Five Nights at Freddy’s 3

By: Robert Murphy

It feels rather fitting that a company would come along after thirty years to the decaying ruins of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria and try to earn a quick dollar by marketing off of the mysterious deaths that took place there so many years ago. Yes, we head into the future for the third installment of Five Nights at Freddy’s but not a lot has changed considering you’re still a lowly security guard working the night shift in this new establishment. Your work conditions haven’t gotten a heck of a lot better either, dingy work environment, small little office space and the added treat of some of your electrical system malfunctioning and causing you to slowly lose oxygen and hallucinate. And the getting murdered thing too, I don’t know how that slipped my mind. This quickly brought together facility doesn’t feel like the greatest environments but that certainly added to its horrifying charm as all the haphazardly put together pieces created a psychological terror.

As I said, bits and pieces from the seemingly long forgotten Fazbear’s Pizzeria have slowly come together by the unknown owner of your new place of work, Fazbear’s Fright. The owner knows the legend and the hauntings all those years ago are sure to earn him a pretty penny on opening day, if it ever gets that far. As you look around the ten different rooms on your first night you will see old arcade style video games, tattered posters and the various disembodied pieces of the former Fazbear gang. Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy now decorate certain parts of the establishment in the hopes to scare kids and teens as they travel from start to exit. But, if they’re on the walls and decorating the place, you might be wondering what there is to worry you and this was also my big question my first night as well. Scouring the place looking for something to scare me I found nothing but then night 2 came.

Your new enemy has apparently just been found by the owners, a faulty and decaying machine that looks like Bonnie but has simply been named Springtrap due to a faulty mechanism in the suit. How the owner didn’t see the rotted corpse inside, I will never know. This horrifying Frankenstein monster is now roaming the halls and trying to get inside your cramped little office space to say “hello” and you have to stop it. The new security system appears much like the old one you had but now you also have an audio, camera and ventilation screen so you can reboot faulty systems when they inevitably break down. Your audio system is your line of defense, activating the eerie voice of Five Nights 2 character Balloon Boy in various rooms will lead Springtrap towards them and far away from you. But, as I said, the systems are faulty and will break down so you must use them wisely. Camera systems being down lets Springtrap run amuck and get close to you, audio being down leads to not being able to distract your new foe and don’t get me started on ventilation.

The terrifying factor often comes from this system going down, sometimes there is an alert to let you know to reset it and sometimes there isn’t, but you will know whether or not it breaks down when the hallucinations start. Springtrap may be your main enemy and the only one who can kill you but the hallucinations help him out greatly. Freddy, Chica, Ballon Boy, Puppet Master and Foxy all return in “shadow” versions of themselves and each have their own ways of messing with you or scaring the crap out of you. Personally, Chica was a favorite of mine, when you start to go loopy, you would see a terrifying vision of her in an arcade game and then you would exit the security monitor to find her in the room, jumping out at you. This causes your character to panic and it will deeply mess with your head, the others are just as terrifying. This new mind game aspect was quite interesting to me and felt like a great way to shack up the dynamic to the Five Nights players have come to know.

This also brings up the new aspect that you really never tried before in one of these games and that is looking around the facility. In Five Nights at Freddy’s 1 + 2, you probably spent most of your time focused on what’s in front of you or one or two rooms, not doing too much exploring do to fear and wanting not to lose focus and die. With Five Nights 3 players are more inclined to keep their eyes on the screen so they know where Springtrap is and move he/she/whatever the hell it is to where you need it to be. This helps the hallucinations grab you as you’re forced to look in the various rooms and then have the gaze of any one of your foes be upon you. Puppet Master could appear in front of you and block your access to the monitors or Foxy could shriek in your ears, messing up your audio and not allowing you to hear Springtrap get up in your face. It’s a balanced system of fear and enjoyment that I loved.

While it is enjoyable though, it does lose its appeal as you progress to later nights in the game. The problem with having a single enemy that can harm you is that things can get a little tedious once you’re use to the events each night can hold. Yes, the scares are terrifying when Chica or any of the shadow cast comes to greet you but they can’t harm you so really you just have to calm yourself and keep an eye out for good ole Springy. This also makes the harder nights appear to drag on for a bit and fear more luck based, before with the other Five Nights games you could learn to stop your foes but now the hallucinations are inevitable and you can’t prevent them so it becomes trial and error till you win. This mainly happened for me on Nightmare mode which is the 6^th Night so I was glad the tedium didn’t come any sooner than that.

In conclusion, I’m a little sad to know that Five Nights at Freddy’s 3 will most likely be the final game for the series as the ending for the game seems final and getting all the secrets throughout, ties the game up in a nice little bow. Secrets have always been hidden in these games but now their importance is much higher so keep your eyes peeled. I loved the game though for it’s new mind game angle and the genuine fear that comes across for your character now. Springtrap is also a terrifying new enemy, keeping him busy and avoiding systems errors makes the games all the more engaging and difficult. I only wish the content lasted much longer than it did, fighting off only one “real” enemy doesn’t work forever and will wear down the fun after awhile but still I’ve had a blast with this trilogy regardless.

Good:

- The new shadow enemies add a new level of terror

- Springtrap is gruesome and a fantastic enemy to face off against

- Your new environment is gritty, fun and filled with little secrets

- A few questions remain but if you reach the “true” end I believe many of the fans will be satisfied

Bad:

- The singular enemy aspect is good but in later levels it will start to drag

- You will undoubtedly build up a tolerance to the jump scares and they won’t effect you as much as you try to complete the game

Scully Rating: 8.0 out of 10 

Five Nights at Freddy's 2

By: Robert Murphy

As if the animatronic nightmare that was set forth in the first Five Nights at Freddy's wasn't enough, now the developer has released a sequel of the terrifying indie horror game onto us all. Five Nights at Freddy's 2 sounds like it would be a much more easier affair on your heart as now you have your own flash light and a Freddie mask to avoid some of the dangers but wait.....what the heck? Where are my safety doors, the little net under the trapeze wire that made me feel safe and happy. Those are gone and now you sit looking down a large hallway as doom approaches you and the doors to the left and right of you have been replaced with ventilation shafts into which the characters like to crawl through to tear your face off. The danger is now even more adrenaline provoking and Freddie and his new friends are out to get you like never before. 

Your questionable career choices seem to follow you into the sequel for Five Nights, even though the pay is a few dollars less too. A newly renovated pizza emporium awaits you here and Freddie and his pals have all been decommissioned and left half destroyed creations of terror and replaced by newer and sleeker models of their predecessors. This does not make the new Freddie and his friends any less terrifying though, technology may have made them look better but they're prettier painted faces of joy still inspired me to crap myself just as much. However, new robots also have come to this Chuck E. Cheese style nightmare, a balloon dispensing child and puppet themed creation and both bring new challenges to the game with them. The aptly named Balloon Boy doesn't really attack you in the way the other robots do, no this grinning, smiling and laughing pain in the butt will instead block the main hallway on you and not allow you to shine your flash light on his friends. This is a huge problem and makes me despise Balloon Boy more than any other as he laughs at the fact that you will soon meet your end. As for The Marionette, he is an enemy that sits in slumber in the new kiddie room for toddlers and will leave you alone as long as you keep him lulled to sleep with a music box. The box needs to be wound up every so often to avoid him from lunging out of the dark hallway right at your face, which is not easy considering everything else you have to deal with. 

Now with all the new features and enemies you might expect things to be more terrifying with it's jumpscares and you'd be right! The animatronics are now in your face in a very real way, before you never saw too much of your furry friends until they were knocking outside your door. Now though you see everything!! You shine your light down on your enemies as they come towards you, creating polarizing images of them as they slowly make there way towards you, disassembled arms stretched out and jaws wide open. What I learned though, your mask is your best friend and best line of defense you can have against all that you will face. Flipping it on at just the right time is crucial when Chica or Bonnie, really any of the nightmare gang get into your room. This fools the robots into thinking your one of their brethren, saving you from a gruesome death and allowing you to make it through another night. It however doesn't prevent you from getting scarred to death as you peer out through the eye holes at your enemies and deeply breathe in and out until they disappear like they were never even there. Why is nobody doing something to help me here?

That question brings up the fact that our friendly disembodied voice has return on your speaker phone to give you advice on surviving the five nights or week if you're feeling brave. Bravery is what is needed more than ever too as things are insanely more difficult this time around. Just like before, as the nights go on the difficulty is increased and that is to be expected but now the difficulty gets amped up quite fast, I spent hours just trying to get through night three as I switched from winding up the music box, shining my flashlight on incoming baddies and hiding for my life. The whole thing requires reflexes of steel and the gumpshun to keep trying and trying until you get through, a challenge fans I'm sure will take but new comers may find daunting. There are also some curiosities that come up in the story aspects to the game, there are still only theories as to what is happening in Five Nights like who are buddy on the phone is and why is he here in this game again. Also, there are some cut scenes between nights on the job that show you inside of a suit yourself or someone in a suit and you are looked on by Freddie and his friends, what did this mean? There are still many unanswered questions that I hope to be answered in some way but for now it's a confusing pile of information. 

Five Nights at Freddy's 2 serves as a great new challenge for returning fans of the game. The added features and dangers such as that cursed Balloon Boy, the lack of automatic doors and many more ways for you to be grabbed continues the fun and fear that you would expect for the game and makes it even better. However, the punishing level of difficulty will likely leave newcomers as well as some seasoned players to feel a drained after playing the much harder nights ahead of you and make you also think twice before trying the sixth or seventh night. This aside and my thoughts on the story elements, I still loved the sequel to Five Nights at Freddy's and wonder if there could be more in store or even more that I might have missed in this game. One way to find out, masks on everyone. 

Good:

- Still an insanely terrifying experience, if not more terrifying than before

- The new added challenges and features such as the mask and music box were all great aspects that added to the fun

- There could very well be more secrets to find in the gameplay, there always are and if you're brave enough to look, good for you

Bad:

- The difficulty level this time around can be jarring 

- Personally, I'd like some more details but I know it's hard to add into such a straight forward game to tell something of a story

Scully Rating: 9.0 out of 10