THE REVIEWS Episode 66: Five Nights At Freddy’s: The Franchise Part 2
How four animatronics and a genius turned a survival horror franchise into a success
Welcome back, guys, to the second part of the Five Nights At Freddy’s episode. In the first part, I’ve written about the history of this franchise, as well as going through the first four games and my opinions on them.
Those four games were what got me hooked onto FNaF during my teenage years, and it’s always fun to see people’s reactions to the games, as well as their gameplays. Back in the day, the hype is real.
Getting back to the topic at hand, next up, we have the fifth game in the series:
Sister Location
This game is very different from its predecessors, for sure. It featured new game mechanics, as well as more new characters that aren’t really variations of Bonnie or older animatronics. Two new ones named Baby and Ballora. They all look totally frinedly, especially with that razor-sharp teeth they have.
Anyways, you play as Michael in this game, an employee working at, you guessed it, an unknown facility with dangerous animatronics lurking around. However, you are not sitting at the desk as the security guard this time, watching the animatronics’ every move from the cameras. Right now, you are doing maintenance work to make sure everything is working. Waking up the aforementioned two animatronics with controlled shock. Wow, no wonder they’re after you. Understandable. If I got buzzed with electricity against my will, I would’ve lost my shit and went after the employee too.
Because you’re doing maintenance works, the nights are pretty different. Besides checking up on Funtime Foxy, Ballora, and Baby, you also need to crawl in the dark to Funtime Freddy’s room to inspect and fix him too. Of course, being in the dark just means those animatronics are gonna scare the shit out of you.
This game is so different from the rest, yet it is so uniquely appealing. Besides the improvement in graphics, there’s a million things you can do in this game you can’t in the others, like climbing through vents, pressing some numberpad on an animatronic, and fixing the circuit breaker. The atmosphere made it really scary too. It would be okay if you’re doing your job with some faint sound, but no. You’re doing every single one of your task in silence. Panic-inducing vibes, once again, as expected of a psychological horror game.
Hearing only the ‘beeps’ of the numberpad in complete, utter quietness of the room. If you fuck up, BOOM, an animatronic scares you. Believe me, after hearing tranquiility for so long, a loud, screeching jumpscare with the endoskeleton of an animatronic plastered on the screen out of nowhere is bound to get you startled. The elevator journey down to start each night is also pretty interesting and fun to watch.
Scott really managed to bring the horror right out of the bag and execute it terrifically well in this game. Even the smallest of things can get you spooked up in a minute. It feels really eerie. Take a look at Night 4.
You have to wind the springlock suit up and fend off Minireenas that will kill you. Oh boy, this night is extremely difficult. Trying to hold the mouse button to keep the springlocks in place while pressing A and D to wiggle off the Minireenas, which in turn will LOOSEN the springlocks, is hard as fuck. It took me hours, days even, to get pass this night. Warning, you’ll face the Minireena jumpscare screen more times than you actually think.
Speaking of difficulty, this game is unbelievable tough. Night 4 may be the hardest stage in all of FNaF, but Sister Location itself is also very unforgiving and tedious at times, especially to new players.
However, one thing I’ll give this game credit for is the voice acting. This is the first game Scott intensively used voice acting in the game. Usually, it’d be the phone calls that have voices. However, every part of this game has voice acting. Be it the elevator, the HandUnit, or the characters in the TV show you watch after every night, all of them are voiced. Very surprising.
Heather Masters did a really good job portraying Baby. Her words can send a chill down your spine, yet it helps you throughout the game by giving you specific instructions to survive. Frighteningly good voice acting by her. Kudos to her.
The first few games were grim, but this has sarcasm and humor, which does indeed lighten up the mood of the game. And it’s not some cringe lines or jokes that miss. It’s those you will smirk a lil.
The ending of Sister Location is quite grim, if I would say, but what if I told you there was another ending? Yup. You need to complete the game first AND play a minigame that only appears sometimes after a game over in such a way that you see a cutscene where Baby kills a child. Then, after sending Baby’s body to the scooping room, go a different direction, and you’ll see this.
Find this familiar? That’s right, you’re playing a Five Nights At Freddy’s game. Just like the first four games. It really feels nostalgic and cool playing this, although it is extremely difficult because it’s already Night 5. Ennard, the endoskeleton responsible for tricking Michael, now tries to hunt him down. Great way to reinvent a game and incorporate old elements into one.
MORE LORE. If it doesn’t provide more knowledge to the FNaF lore, it’s not a FNaF game. The Custom Nights do provide more story too, which makes the lore all the more fascinating. Overall, this game’s a pretty good one. I enjoyed it personally, although the difficulty can be a little piece of shit sometimes.
Next up, we have…what? Am I seeing things?
Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator
Presenting a fun Five Nights at Freddy’s adventure with a lighter touch for the holidays, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator puts you in charge of developing your own restaurant! Design pizzas, feed kids, and get high scores!
From the screenshots and the description of the game, this…looks like a simple kids game. You, the player, control a manager of a pizzeria and pass pizzas to kids as Freddy. Did Scott lose his mind or something? Did he just decide to release a non-horror game after canceling the sixth main game, something fans were anticipating for? It might not sound that serious, or look pretty bad, but back then, everyone scrambled for bits and pieces Scott dropped.
He was one hella big main sensation years ago, and whatever he released, people would come and buy it no matter what. Well, this game was a little different. It was FREE. The other FNaF games costed money, and this one was free of charge, so naturally, everybody downloaded it. I mean, you didn’t need to pay ANY MONEY. Why wouldn’t YOU download it?
Turns out, this was all a marketing strategy by Scott. We all underestimated this man. He is a master of surprise. This game turned out to be FNaF 6. After the passing-pizzas part starts to glitch, it shifts into the survival horror game we all know.
In this game, you have to salvage animatronics, manage a restaurant, and complete night duty by completing tasks to maintain the establishment. The last part is basically almost like the normal FNaF mechanic everyone knows, but let’s go over the first two parts.
In the savaging part of the game, one of the four rundown animatronics is placed right in front of you. Like the part’s name, your job is to salvage the animatronic with a checklist to earn more cash so that you can build your restaurant into a bubbly and bustling one. This is yet another unique style of gameplay. It didn’t appear in the previous games, either. Completely new, and I respect that.
For those of you who don’t know how the salavaging works, here’s how. You have a checklist and you have to tick one of three options for each question; “no”, “yes”, or “unsure”. The animatronics meanwhile will move when you are looking at the checklist and they might jumpscare you, ending this portion of gameplay really quickly, but you can prevent it by using a taser when you feel like you’re gonna get jumpscared. Or, if you just don’t want to even think of getting the animatronic, you can just discard them. Whether you successfully salvaged them or not, they become a liability and monster at the night portion of the game.
The second part is the business simulation part. Here, you are the manager, and you decide what to buy to place in the restaurant. Things like decorations, animatronics, and even arcade games. All of these can increase the stats of your restaurant, which means more revenue. However, some of these items, especially those cheap ones, have a risk of getting you into lawsuits, which you have to settle…with money. Also, you could get sponsorships sometimes, and accepting them will get you more income. Richer and richer you get. By the way, those arcade games have LORE. WOW, LORE AGAIN. WOO, WE’RE ONE STEP CLOSER TO KNOWING THE EVER-ENDING FNAF STORY. The stories are pretty enthralling though, and they all are connected to William Afton.
Here’s the last part of the game. You have to complete tasks on the monitor while fending off animatronics. You can shine the flashlight on the vents on either sides or use audio to lure them away. Now, you might think it doesn’t sound that bad. It’s just one animatronic at night one, and then plus one after the first night, and you only have to fend them off. Not so horrible, right?
You’re half right. You have a few tools at your disposal, but you can only use them one at a time. For example, you have a motion detector on your screen that allows you to monitor the animatronics’ movements, but you can only use that or the audio lure. You can’t use both at the same time. You remember the sponsorships you have accepted? Now they’ll come to bite you in the ass. They’ll play RANDOMLY at any time during your night shift, rendering you unable to do ANYTHING except waiting to skip it. By the way, if it isn’t clear enough, the animatronics can also attack you during this period of ‘paralysis’ you have.
Depending on what you do in this game, you get different endings. Go bankrupt. Be risky. Discover something you shouldn’t see. You can try it out for yourselves. You just need to fulfill different conditions. There’s a total of seven of them, and you can check them out in this video.
This game is pretty fun, and it felt so refreshing to play something so completely different yet the same. The designs of the animatronics were pretty cool too, save the salvaged animatronics. The fact that this not only have good animation, but even a cute small Freddy and multiple endings that are quite engrossing, this is one of the better FNaF games. I would play this over FNaF 2 and 4 not because they’re bad, but because Pizzeria Simulator is more easier and much more colorful and fun.
Next up, there is…
Ultimate Custom Night
You get to play as a security guard, defending against fifty animatronics. DAMN, FIFTY ANIMATRONICS?! THAT’S A CRAZY LOT!
Look at the roster above. It is a combination of the animatronics from the first six games. The gameplay is just like FNaF 2; check the cameras, wind up the music box, shine flashlight, wear the Freddy mask. Each animatronic has a different mechanic. Some of them have the same as their own counterparts in their own games, while others have a completely new one. One example is Toy Freddy, where you have help him to play another variation of FNaF. If the monster in that game scares him, he will come and scare you too.
Overall, this add-on game is a fairly tough yet pleasant game, and nostalgic for those who love the older FNaF games. It’s something on the side to pick up when you’ve finished all the FNaF games and you want something more challenging to play. Also, I’m sure this is a challenge to those hardcore, expert 20/20 players to 50/20 this shit. Damn, I can’t even beat that.
Oh well, moving on, we have…
Help Wanted
This is the very first FNaF VR game. Wow, it’s pretty crazy, right? It is developed by Steel Wool Studios, and it depicts a virtual experience of the alleged previous incidents that happened at its establishments and aims to poke fun at it and the lawsuits that came along with it.
FNaF Help Wanted has all the nostalgia packed into one, as well as new mini-games. It contains FNaF 1–4 stages, so you can play them all over again. However, this time’s different. Instead from playing at a fixed angle, now you can do the real deal with your own VR headset. The VR makes you feel like you’re actually playing a security guard, manually doing everything with your hands. Other times, you’re playing catch-the-animatronic-in-the-dark with various animatronics, and then you’d be repairing the animatronics or even play hide and seek with them. And of course, lore. Need I say more?
That said, it becomes more scarier when the animatronics actually jumpscare you. It’s right in your face. Sometimes, it can be so unexpected it catches you off-guard. I won’t lie, it freaked the balls out of me, and it felt like my heart just jumped out of me. The graphics in this game are outstanding. The animatronics and the scenery look so goddamn detailed, and I really like that. Unfortunately, the awesome graphics contributes to the scariness of the jumpscares.
THIS GAME IS SO FUCKING FUN. I enjoyed this one out of the rest of the games. Even though some of the minigames are a rehash of the older games, they are still really fun to play, and so are the other minigames, which are extraordinary and remarkable. Unique mechanics, and they’re gratifying. A FNaF fan would love the hell out of this game. I loved this game a lot, and I recommend this to anyone who wants a good VR and FNaF game.
Security Breach
Ah, this new game from Scott. It looks pretty though, I won’t lie. You play as a boy named Gregory who is stuck in the Pizzaplex. He seeks help from Freddy, all the while fending off three other animatronics, a security guard, and some other monstrosities, who all somehow want him dead even though HE’S A KID.
Honestly, this game never excited me as much as the rest, especially after playing Help Wanted and how that increased my expectations for future FNaF games. Nonetheless, I will give credit to this game for its free-roaming. The graphics are up to standard, and I think it’s not bad. The voice acting is superb too.
For me, I think this game is a bit of a disappointment. Not to say it’s a horrible game, because it isn’t. This game is great by itself. Besides all those good points I mentioned earlier, the design of the four main animatronics are quite vibrant, and it makes the game more vivid. Despite all of that, I think the game could have been better.
Number one: more development time. The mechanics in this game…are a bit too mundane. I’m not expecting something like controlling Freddy to fight the other animatronics one-on-one like in fighting games, but the things I do in this game aren’t things to write home about. Most of the time, you’re just walking around as Gregory to find collectibles or clues. You can’t even use Freddy because he runs out of battery pretty easily, especially in the earlier stages. It’s GAME OVER if he runs out of battery while Gregory is inside. What’s the point of letting us use him if it’s almost the same without using him anyways? Also, breaking locks only when you get an upgrade? That’s pretty lame. Shouldn’t that be a normal thing since the animatronics can literally MURDER THE FUCK OUT OF PEOPLE? They can fucking KILL ANY HUMAN IN ONE HIT, FIT A GODDAMN SECURITY GUARD INTO A SPRINGLOCK SUIT, AND RUN AT RIDICULOUS SPEEDS, but NOT OPEN A FUCKING LOCK WITH THEIR BLOODY HANDS? GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK.
I can’t really describe it, but I don’t have the same excitement when I’m playing Security Breach compared to, let’s say, Sister Location or even Pizzeria Simulator. It felt like I’m completing tasks that I’m forced to do. It felt so tedious. It felt so…repetitive. I believe if the developers spent more time developing this game, it would’ve been better and more creative with its mechanics.
Also, I think the STAFF bots jumpscare are so much scarier than the actual antagonists’ jumpscares.
Number two: the story. I know this might be redudant to some of you, and y’all probably won’t judge a game by that. I do, though. The storyline’s…pretty fucking boring, if I’m being honest. It’s not that interesting. The one time a FNaF game finally decides to be a story-based one, it’s not that good at it either. Half the time, I can’t even be bothered with what the hell the dialogues were. All I wanted to do is finish this game, and at the same time do other tasks to get the multiple endings.
Number three: the difficulty. This game is pretty dang hard. Like I said, Freddy runs out of battery pretty fast, so you have to recharge him. The same goes for your flashlight, which you will need it in A LOT OF SITUATIONS, trust me. You can run, but not for long. You have stamina, which is crazy for a game that has animatronics appearing right behind you out of nowhere and running towards you like they are Usain Bolt. Draining it will force you to walk, and if an animatronic is near you, you can say bye-bye and get a game over straight up. Some of the missions were quite hard to complete, like getting through the arcade, where there are so many STAFF bots catching you everywhere, the button-pressing when putting in Chica’s voice box into Freddy, and the Mazericse.
One of the worst parts of this game is the Endoskeleton stage. Those fuckers will actually catch up to you when you don’t look at them. Believe me, they’re fast as hell and they will kill you in an instant. It took me hours to even memorize where the hell I need to go, hdiding spots to dodge those sneaky pests, and get past this section. IT’S. SO. GODDAMN. ANNOYING. I. HATE. THIS. PART.
Did I mention save points? Yeah, they’re really scarce, so no matter what you’re doing, where you are, or what timing it might be, I have one piece of advice for you. JUST SAVE. Save every time you see a checkpoint. Doesn’t matter if the task you’re currently working on is easy. JUST. SAVE. Thank me later.
Last point, and it’s the most important one. BUGS AND TECHNICAL ISSUES. YEAH, I’M NOT JOKING. You think that with a game coming from such a big, important, and beloved franchise like Five Nights At Freddy’s would at least have some performance checks and bug testing before being released to the public so that fans would enjoy a smooth-sailing game.
No, they didn’t. It was released in a buggy, fucked-up state. So many issues, so many bugs when it first came out. I’m sure Steel Wool Studios released this in hopes of the hype for the franchise continuing, and that fans have finally something new to play. I appreciate the good intention, but this is not the way you should go around it. At least test the game out before releasing it! Did Steel Wool Studios not learn from the reception of Cyberpunk 2077, a game where it could’ve been fantastic if not for its horrendous bugs on release?
The bugs range from displeasing to the eyes to straight up disgusting. The graphics glitches randomly. You can FALL THROUGH THE FUCKING FLOORS AND WALLS. THE A.I. CONTROLLED ANIMATRONICS CAN TELEPORT THROUGH WALLS AND RIGHT TO YOUR FACE. OH, THAT’S REAL FAIR, GAME. YOU MIGHT AS WELL TAKE AWAY FREDDY, MY SPRINT ABILITY, AND THE GADGETS I HAVE AT THAT POINT. NOT BEING ABLE TO HIDE IN A SPOT EVEN THOUGH YOU LITERALLY SPAMMED THE HIDE BUTTON LIKE THREE HUNDRED TIMES. WHAT KINDA FUCK ARE THE DEVELOPERS EVEN SMOKING WHEN THEY RELEASED THIS GAME?
Though these bugs were fixed at a later point, it was when most people kinda lose interest in the game, including me. Security Breach was trying to be really ambitious with the horror and the new-gen graphics, and the premise was presented well, but the game was hindered by so many other things. The difficulty, the dull story, the bugs on release day. I really think this game could’ve been better if given more time and more testing. So much potential with a good concept, but too bad it was pretty much wasted.
Well, I’ve covered the main games up to November 2023. Help Wanted 2 is not out yet as of the time I’m writing this, so I’m not reviewing that yet. Anyways, there’s two more side games I want to touch on before moving onto the other stuff of FNaF.
FNaF World
This RPG is actually pretty fun for me. I enjoyed playing this. Basically, you start with a roster of the original and toy animatronics. As you go on adventures and defeat enemies, you have a chance to encounter other animatronics, and winning their boss battles will allow you to use them in your team. The characters are all from FNaF 1–4 too, as this was released after FNaF 4.
The abilites each animatronic has look cool. Some of the same variations have the same moves though, like each variation of Freddy having Bite. It reminded me of Animal Kaiser, an arcade game where the same species have the same moves too. Overall, FNaF World is a fun game to pick up when you have free time. Graphics are colorful, gameplay is simple yet addictive, and the music is a BOP.
Special Delivery
This is the very first FNaF phone-original game. I know the different versions of FNaF also have mobile ports, but Special Delivery is the first to be developed specifically for the phones. I didn’t play this one much, to be honest. When I first downloaded it, I was confused and lazy to understand how it worked, so I just deleted it.
From YouTube videos, it’s all about going around your home to catch animatronics. It looks alright, but I’m not too invested in it. If you guys have played the game and enjoyed it, that’s good for you. I probably won’t try this again.
I’m not reviewing the rest of the games as they’re just add-ons or short games I’m not gonna touch. I’m not going through the books, as there are a TON of them, and I’m not rich enough to buy the whole collection of books, neither do I have the time to read all of them.
Now, we are left with one last thing to review. I’ll leave that for the last part of this three-part FNaF review, because I do have quite some stuff to say about it, so stay tuned.
As usual, thank you for reading, and have a nice day.
