no satisfying middle-ground.

Mario defeating enemies and earning power-ups in Smash Run.

Even if there were a more satisfactory middle-ground, I probably wouldn't play online very much because of how laggy online play tends to be. Online matches in Smash 3DS use a peer-to-peer connection, which basically means the speed and stability of your connection will only be as good as that of the person with the worst internet connection. If you're playing someone halfway around the world, or with someone whose ISP is powered by a hamster wheel, then you're likely to encounter freezes and stuttering lag that disrupt the timing of your inputs. I've played about 12-15 games online and about half of them had some kind of noticeable lag; though it's never been strong enough to make the matches unplayable, it's been enough to curb my desire to play online more often.

Smash 3DS fixes some of the more notable problems from Brawl, yet perplexingly retains some of Brawl's other notable problems. Movement is faster, attacks feel weightier, and the controls feel more precise in Smash 3DS. There are still minor limitations with the accuracy of the 3DS's circle pad as compared to a full joystick, but at least the software isn't designed to be deliberately imprecise like the infamous tripping of Brawl. So on the whole, Smash 3DS feels better than Brawl, but it still uses the same obnoxious scoring system that arbitrarily awards KOs to players after someone suffers an obvious self-destruct, just because someone happened to touch that player 30 seconds ago, and typical matches still have too many freakishly random things between pokeballs, smash balls, stage hazards, assist trophies, and so on all being active simultaneously.

After playing Sony's PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale, I've also come to realize how little I care for the Smash Bros series' damage and KO system. In SSB, the damage you deal to another player doesn't matter at all if someone else swoops in and delivers the killing blow, which makes matches more about opportunism than anything else. In PSA:BR, you have to earn each of your kills by charging your own "AP meter" to execute killing maneuvers, which requires you to be an active participant in combat -- you can't simply avoid combat and kill-steal. The system in PSA:BR promotes more offensive engagement and doesn't penalize players as harshly for minor errors and fluke accidents. Chalk this one up to personal preference if you will, but I prefer the system in PSA:BR and would have loved for Nintendo to include a similar type of game mode in Super Smash Bros, especially since any hope for an actual PlayStation All-Stars series is basically dead.

My two favorite characters: Samus and Zero Suit Samus.

Like each of the previous games, there's a lot of excitement to experience in Smash 3DS right up front, but after a few days of unlocking things, the thrill wears off and you're left with the same basic game we've been playing for the past 15 years. Customizing your characters for use in Smash Run is a fun way to pass the time if you're waiting at a bus stop or something, but I don't see there being as much lasting appeal in Smash 3DS as a true party game as compared to its console brethren, since it requires all of your friends to own a 3DS and their own copy of the game. Odds are, you're going to be playing Smash 3DS by yourself, or possibly online against laggy, random strangers, which I just don't care for much, personally.

Super Smash Bros for Nintendo 3DS is a pretty solid entry in the series that does the requisite things necessary for a sequel of this nature, but doesn't do anything all that mind-blowing to make it an absolutely essential purchase. Perhaps my tastes have changed over the years, but I just don't see myself spending much more time with Smash 3DS now that I've unlocked all the important features, because it feels like I'm just repeating the same games and grinding through challenges over and over again. That said, I still got nine hours of enjoyment out of it, so if you're an avid fan of the series I'm sure you'll get your time and money's worth. If you have a Wii U, though, you might be better off just waiting for that version to come out for the convenience of easier/cheaper local multiplayer and its greater production values.