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Wednesday, March 6, 2024

The Five Nights at Freddy's movie was pretty neat. A very robotic review.

So when I reviewed the Five Nights at Freddy's Core Collection bundle, I said I wanted to wait until I watched the movie before reviewing that. Well, I watched it. And I want to talk about it, because as the title of this post implies, it was pretty neat. This post exists primarily as a sequel of sorts to the Core Collection review. As such, I won't cover the lore of the franchise as extensively here as I did there. And Five Nights at Freddy's is a horror franchise that was built on a foundation of deep lore. So if you want more information on the games that this movie is based on, go read that post instead.

Image from wikipedia.org

Here's a very simplified recap of the series for those who need a quick refresher. Five Nights at Freddy's, often called FN@F for short, is a horror game franchise created entirely by one guy named Scott Cawthon. Despite working on budget consisting of shoe strings and paper clips, Scott's quirky little horror series exploded seemingly overnight in terms of popularity, and he become a prominent figure in the world of independent video game developers. Basically, the series revolves around a Chuck E Cheese's style pizzeria that is home to a crew of haunted animatronic performers. A movie based on the games was announced all the way back in 2015 as part of a collaboration between Scott and horror movie studio Blumhouse, but the script went through multiple rewrites before Scott and director Emma Tammi settled on a script they actually liked some time in 2021. The movie would finally release on October 26th of 2023.

Our story follows the life of Mike Schmidt (played by Josh Hutcherson), a down-on-his-luck security guard trying his best to provide for his younger sister Abby (played by Piper Rubio) and solve the mysterious disappearance of his brother Garrett. Following an incident where he violently attacked a man that he mistook for a child predator, Mike is fired from his old job. With his Aunt Jane (played by Mary Stuart Masterson) trying to take custody of Abby away, Mike is desperate to prove he can be a functional member of society and actually hold a job. So he takes the next job that becomes available to him regardless of how sketchy it sounds. Which means he gets a job working the night shift at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria, the aforementioned Chuck E Cheese's style restaurant. On top of this, Mike's dreams when he sleeps become increasingly weird. Granted, this is deliberate on Mike's part. He is purposely using lucid dream theory (which is a real thing, by the way) to recreate the past and figure out what happened to Garrett. Though, considering this is a Five Nights at Freddy's story, anyone with even a surface level understanding of the lore can guess what happened to him long before the truth is revealed. But most importantly, the animatronic performers start moving by themselves, without any external assistance.

Oh, and Vanessa is here too. Vanessa (played by Elizabeth Lail) is a mysterious police officer that knows an uncomfortable amount of the Pizzeria's history. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, the main reason Vanessa is here is to explain the lore to newcomers. She tells Mike about the Missing Children Incident, in which at least five kids died inside the Pizzeria while Fazbear Entertainment (the Pizzeria's parent company) covered up said deaths and hid them from the public. She reveals the true nature of the animatronics, which are haunted by the ghosts of the dead kids. She tells him about the Spring Lock suits, which are failed prototypes for robot-costume hybrids that can either be worn like a suit or controlled remotely. She even name drops William Afton, the big bad final boss villain of the whole franchise. Literally every bad thing that happens in FN@F can be traced back to William Afton. Which is why the reveal of what happened to Garrett is not surprising in the slightest for people familiar with the lore.

Image from https://freddy-fazbears-pizza.fandom.com/wiki/Five_Nights_at_Freddy%27s_(Film)/Gallery

But now I want to tell you about the best thing in the whole movie, the animatronics themselves. Every monster here is a real animatronic built and operated by the lovely people from Jim Henson's Creature Shop. While they did use human actors for some scenes that were too complex for normal animatronics, the costuming is so good that I genuinely can't tell the difference. All four of the main monsters look like they stepped right out of the games. Most impressive is Foxy the Pirate Fox. He has by far the most complex design due to his exposed robotic innards, and the Foxy animatronic was so intricate that they needed no less than seven people working together just to make it move around (one for the face, one for the neck, one for each arm, one for each leg, and one to make the whole rig lean forward or backward as needed). Honestly, even if you don't care about the lore or the franchise as a whole, the movie is worth watching just for the animatronics. They are a true spectacle to behold. I do wish they gave the animatronics the pitch-black eyes with the pin-prick white pupils instead of the red eyes they used, since it would look both scarier and more lore accurate, but that is a minor nitpick.

The second best thing about this movie is that it is a real love letter not just to the games, but the fans of said games. There are a lot of references and inside jokes that only make sense to people familiar with the series. And there's some really deep cut references here. Just to give a few examples, there's a scene where Aunt Jane and her gang visit a diner called Sparky's. Sparky was the name of a unused animatronic that was rumored to haunt certain copies of the first game. Scott had to clarify that Sparky wasn't real and that the whole thing was a urban myth that spiraled out of control. Another example, when Mike finds the dead bodies of said gang in the backstage, they've been shoved into costumes based on various monsters from the sequel games and even the spin-off lore novels, such as Shadow Freddy, Eleanora the Doll and Fetch the Dog. But I want to draw attention to two of my favorite references. During the end credits, the movie plays an electropop song simply called The Five Nights at Freddy's Song. This song was a fan-made project made by a band called The Living Tombstone. Evidently, Scott heard the song and loved it so much he decided to make it the official theme song of the whole franchise (with Living Tombstone's permission, of course). And seeing fan-made stuff get a seal of approval from the original creator is always going to be awesome.

The other references I want to talk about extensively happen in that same diner scene described earlier. While coming up with a plan to ruin Mike's life, Aunt Jane is pestered by an overly eager waiter played by Matthew "Mat Pat" Patrick. Mat Pat was the main host of a YouTube channel called Game Theory, which was a web show devoted to solving the biggest mysteries in video game history. Mat Pat has made dozens of videos trying to solve the lore of this series, and has become synonymous with the franchise as a whole. And his character somehow manages to find a way to sneak in the phrase "That's just a Theory!" in casual conversation, a catchphrase that Mat Pat says at least once per video. There's another scene where Abby is riding in a taxi with Golden Freddy, and the taxi driver is played by Cory "CoryxKenshin" Williams, who made humorous play throughs for all the FN@F games. Both Mat Pat and CoryxKenshin are commonly cited as major reasons the franchise got as popular as it did, since these two individuals provided the first game with a lot of Internet publicity. Is the average viewer going to understand who these people are or why they are a big deal? No. Not in the slightest. But again, for people who are involved in the online fan community for this series, these cameos and inside jokes are a pleasant surprise.

Image from imdb.com

The third best thing about the movie is the main villain, William Afton. Spoilers abound for this section. William Afton is played by Matthew Lillard (best known for being the voice of Shaggy from Scooby Do). Afton is first introduced as Steve Raglan, a career consular that not-so-subtly pushes Mike to take the job at the Pizzeria. The reveal that Steve was actually Afton the whole time would have been shocking, had it not been for the fact that Blumhouse spoiled their own twist with the casting. They didn't even bother to pretend that Lillard wasn't playing William Afton. Which means that anyone who knows the lore or paid attention to the casting can guess that the job consular is probably evil. This isn't a bad thing per se, because once William Afton reveals his true nature, he puts on a delightfully hammy performance as a villain. Lillard was clearly having fun being the "bad guy" for once. And honestly, the most quotable parts of the movie come from William Afton. Seriously. Afton yelling things like "SYMMETRY, MY FRIEND!" and "YOU ROTTEN LITTLE BEASTS!" is stuck in my head like an ear worm. And unlike the other characters, William's Spring Trap persona isn't an animatronic. That's a proper costume meant to be worn by a human actor. And apparently, Lillard couldn't see out of the Spring Trap mask, so for all of the scenes where he wore the mask, he was quite literally acting blind. Which I got to imagine must've been an awkward experience, but it was worth it, since William Afton's portrayal here is a major highlight of the movie.

If I had to say anything negative about the movie, I didn't really find the movie that scary. Granted, I'm a long time FN@F fan and I think I've become desensitized to all of Scott's tricks and jump scares. I've mostly stuck around for the lore and monster designs. But a common saying you'll hear about the games is that Five Nights at Freddy's is a "baby's first" horror game. And to put things bluntly, this movie is a "baby's first" horror movie. The violence here is surprisingly tame, especially when compared to other horror movies. The animatronics almost never kill anyone on screen, because the camera conveniently looks away right before the killing blow lands. Or we see only the aftermath of said kills. Don't get me wrong, this movie can be creepy and atmospheric. That's another thing the movie does well. The vibes of the Pizzeria itself are perfect. The issue is that the movie feels like it's holding itself back. Like it has the potential to get super gory and gross but it's really trying not to lose that PG-13 rating so it tones itself down enough to be technically family friendly. Like the goriest thing in the movie is when one of Aunt Jane's gangsters gets the upper half of her body bit off by Freddy, but the bite and remains are framed in shadow to not show any of the grisly details. So the lack of violence leaves me conflicted.  On one hand, I could probably show this movie to my parents and have them not think I'm a masochistic freak for liking something spooky and weird. On the other hand, if you come looking for a thrill, you'll probably not find it here. It's a fairly "safe" movie, all things considered.

I think the biggest divide on your enjoyment of the movie is your view of the table-fort scene. For context, about halfway through the movie, Abby discovers that she can communicate with the ghosts haunting the animatronics through drawings, and being a 10 year old girl, she uses this newfound power to befriend the animatronics and play games with them. This culminates in her roping in Mike and Vanessa into helping the animatronics build a "fortress" out of tables and party supplies. Depending on your perspective, this is either cute and wholesome or cheesy and lame. I'm of the former opinion, myself. Why, you ask? The animatronics are haunted by the ghosts of children. One of the "rules" the ghosts follow is that will not under any circumstances bring deliberate harm to living children. The only reason the animatronics are hostile in the first place is because they hate all adults on principal, and with the only exceptions being the fourth game and the tenth game, every game has you playing as a "grown-up" employee of Fazbear Entertainment. And even then, there's a lore explanation why the Nightmares from FN@F 4 and the Glam Rocks from FN@F: Security Breach are suddenly attacking a child. The former are the physical manifestation of a coma victim's dying dreams (and thus aren't "real"), the latter are being hacked and controlled by a virus. So the ghost kids using their new mechanical bodies to act like kids is lore accurate.

Image from https://freddy-fazbears-pizza.fandom.com/wiki/Five_Nights_at_Freddy%27s_(Film)/Gallery

So let's answer the biggest question. Is this a good jumping on point for people who are new to Five Nights at Freddy's? Not really, no. This movie carries itself with a "by the fans, for the fans" mentality. It's goal isn't to convince newcomers to invest themselves in the rest of the series, but more so to give long time fans (like me) the cinematic experience they've been waiting literal years for. It does attempt to be newcomer friendly, with things like Vanessa explaining the lore and trying to have a somewhat straightforward narrative compared to the deliberately vague "figure it out yourself!" plot of the games. But there's that signature brand of Scott Cawthon weirdness, like how the drawings work or how the ghost kids can interact/harm Mike directly in his dreams Freddy Krueger style. And indeed, looking at other people's reviews of the FN@F movie, people who are already fans tend to rate the movie more highly than people jumping in for the first time. So I'll give two different ratings, just this once. It's an easy four stars out of five for people who already like Five Nights at Freddy's, but is probably closer to a 3 stars out of five for people who aren't already fans of it. There's enough effort and production quality to prevent the movie from going any lower than that. But again, already being a fan of the series does improve the enjoyment factor.

Five Nights at Freddy's is the property of Scott Cawthon, Steel Wool Studios, Blumhouse and Universal Pictures. None of the images shown here belong to me. Please support the official release.

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Devil May Cry 5 is the most bonkers game I've ever played. A very stylish review.

 So here's a funny story. Once upon a time, while browsing the strange and terrifying depths of the Internet, I found a song. A really good power metal song that's almost 10 minutes long. A song so good that still to this day, I listen to it while working on this very blog. Heck, by the time you read this post I have probably listened to this song an additional ten billion times. This song was called Bury the Light, and I wanted to know the story behind the song, because it didn't sound like something that you would stumble across on the radio. After a bit of Googling, I learned that this song was the official theme song of the main antagonist of a game called Devil May Cry 5. Which naturally lead me down a rabbit hole of wacky wahoo pizza man hijinks. And now I'm here to tell you about this game because it is absolutely insane in the best way possible. Quick content warning. Devil May Cry 5 is rated M for Mature and is intended for audiences 17 years old or older. Because of violence. And profanity. And an uncensored Michael Jackson dance. All of this is to say that reader discretion is advised.

Image from Wikipedia.org

So what is Devil May Cry 5? It is the fifth game in Capcom's Devil May Cry series. Obviously. But there's a funny reason why this franchise exists. Back in 2004, Capcom was brainstorming ideas for a new Resident Evil game. So their dev team made four game demos, one of which would become Resident Evil 4. But Capcom didn't want to waste the other three demos, so they filed off the "resident evil demo" label and repurposed those demos for different games entirely. This was how the first Devil May Cry was made. Though it is weird that the demo that became Devil May Cry was even considered to be a template for a Resident Evil game, considering that RE is a horror franchise and Devil May Cry is a bombastic, over the top action series. Then again, Hideki Kamiya was the main creative director behind the demo and all subsequent games in the series, and that man is notorious for his love of larger than life action scenes. And we all love him for it, because no matter what is trendy or popular in the video game industry, Kamiya will ignore it and just do his own thing. 

Released in 2019, Devil May Cry 5 is the newest game in the franchise and makes frequent reference to the events of previous games. While this does mean that a newcomer jumping in for the first time will lose some context, the game is kind enough to come with a 30 minute mini-movie that quickly recaps the events of the series to get you up to speed. But I'm going to do my own recap, speaking as someone who has never played a single game prior to 5. So basically, Devil May Cry follows the adventures of a boastful demon hunter named Dante, who alongside his friends Lady, Trish and Nero, runs a company called Devil May Cry. Devil May Cry is a demon hunting company, because demon attacks are so common in this universe that demon hunting is a profitable business. Think of Devil May Cry as the Ghost Busters, but instead of fighting ghosts, they fight demons. Dante is also the son of this demon dude called Sparda the Black Knight. Sparda was a demon who decided that being evil was cringe, actually, so he betrayed all the other demons and saved the world. He then fell in love with a human woman named Eva and had two kids, one of which was Dante. Because of his demonic heritage, Dante is leaps and bounds more powerful than a normal human. He has super strength, super speed, teleporting, rapid healing and the ability to master any weapon with only a few seconds of practice. Also, Nero is Dante's nephew and has almost the exact same powers.

In addition to demon hunting, the Devil May Cry crew have to keep an eye out for Vergil, who is Dante's "evil" twin brother. Vergil was the second child of Sparda and naturally has the same powers and Dante and Nero, but became obsessed with power following the death of his mother, Eva. The descendants of Sparda are the guys you play as in the all the games. And as hinted at in the opening section of this review, Dante himself is a very silly guy. He spouts cheesy one liners and taunts in every other fight, he uses weapons that don't make any sense but look REALLY COOL, and he feels the need to show off with everything he does. Dante believes that it isn't enough to *just* beat the bad guys. He turns every fight into a theatrical performance, just to add further humiliation to his enemies. And Nero is following very closely in his uncle's footsteps, since he is also a bit of a show-off himself. Not as much as Dante, but still.

This game's story begins with the crew fighting a mysterious new demon king called Urizen, who has stolen Nero's right arm. As you do. Urizen immediately wipes the floor with everyone, including Dante and Nero. All without even standing up from his throne. And this isn't even a cinematic. The tutorial ends with a boss fight against Urizen that you are supposed to lose. Though you do get a funny joke ending if you manage to beat him earlier than intended. But anyway, following the advice of a mysterious poet named V (yes, the character's name is literally just the letter "V"), Dante stalls for time while the rest of the crew escape. One month later, and local gunsmith Nico builds Nero a prosthetic arm called the Devil Breaker. Lady and Trish have gone MIA in the meantime. So now it's up to Nero, Nico and V to save everyone else from Urizen's clutches.

Image from trueachievements.com

So let's talk gameplay really fast because SWEET MOTHER OF NEPTUNE IS THE COMBAT IN Devil May Cry 5 AMAZING. This game has three (four if you are playing the Special Edition) playable characters. But generally speaking, the main challenge of a Devil May Cry game doesn't come from the enemies and bosses, though they can pose a threat on higher difficulty settings. But the main challenge is getting a good rank. At the end of every combat encounter you are ranked on how stylish you were in battle. This does not equal to how fast you were or how much damage you did with a single move, but it equals to variety. Sure, you can beat the whole game using the same basic three-hit sword swing combo over and over, but you won't get a good rank from doing so. You have to mix and match different weapons and combos together to take down those pesky demons IN STYLE. And getting better ranks gives you more Red Orbs, the main currency of the game, which can be used to buy upgrades for the crew. And each character has an extensive move set that once mastered, let's you do some incredibly cool stunts. So let's go over each character.

Nero is unlocked right from the start. He is the guy you play as in the tutorial, and he is by far the simplest character in the game. Which isn't saying a lot, since even Nero has a complex toolkit that allows a skilled player to do some wild stuff once you learn how he works. He always has a sword called the Red Queen and a revolver called the Blue Rose. The Blue Rose has infinite ammo, so feel free to blast enemies as much as you want. But holding the button down makes Nero load up explosive bullets, which deal more damage and can stun enemies. The Red Queen is a reliable melee weapon that Nero swings around with reckless abandon. But the Red Queen isn't a normal sword. It has a motorcycle engine attached, and Nero can literally Rev Up his sword to add blazing fire to his combos. And finally, Nero has Devil Breakers, prosthetic arms that grant additional abilities. These can range from a electric pulses, whip attacks and homing rockets, among others. My favorite Devil Breaker is called the Punchline. It's a fist-shaped rocket that Nero can ride on like a skateboard. He can even do tricks on it that improve his rank! But Devil Breakers aren't exactly durable, and they will break if Nero gets hit while using one. Or you can manually choose to make your Devil Breaker self-destruct, which doubles as a counter attack. The only thing I don't like about Nero's kit is that the only way to switch Devil Breakers is to destroy the one you got active. But other than that, he's a fun character who serves as a good introduction to the game's overall vibe.

V is the second character unlocked and he is a little bit weird. V never attacks anything himself. Instead, he summons two shadow monsters named Griffon and Shadow that do all the fighting for him. The only time V actually hits anything himself is during his finishing move. You see, V's summons can't actually destroy demons, they can only weaken demons. It's up to V to actually finish them off. He can also teleport to weakened enemies to make getting closer easier. V has the weirdest fighting style and he is very much a "gimmick" character. Despite this, I personally found it easier to get good ranks with V than with Nero. Mostly because V's summons getting hit does not deal damage to V himself. And taking damage not only brings you closer to failure, but it reduces your rank. And when V is chilling on the other side of a room while his summons do all the work, the result is easy A and S ranks on missions. He gets the fewest amount of levels where you can actually play as him, unfortunately. Of the game's 20 main missions, V is playable in only 8 of them. But on a more positive note, he looks like a skinny, tatted up version of Kylo Ren from Star Wars. So he gets bonus points just for that.

Next up is Dante, who is the final character unlocked in the main game and he is by far the most complex. Dante can carry up to eight weapons with him at any time (four guns and four melee weapons), and he can switch between those weapons at any time. On top of that, Dante has four Styles that he can switch between that radically alters his abilities. Trickster Style gives Dante better mobility and speed. Sword Master Style gives him better melee attacks. Gunslinger Style gives him better long range attacks. And Royal Guard Style let's Dante block any attack. Yes. Any attack, no matter how strong, can be blocked with a well timed Royal Guard. And every successful Royal Guard block charges up a special punch called the Royal Release, and this is one of the strongest attacks in the game. The actual weapons tend to be wacky and ridiculous. Like one of Dante's weapons, the Cavaliere, is literally a motorcycle that can transform into a pair of giant buzz saws. Let me repeat that. Dante can beat the bad guys over the head with a MOTORCYCLE THAT TRANSFORMS INTO BUZZ SAWS. Another weapon, Dr. Faust, is a magic cowboy hat that turns Red Orbs into bullets. It's very expensive to use, but you eventually get so many Red Orbs you kind of stop caring about the money. But I think my favorite weapon is King Cerberus, a bo staff/nun chucks hybrid weapon that can be used to control ice, fire, and lightning. Of course, playing Dante effectively requires you to learn the ins and outs of every tool at his disposal. While he is my favorite to play as, I understand why he takes so long to unlock in the main story.  

And finally we have Vergil, who is only playable in the Special Edition or if you buy a 5 dollar DLC pack for the base game. Vergil is basically Dante on steroids. He only has three weapons, his Yamato sword, a pair of gauntlets and boots for hand-to-hand combat collectively called Beowulf, and a second sword made of magic called Mirage Edge. Instead of having guns like Dante, Vergil just creates mini Mirage Edges that he psychically launches at far away targets. He can also perform super moves with deliciously edgy names like "Judgement Cut End" and "Hell On Earth" to clear out entire rooms of enemies. Playing as Vergil is less like playing a reasonably balanced action game character and is more like if you played the game as the final boss. And well, spoiler alert, but that's exactly what Vergil is. He's the final boss, and if you unlock him you have all the crazy, overpowered final boss tricks at your disposal. Also, Vergil's theme song is the aforementioned Bury the Light, so without Vergil having an amazing theme song I wouldn't know this franchise even existed. Thanks, Vergil.

Image from trueachivements.com

All playable characters eventually unlock a transformation ability called Devil Trigger. While transformed, every character does more damage to enemies, takes less damage from enemy attacks, and any damage they do take will automatically heal over time. The only exception to this rule is V, who simply summons a third shadow monster called Nightmare instead of transforming. You can only use Devil Trigger when the Trigger Gauge is full, and it fills up with every successful attack. Again, the only exception to this rule is V, because he can literally read poetry books to speed up the charge of his Trigger Gauge in addition to charging it the normal way. Dante has a unique variant of the Devil Trigger called Sin Devil Trigger, where he can choose to convert his Trigger Gauge into energy for an even stronger transformation that completely overhauls his move set. Vergil's Devil Trigger let's him create copies of himself that mimic his movements with a slight delay, so with some planning, you can set up a Devil Trigger doppelganger and launch enemies between the real Vergil and his copy like the world's most dangerous game of Ping Pong. One last thing about all the characters. For the handful of levels where multiple characters are available, if you are playing online, you can see in the background other players playing as whoever you didn't select fighting through their own version of that level. It's not quite a co-op feature, since you can't interact with those other players directly. But it is a nice attention to detail since the these characters are supposed to be heading towards the same goal. It ties the gameplay in with the story, and that's neat.

Devil May Cry 5 is a fairly linear game. Almost all of its 20 missions are straight and narrow paths with rooms full of enemies standing between you and the goal, with only occasional branching paths sprinkled in here and there. There are Secret missions, which are bonus levels found by lining the camera up with spooky sigils hidden in each main mission. And almost every level ends with a boss battle. There's barely any exploration, but that doesn't really matter because the game's combat is so polished that having a straight shot to every fight with the occasional secret mission is not that big a deal. But if you are looking for something with exploration or puzzles, well... I don't know what to tell you. The game is laser focused on having the best dang combat in any video game ever, and in that regards, it succeeds. I know it's an overdone cliché to compare something to Dark Souls but I will say this. Devil May Cry is the polar opposite of Dark Souls, at least in terms of combat philosophy. Dark Souls is precise, weighty and cautious. Devil May Cry is bombastic, over the top and stylish. So if you play a lot of Souls games (like I do), you do have to unlearn that series' lessons to get the most out of Devil May Cry's combat. Normally I wouldn't make such a comparison, but I played this game while doing a playthrough of Dark Souls III at the same time, and bouncing between two games with almost exact opposite philosophies is certainly an experience. One thing I will say about DMC 5 is that the way lock-on works is weird. Instead of toggling it on, you have to press and hold a button to remain locked on your intended target. And switching targets while locked on something requires you to press down on the center of the right analog stick without letting go of the aforementioned "lock on" button. It feels bizarre at first because it doesn't work at all like a "modern" lock-on. But you get used to it after a while.

On the subject of difficulty, Devil May Cry 5 is surprisingly beginner friendly. You start off with two difficulty options, Human Mode and Devil Hunter Mode. Human being the equivalent of easy, while Devil Hunter is intended for intermediate players. Beating the game once unlocks a third difficulty option that's a little bit harder than the previous options, called Son of Sparda mode. Beat that mode and you unlock a fourth difficulty option called Dante Must Die mode, which is the hardest challenge the game has outside of "gimmick" difficulty settings. I actually like that the harder difficulties are locked off by beating the game, because by the time the player has unlocked them, they should be competent enough to actually handle those difficulty settings. The punishment for getting defeated is also surprisingly tame. Or maybe it's standard practice and I'm just used to Souls games harshly punishing you for failure. Anyway, Whenever your character's health hits zero, you can choose to either restart the level, or spend some of your Red Orbs on a revive to keep on fighting. Doing so will let you continue the fight right where you left off, but it will hurt your rank if you do so. There's also an auto assist option in the settings that simplifies the move sets and automates certain abilities, such as changing Dante's Styles automatically. The assist option is basically training wheels. Do you need it to learn the combat? No. Does it make the game easier? Yes. But turning auto assist on hurts your rank, so sooner or later those training wheels are going to have to come off. Almost every level ends with a boss fight, and the bosses are generally pretty tough. I had to restart/revive at least once per boss. Also unlocked upon beating the game is a new game mode called Bloody Palace. Bloody Palace is a gauntlet where you fight every enemy and boss in the game, with no chance to heal between fights. The idea is that it's like a survival mode, meant to test your endurance and skill. I haven't messed around with it too much. But I have seen players who are significantly better at the game than I am do some absolutely absurd things in the Bloody Palace. It's probably the best, spoiler-free way to see what end-game combat is like. 

Image from trueachievements.com

Okay, enough gameplay. How's the story? Well... I have to make a few confessions. As previously mentioned, I never played a Devil May Cry game before. That said, because of pop culture references and memes, I accidentally spoiled some rather important plot details for myself. Spoiler warning for the remainder of the post. I already knew that Vergil was the final boss, and I already knew that Vergil was Nero's dad (they play it up as a Darth Vader style plot twist). Granted, I didn't know the entire plot. Somehow, playing the game made the memes both make more sense and less sense. The simplest way to describe the plot of Devil May Cry 5 is that it's like an interactive Shonen battle anime. A menacing villain shows up, defeats the heaviest hitters in the series with minimal effort, and forces the younger heroes to step up and finish what their predecessors started. Meanwhile, said veteran hero goes off for a brief solo adventure to get a big enough power boost to fight said villain on even footing and help out the younger hero. The only thing missing is a martial arts tournament that takes up half a season's worth of episodes.

None of this is a bad thing, by the way. There's a charm to the antics of Dante and his friends. And while the plot is simple (by anime standards), the characterization and character interactions more than make up for it. Half the fun of this game comes from things like seeing Dante's next cheesy one liner, or Nero and Nico's constant teasing and banter with each other, or hearing one of V's silky smooth poems. The only real criticism I have of the story, at least from the perspective of someone who is looking at the series from the perspective of a newcomer, is that they don't really do much with Lady and Trish. From what I understand, those two women were super prominent in previous Devil May Cry games, even being playable in DMC 4. But Lady and Trish spend most of this game being mind controlled by Urizen, and once they are free from said mind control, they kind of just spend the rest of the game chilling in Nico's van. The result is that they can, at times, feel like they are glorified cheerleaders.

One thing that took me by surprise was the relationship between V and Urizen. Spoilers, again. But you know how I said that most of this game's plot was spoiled for me by memes? There's barely any memes about V, so he was the character I knew the least about. And as it turns out, V is actually Vergil. Sort of. Vergil used a magic samurai sword called the Yamato to split his soul in half. The "good" half of his soul became V, the "evil" half became Urizen. V hired the Devil May Cry crew to fight Urizen because V wants to recombine with Urizen and become Vergil again. And the revelation that V and Vergil are (technically) the same person was honestly more surprising than the "Vergil is Nero's dad" reveal. Even if that reveal hadn't been spoiled for me, it is so obvious that Nero is related to Vergil that I am left wondering how only Dante put two and two together. Like, Nero wears almost the same colors as Vergil. Urizen used the arm he stole from Nero to (re)make the Yamato, which is Vergil's signature weapon. Nero has all the same powers that Dante and Vergil have, and I'm not so sure about you, but Dante gives me "goofy uncle who never got married" vibes. This is the man whose first reaction to seeing a cowboy hat is to put it on and do a Michael Jackson dance. There is no way that Dante of all people could sire a child.

Also, speaking of Nero, I actually really like him as a character as well. He's cocky and a bit of a punk, but he is somehow the only person in this franchise that can behave like a functional adult. Mild spoilers here, but it's ultimately Nero that convinces the Sons of Sparda to put their differences aside and settle their rivalry in a nonviolent manner. Despite, you know, smacking them both around in a cool boss fight, because this is an action game and beating things up is how you interact with the world of action games. But funnily enough he takes the whole "Urizen stole my arm" thing surprisingly well. Like, he gets more upset at Dante calling him "dead weight" once than he does at the fact that a literal demon king broke into his house and stole his arm. For context of the "dead weight" thing, Dante wasn't trying to insult Nero. He was trying to protect Nero with some well meaning, but perhaps misguided brutal honesty.

Anyway, the game ends with a two part boss battle against the newly reformed Vergil. And speaking as a newcomer to the franchise, the final boss is really cool. I love that age old trope of "the boss is a human sized duelist with similar moves to your own." And Vergil is, as previously stated, like Dante but cranked up to eleven. At least in terms of fighting style and combat prowess. In terms of personality, Vergil is the exact opposite of Dante. While Dante is silly and flamboyant, Vergil is stoic and reserved. And Vergil is just a really cool antagonist in general. His boss fight was also surprisingly difficult. I first played the game on Devil Hunter mode (I am too prideful to play on the lowest possible difficulty setting) and it took me a good 45 minutes to figure out how to beat him. But during the second part of the fight, the player switches over to Nero, who has literally just unlocked his Devil Trigger form. And for this fight only, Nero's Trigger gauge fills automatically. And even though nothing else about the Vergil fight changes in the second round, it's somehow easier with Nero thanks to him being able to effectively spam Devil Trigger transformations for the whole fight. But within the context of the story, this is Nero hitting the newest peak of his power, and him being able to beat Vergil so easily in the gameplay reinforces the idea that Nero is now much stronger than he was at the start of the game. And I think that's really cool.

Image from trueachievements.com

In terms of presentation, DMC 5 is a really pretty game. It has some of the best looking facial animations in any video game that I have played. The game uses the same graphics engine as the Resident Evil games (at least, from Resident Evil 7 onward). And any game using the RE Engine is going to have good looking faces. The main characters look incredibly stylish in general. Which is the whole point of the franchise. Devil May Cry is all about looking cool in everything you do. And the animations on the weapons look cool too. Everything is highly impractical and not realistic in the slightest, but that doesn't matter because the weapons are REALLY COOL. Honestly, that's the whole vibe of the franchise. None of it is practical or realistic, but everything and everyone is REALLY COOL. This also applies to the voice acting and sound effects. The English voices are surprisingly good. You can tell that everyone involved in the voice acting were having the times of their lives with their given roles. And in what might be the biggest and funniest coincidence ever, Dante (Reuben Langdon), Nero (Johnny Yong Bosch) and Vergil (Daniel Southworth) are all voiced by former Power Rangers. And considering that Power Rangers is another franchise built around the "Rule of Cool" it honestly makes sense why actors from there would show up here. After all, Devil May Cry is as close as we're gonna get to R rated Power Rangers. Or maybe Power Rangers is as close a we're gonna get to family friendly Devil May Cry.

Oh, boy. It's time to talk about the music. DMC 5 has an outrageously good soundtrack. I've already mentioned that the entire reason I sought this game out was because Bury the Light was a fantastic song. All four of the main playable characters get a song associated with them. Nero gets Devil Trigger, V gets Crimson Cloud, Dante gets Subhuman and Vergil obviously gets Bury the Light. And a unique feature of the game is that the music is dynamic. The better you do in any given fight, the more instruments join in. Do well enough and the lyrics kick in. And all four of these songs are bangers. The music in general is like a mix of punk rock and heavy metal. There is some playful irony in the fact that the most aggressive and "angry" sounding song is Subhuman, which is Dante's theme, despite Dante being by far the most cheerful and "jolly" of the four main boys. Crimson Cloud is the most "down to Earth" of the songs (at least in comparison), which fits for the calm, manipulative V. Devil Trigger meanwhile is an absolute ear worm that sets the tone for the whole game well. And Bury the Light is just one of the best songs to come from any video game ever. It is the kind of intense power metal anthem that you listen to while working out or doing chores. It makes you feel MOTIVATED. My compliments go to Casey Edwards, the music composer for this game. Also, fun fact about Nero's song! The female vocals in Devil Trigger were performed by Casey Edwards' sister. That's oddly wholesome for a song called "Devil Trigger." There are other songs in the soundtrack, obviously, but these four are the standouts.

Image from trueachievements.com

Overall, Devil May Cry 5 is somehow both a love letter to everything that came before it while also being a relatively good jumping on point for newcomers. It's got cool combat, cool music, cool characters, cool graphics and is just a cool game in general. Do I think it's for everyone? No. It's cheesy and bombastic like a Shonen anime and the controls take a while to get used to. I like the cheese, but that's because I normally play very dark and serious games. DMC 5's over the top shenanigans are a breath of fresh air for me. And now I want to play the other DMC games. And that's the main thing about this game. If you like Devil May Cry, you will like this game. If you like DMC 5, you'll like the rest of the franchise. But if this game doesn't win you over, nothing else will. I give Devil May Cry 5 a grand total of 5 stars out of 5. "Jackpot!"

Devil May Cry 5 is the property of Capcom. None of the images used here were created by me. Please support the official release.

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Bloodborne, mysterious, macabre, masterpiece. A very bloody review.

So let me ask you a question. Have you ever wanted a high quality action horror video game based on the works of classical horror authors like Bram Stroker and H.P. Lovecraft? One that has you fighting against grotesque monstrosities with weird and unusual weaponry? One with a deliberately vague storyline that is open to multiple meanings and interpretations? Well do I have the game for you! Because today, we are reviewing Bloodborne, an action-horror game that meets that exact description. Bloodborne, for the unaware, is part of From Software's Souls Borne franchise. In fact, that's where the "borne" part of the title comes from. The "souls" part comes from the first two games in the series, Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. Other games in the series include Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Elden Ring. I have already reviewed Sekiro, and figured I would tackle the rest of the franchise while I'm at it. So let's continue the Souls Borne review series with Bloodborne.

Image found on wikipedia.org

So what is Bloodborne? It is, as previously mentioned, a Gothic Horror action roleplaying game developed by From Software and published by Sony as a Playstation 4 exclusive. It was released in 2015 and received an expansion pack titled The Old Hunters in 2016. The game was directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, whose prior success with Dark Souls and Demon's Souls led to him being considered a bit of a legend in the video game community at large. A quick content warning before we continue. Bloodborne is rated M for Mature by the ESRB and thus it is intended for audiences 17 years old or older. Additionally, the game can potentially delving into some disturbing subject matter. So reader discretion is advised. Though to be fair, the game is called BLOOD borne. There's going to be blood in a game called BLOOD borne. In fact, almost half of all the collectibles in this game have the word "blood" in their name. Blood Vials, Blood Echoes, Blood Stone Shards, Cold Blood Dew, Pungent Blood Cocktails, and Beast Blood Pellets are just a few examples of all the "blood" themed items in this game.

The story of Bloodborne is a little bit strange in how it is told. Like all games in the Souls Borne series, the story is not told through traditional cinematics. It is told through the flavor text of collectible items, through environmental details that you may or may not notice while playing, and through optional conversations with the few friendly characters you can potentially meet. Bloodborne itself is a story that wrapped in heavy symbolism and double meanings. The game is almost a decade old and people are still discussing and debating its lore and meanings. I've seen the game be interpreted as anything from a metaphor for the afterlife, a cautionary tale against the dangers of unrestricted science experiments, to even a tragedy about the struggles of womanhood and childbirth. Which one of these interpretations is correct? The answer is Yes, because Souls Borne games tend to be open ended enough for multiple equally valid interpretations. The only thing that everyone can agree to is that the game's aesthetic and "vibe" is heavily inspired by the likes of Bram Stroker, the man who (among other things) created Count Dracula, and H.P. Lovecraft, the man who (among other things) created Cthulhu. So lots of unspeakable truths lurking in the shadows, lots of ordinary people hiding terrible secrets in plain sight, and as previously mentioned, a whole lot of blood. What's impressive about Bloodborne is that it somehow manages to justify the existence of game mechanics through its lore. Everything, from multiplayer to enemy placement to even the player's ability to retry failed battles has some kind of explanation in the lore for it.

So let's start at the beginning of the game. You play as a customizable, but mute foreigner who has come to the fictional city of Yharnam in order to receive treatment for an unknown disease. Yharnam is basically Victorian Era England, but cranked up to eleven. And this city is famed for its miraculous healing medicine, capable of treating any illness or disease. The medicine was created and distributed by a religious organization known simply as the Healing Church. There is just one problem with the miracle medicine. It's made with blood. Not just normal blood either. But Old Blood. What is the Old Blood, you ask? I can't really say without getting super deep into the lore, but all you need to know is that the Old Blood gets a little funky when you overindulge in it. And it's described as being highly addictive in nature. To quote the description of the Pungent Blood Cocktail; "In Yharnam, they make more blood than alcohol, as the former is more intoxicating."

Your character wakes up in a clinic after receiving a blood transfusion. Step outside and you will find the city of Yharnam in complete and utter chaos. Angry mobs armed with torches and pitchforks patrol the streets, upper class citizens barricade themselves in their homes with warding incense, and werewolves prowl the backstreets and darkened corners of the city. The angry mobs are quick to accuse you of being a werewolf, and any werewolves caught by them get crucified and burnt at the stake, for those classic "paranoid witch hunter" vibes. You are free to explore Yharnam from here. Though in typical From Software fashion, you can run into an outrageously strong werewolf within minutes of the game starting, and while you can defeat it if you are good at the game, you are intended to get killed by it. Upon dying to this werewolf (or any enemy, really), you are teleported into a safe zone called the Hunter's Dream. There you meet Gehrman the First Hunter. Gehrman is an elderly, retired werewolf hunter who bestows upon your character the title of Good Hunter and gives you your first real long-term goal to work on. To quote Gehrman himself, "Just go out and kill a few beasts! Don't think about it too hard. All you need to know is that this is for your own good."

Image from neoseeker.com

From here the Good Hunter is handed a Trick Weapon and a gun. The game starts for real here. So let's talk gameplay really quickly. Bloodborne is first and foremost an action game. Combat is fast, fluid and leaves very little room for error. The Good Hunter can have two different weapons in use, one for each hand. You can perform fast, light attacks with the Right Bumper, or slower but more powerful attacks by pressing the Right Trigger. You can use Left Trigger to parry and deflect enemy attacks so long as you are holding a "defensive" weapon in your left hand. This is just standard From Software controls. Unique to this game are guns and Trick Weapons. Guns are exactly what they sound like. Ballistic firearms that can be used to attack from a safe distance. But more importantly, guns are how you block and parry enemy attacks. Basically, if you shoot an enemy right before their attack hits you, they will be stunned and the Good Hunter can perform a devastating technique known as the Visceral Attack. Visceral Attacks will straight up kill weaker enemies in one go while removing a massive chunk of health from bosses and other Hunters. There are also special weapons called Hunter Tools, which function as this game's version of magic spells. Hunter Tools can shoot homing lasers, replace your dodge roll with a short-range teleport or supercharge your Trick Weapon with arcane energy, among other things. Both guns and Hunter Tools use up a resource called Quicksilver Bullets, which can be collected from any defeated enemy that had a gun or used magic. If you run out of Quicksilver Bullets, both your guns and your Hunter Tools stop working. 

Trick Weapons are a little bit more complicated, but they are easily the most iconic part of the game. By pressing Left Bumper you can transform your Trick Weapon into a different form, which changes the move set, combos and damage type of the weapon. While there are only about 30 collectible weapons total, because every weapon comes with an alternate form, in practice the weapon total is closer to 60. Trick Weapon transformations are effectively this game's equivalent of Dark Souls' stance change system. In that game, you can choose to hold a weapon with either one hand to free up a slot for an extra weapon, or with both hands for stronger attacks. But it is a lot more visually impressive to transform a weapon over just choosing how you want to hold it. And the weapons aren't magic or anything. They designed each weapon so you can see all the moving parts and how they connect to each other. All the grooves and gears and interlocking mechanisms are on display. Some of the transformations are simple. The Saw Cleaver starts as a folded blade with a serrated edge, and all transforming it does is unfold the blade for extra reach but slower swings. Other transformations are incredibly stylish and grandiose. Like the Threaded Cane, which starts as a simple cane, but once transformed it becomes a bladed whip covered in razor-sharp thorns. And you can transform your Trick Weapon mid combo. But everything, from swinging your Trick Weapon to shooting with your gun to dodging, consumes stamina. Stamina regenerates as long as you are not attacking or dodging, and the more stamina you have, the more you can keep doing those actions without pausing.

The Good Hunter can be upgraded using a universal currency called Blood Echoes, which are dropped by all defeated enemies. Blood Echoes can be used to buy items from merchants, or to upgrade your stats (more on those in a moment) and weapons. You drop any and all Blood Echoes on you if you die for any reason, though if you are quick enough you can get back to where you died originally and get your Blood Echoes back upon revival. Again, this is standard From Software fare. But what's unusual is the Blood Gem system. Basically, as you upgrade your Trick Weapons, you open up Gem Slots, which allow you to attach a Blood Gem to your weapon. These gems can do anything from boosting damage to adding additional effects like poisoning foes or giving the Good Hunter gradual health regeneration. The only other game (at least to my knowledge) that features the ability to modify weapons like this is Dark Souls III, which was made after Bloodborne. The last main mechanic that is unique to Bloodborne is the Rally. Whenever you take damage, if you attack the enemy that just hit you fast enough, you can heal and get some of your health back. If you do just right, you can completely negate all the damage you just took. This ability encourages you to keep pressing your advantage and fight as aggressively as possible. The Rally is probably my favorite part of Bloodborne's combat and I wouldn't mind seeing it get brought back in a future From Software game.

Now's let's talk stats, since those are just as important as your weapons. The stats themselves are fairly simple, at least by From Software standards, and they do more or less what you expect them to. Vitality gives you a bigger health bar and Endurance gives you a bigger stamina bar. Strength improves big heavy weapons like the Kirk Hammer and Whirligig Saw, Skill improves small lightweight weapons like the Threaded Cane and the Blades of Mercy. Arcane powers up your Hunter Tools while also increasing the chances of enemies dropping extra items upon defeat. The only "weird" stat is Blood Tinge. Blood Tinge boosts the power of gunshots. This includes your guns and any projectile fired from the Reiterpallach and the Rifle Spear, since these are the only Trick Weapons with a ranged attack. But why is the "make guns better" stat called Blood Tinge? The reason is that technically, from a lore perspective, this stat isn't the "make guns better" stat. It's actually the "make blood in general better" stat. Because Quicksilver Bullets are not normal ammo. According to the their flavor text, they are made with metals pulled directly out of the human body. The Good Hunter even has a neat but mildly disturbing ability where, by pressing "up" on the D-Pad, they can sacrifice a portion of their own health to make a fresh set of Quicksilver Bullets. Personally, there were only three fights in the whole game where I was desperate enough for the extra ammo, but the option is there right from the beginning. And indeed, two late game Trick Weapons called the Bloodletter and the Chikage coat themselves in crystalized blood when transformed. These weapons are intended for Strength-Blood Tinge hybrid builds and Skill-Blood Tinge hybrid builds respectively.

Oh, right, builds. A term you'll hear not just in Souls Borne games, but any video game that has adjustable statistics. The term is so widely used by gamers that most won't even bother explaining what it means. But I know some people that don't even play video games that read this blog, so for them, I'll offer a brief explanation. A build is a combination of stats, weapons and items that enforce a specific fighting style in your character. A Good Hunter with high Strength and Vitality is going to fight differently from a Good Hunter with high Skill and Arcane, for example. As previously mentioned, you can spend Blood Echoes to upgrade your stats. Each upgrade gets gradually more expensive. It might start with a few hundred Blood Echoes per upgrade, but the price can easily reach into the thousands or even millions by the end of the game. So while you can max out each stat and make a Good Hunter that's good at everything, such a goal is unrealistic and it is more cost efficient to specialize in one or two stats. Each Trick Weapon scales off of at least one stat, though the rarer weapons require investing in multiple stats to get any real mileage out of them. Ludwig's Holy Blade, for example, demands that you have an almost perfect split between Strength and Skill to use. Some weapons need only one stat to work with, like the Rakuyo, which needs only Skill. The advantage of the "pure" stat based weapons is that you don't need to invest as many Blood Echoes into your stats for them to work, making them a cheaper investment overall.

Image from rpgfan.com

Bloodborne also has multiplayer, though I have admittedly not played around with it that much. I prefer to play these kinds of games solo. But anyway, you can either summon a friend for Jolly Cooperation or invade another player's world (aka their version of the game) and pick a fight with them. For Player versus Player fights, the game always pairs you up with a player with similar Blood level to yours. Blood Level is a number that shows, at a glance, how powerful your character is. 4 is the lowest, 544 is the highest. Every time you upgrade a stat, your Blood Level increases by one. Several years ago, a bunch of nerds on the Internet decided on the "meta" level, which is 120. This Blood Level was your best bet for getting good fights with other players, since most people would be nearing the end of the game while at this Blood Level. By that point, players would have access to (almost) every Trick Weapon, gun type, Hunter Tool and have the stats needed to use most of these items. Ergo, Blood Level 120 is the most "fair" level for player vs player combat. But more importantly are messages and co-op summons. Basically, you can summon friendly players into your world to help out against a boss you are haven't defeated yet. While it is true that summoning a friend or two will give all bosses extra health, as long as your friends are competent players, every fight in the game will be easier overall. The way you actually summon other players into your world is a little bit esoteric, but this is a problem with every Souls Borne. Basically, if you want to be summoned to help a rookie out with a boss, you need to make a summon sign. You then need to wait patiently for another player to find your summon sign in their version of the game, and they need to click on it. And if you want to do the summoning yourself, then you will burn through a secondary currency called Insight for every person you summon. If have zero Insight, then you can't summon at all, even if you found another player's summon sign. I'll discuss Insight in more detail later, because it is a fascinating concept.

And finally, messages. You can leave messages on the floor for other players to read. You cannot type anything out yourself, however. You have mix and match pre-written phrases to get your meaning across. While these messages can be helpful hints like "Hidden Door Ahead" or "Large Beast, therefore, Try Fire" the community naturally uses this system for dumb jokes. The result is that in addition to helpful messages, you also get messages like "Lover Ahead" in front of literally any female character in the game or "Try Jumping" in front of bottomless pits. Honestly, the messages are my favorite part of Souls Borne multiplayer, because it's a total coin flip. Either a good Samaritan gives you genuinely good advice that helps you through a tough level or boss, or a goofball haves a laugh at your expense. And if a Souls Borne game doesn't have people making messages that are equal parts helpful, funny and stupid, is it really a Souls Borne?

There's also Attire, collectible outfits that change the look of the Good Hunter. While they do provide defense bonuses against certain kinds of attacks, the damage mitigation is low enough to not be worth worrying over. The only time that Attire really matters is if you are going through a level or fighting a boss that causes status effects, like poison or Frenzy. Wearing Attire that resists that status effect means you can stand in its presence longer before taking damage. This is especially important for Frenzy, because if Frenzy activates you lose 75% of your maximum health. Which in practice means that getting Frenzied is an instant kill, because if you get hit while Frenzied, you kind of just die. And obviously, if you have less than 75% of your maximum health, Frenzy will kill you by itself. Thankfully there's only one real enemy that inflicts Frenzy on you, and said enemy can only be found in three places in the game. But anyway, as long as you are not dealing with something poisonous or something that can Frenzy you, you are free to wear whatever Attire set you want. Go full Fashion Souls if you desire.

The last gameplay thing I want to discuss is how healing items work. So normally, in Souls Borne games you have three healing potions that refill automatically when resting at a checkpoint, with the ability to unlock more as the campaign progresses. What the potion is called varies from game to game, but the general idea stays the same. These refilling but sparse potions encourage you to wait until the last possible moment to heal, out of fear of wasting a heal before reaching the next boss. But in this game, you heal with Blood Vials. You can carry up to 20 Blood Vials on you, though once used they are gone forever. Most enemies drop Blood Vials in addition to Blood Echoes upon death, so can get replacements relatively easily. The downside is that if you run out of Blood Vials while fighting a boss and then die to said boss, instead of being able to challenge the boss again immediately you have to go back to a previously cleared area and kill all the enemies there in order to restock on Blood Vials. Which also has the coincidental effect of giving you more Blood Echoes, which can then be used to upgrade your character to make the next boss fight attempt more manageable. While I like both styles of healing, there were times in my Dark Souls III playthrough (which I started right after finishing Bloodborne) where I wished I had Blood Vials again. Because the levels in that game are so long (at least the ones I've seen so far) that I feel like it's easier to run out of healing items before you even reach the next boss. With Bloodborne, the generous nature of Blood Vials combined with the Rally made it very easy to get to each boss with plenty of health remaining.

Okay, let's talk about the lore. Apologies in advanced if I get any information wrong. From Software games are infamous for cryptic and mysterious stories. But anyway, you remember that Insight stuff I mentioned in the multiplayer section of the review? Well, Insight does a lot more than just allowing for Jolly Cooperation. It is a measure of how much knowledge about Yharnam that the Good Hunter has collected. It goes up every time you see a boss for the first time, every time you talk to a friendly character, every time you read a lore note. But in addition to representing knowledge, it also represents madness and insanity. The more Insight you have, the weirder and more bizarre the game becomes. Certain enemies start using strange magic spells that they don't use normally. You start hearing the sound of a baby crying faintly in the background. And if it gets high enough, you will start seeing gigantic, horrifying monsters known as the Great Ones who were previously invisible. One of the many themes of Bloodborne is the idea that knowledge comes with a price. As you learn more about Yharnam, you learn that is not just a simple werewolf infestation plaguing the city. The real problem is somehow even worse. Mild spoiler warning here.

Image from rpgfan.com

So several years before the start of the game, a bunch of nerdy scholars from the College of Byrgenwerth (Yharnam's most prestigious academy) made a discovery. Gods were real. Sort of. They found the Great Ones, alien creatures who were so powerful and so wise that the only word that could accurately describe them is "godly." The scholars of Byrgenwerth became obsessed with these Great Ones, and they aspired to become as powerful as these cosmic beings. And when they learned that a pregnant Great One named Kos (or some say Kosm) was sighted at a fishing hamlet, the scholars launched an expedition to study her. There was just one problem. Kos was dead. It's unclear if Kos was already dead by the time the scholars got there of if the scholars murdered her as part of a cruel experiment. Either way, the scholars desecrated her corpse and extracted her umbilical cord. And then they slaughtered the entire hamlet to keep the knowledge of their sins secret. As the scholars learned more about Great One biology, they more they realized that the human body cannot physically handle the power or wisdom that Great Ones have at their disposal. So they split off into several smaller factions, each with the same goal of trying to bring humanity up to the Great One's level. They just did it in very different and very horrifying ways.

Laurence the First Vicar founded the Healing Church and used the Old Blood, which is the blood of Kos's offspring, to create miracle medicine. Unfortunately, Laurence and his followers became the first werewolves due to their proximity to the Old Blood. Micolash the Nightmare Host created a secret society called the School of Mensis that tried to make their own artificial Great Ones by performing occult rituals and human sacrifices. When the experiments failed, Micolash resorted to surgically attaching stolen eyes to the inside of his body, because natural Great Ones have extra eyes and Micolash figured that the extra eyes was the secret to their power. Queen Annalise stole a portion of the Old Blood for herself, and used it to turn her entire family into immortal vampires called Vile Bloods. But despite her vampiric transformation, she was content to stay in her castle while the rest of Yharnam burned around her. And Headmaster Wellam was disgusted and outraged by the depravity of his peers and retreated back to Byrgenwerth, turning the college into a makeshift fortress. But everyone who used the Old Blood in any capacity is doomed to one day become a werewolf. Heck, even the Good Hunter is doomed to this fate. The blood transfusion they received at the start of the game was done with Old Blood. And this is the canon explanation for why the Good Hunter always comes back after dying. The Old Blood coursing your veins will not let you stay dead, for a Hunter must Hunt, even in death. But the funny/tragic thing about the lore is, despite every faction trying to become more like the Great Ones, the Great Ones themselves barely acknowledge humanity in any capacity. The majority of them are indifferent to humanity's plight. Because one of the biggest inspirations for Bloodborne was H.P. Lovecraft, who popularized the idea of villainous creatures that are dangerous not out of deliberate malice, but cold indifference. Lovecraftian monsters view humanity the same way humans view wild animals, both for better and for worse. Unlike Lovecraft's monsters, the unknowable horrors in Bloodborne can be wounded or even killed by a sufficiently well-equipped Good Hunter. In other words, you can go from hunting simple werewolves to hunting alien gods. 

In case it wasn't obvious, Bloodborne is one of the darkest and most depressing stories in all of fiction. No one is having a good time in Yharnam. This setting is equals fascinating to learn about and disturbing to live in. If you have ever heard of the term "Grimdark" Yharnam is a peak example of Grimdark in action. Grimdark, for the unaware, is a term in storytelling and media analysis that describes a cynical setting with no hope, a setting that is meant to serve as some kind of cautionary tale. Usually with the lesson being "Don't let real life society turn out as bad as this fictional society." And the worst/best part of it is, there is very little the Good Hunter can do to help the people of Yharnam. By the time the game starts, the atrocities committed by the Healing Church, the Vile Bloods and the School of Mensis have already caused so much damage that Yharnam is doomed to fall no matter what. In fact, there's a grand total of six named characters who even have a chance at living through the whole campaign, and that's dependent on player intervention. But you can still bring the likes of Laurence and Micolash to justice, right? Well you can, but by the time you meet them they are so far mentally gone that slaying them is akin to putting down a sick animal.

But now let's discuss the main highlight of Bloodborne, the bosses. This is quite possibly the best lineup of bosses in any From Software game, at least of the games that I have played. Literally the only bosses I don't like are the Chalice Dungeon bosses, but I don't mind the Chalice Dungeon bosses because the Chalice Dungeons themselves are optional and not required for progression. Their main purpose is to be semi-randomly generated bonus levels that you can play through to stock up on Blood Echoes, Blood Vials and Blood Gems quickly. Most of the bosses here are basically just buffed up rematches against bosses from the main campaign, alongside some unique bosses that I admittedly don't feel as polished as the main bosses. But there's a lot to like here. Take the two first bosses in the game, Father Gascoigne and the Cleric Beast. The former is a rogue hunter not unlike your character and he uses similar equipment to yourself. The latter is a giant werewolf with a lopsided arm. These are the first two bosses available at the start of the game and they both set a good precedent for what you can expect going forward. And generally speaking, most bosses fall into two categories. Humanoid bosses that fight similarly to the Good Hunter and giant-sized bosses that fight with monstrous flailing, with very few exceptions to this rule.

But in terms of difficulty, Bloodborne is interesting. From Software have developed a reputation for making challenging games that push one's skills to their limit. Miyazaki himself has said that that without struggle, victory is hollow and meaningless. As such, the franchise openly prides itself on its high difficulty. Generally speaking, normal mode in a From Software game would be equal to a hard mode in any other franchise. For a frame of reference, I have already played Dark Souls II, Sekiro and Elden Ring prior to playing Bloodborne. And honestly the game has a good sweet spot of difficulty. It's harder than Elden Ring (which allows you to get comically overpowered very easily) but easier than Sekiro (which I still consider to be the hardest game that I have ever completed). I honestly don't know how I would compare it to Dark Souls II because the last time I played it was three years ago and even then, I never finished it. I have recently started playing Dark Souls III, which I'd say is more or less even with Bloodborne. All of this is to say that Bloodborne is by From Software standards, a fairly intermediate game. If I was reviewing the base game by itself, I'd say it's overall a pretty smooth experience. Most bosses don't take more than three or four tries to defeat, and most of the more annoying enemies are all in optional bonus levels called Chalice Dungeons, which can be safely ignored if you don't care about 100% completion.

But this is not a review of base game Bloodborne. We're doing the DLC while we're at it. The Old Hunters DLC pack (which is included for free in the Complete Edition) adds in five brand new bosses and associated areas, alongside a handful of new guns and Trick Weapons. And the DLC bosses are by far the toughest challenges in the entire game. Based on my experience, the base game bosses take about three or four tries on average. Some, like the Cleric Beast and Father Gascoigne, only took one try. The Old Hunters bosses all took about nine or ten tries before I defeated them. The exception to this was the Orphan of Kos. I legitimately lost count how many times that I died to the Orphan. My total playtime for the whole game was a little bit over 80 hours, but I can promise you at least 20 of those hours were spent on just the Orphan of Kos fight. The Orphan is by far the hardest boss in the game. Even when I did defeat it, I was all out of Blood Vials, Quicksilver Bullets and had less than a quarter of my health bar remaining. It was brutally challenging. But it was still fun, despite it all. In fact, in terms of boss design and lore, the DLC bosses are among the best in the whole game. Anyway, the DLC takes place in the Hunter's Nightmare, a personalized hell designed to punish the Scholars of Byrgenwerth and their various successors for the crime of desecrating Kos's body. It is here that you learn the dirty little secrets of Laurence's Healing Church along with every other faction leader. Honestly, the DLC adds in so much content that elevates the whole experience. Old Hunters takes Bloodborne from a "good" game to a full on masterpiece. So if you can get the Complete Edition, that would be the best way to experience the game as a whole.

Image from rpgfan.com

Actually, you want to know how good Old Hunters is? One of the first bosses in the DLC is Ludwig the Accursed. Ludwig was a character mentioned frequently in the base game item descriptions. Heck, one of the Trick Weapons is literally called Ludwig's Holy Blade, a name that implies that you are using a weapon that belongs to a more accomplished Hunter. Ludwig was described as a paragon, a champion and an inspiring leader. A true hero that all Hunters aspired to be more like. And you get a chance to meet Ludwig in the Hunter's Nightmare. He has been twisted and deformed into a grotesque horse-like monster covered in misshapen limbs, driven completely feral by the curse of the Old Blood. Ludwig's monstrous form is sickening to look at, and his pained growls make you feel pity for him. That is, until halfway through his boss fight. Once Ludwig takes enough damage, he becomes lucid and starts fighting with a greatsword that glows bright blue with moonlight. His whole design unfurls from a chaotic mess with no recognizable anatomy or body plan, into something that actually somewhat resembles a real man. A deformed man to be sure, but a man nonetheless. This transformation turns what would be an instance of putting down a sick animal into an honorable duel, letting Ludwig end his life as the hero he once was and face death with dignity. Not only does Ludwig have the most iconic design and theme song of any boss in Bloodborne, the sword he uses once he becomes lucid is the Moonlight Greatsword (pictured above). This weapon is a sort of mascot for From Software. It is their pride and joy. It is their Pikachu. It is their Mickey Mouse. Every From Software game will find a way to include the Moonlight Greatsword, and having Ludwig be the original owner of such a legendary weapon makes him far more impressive for longtime fans of the Souls Borne franchise. And once defeated, you can use the Moonlight Greatsword for yourself.

In terms of presentation, Bloodborne is a very nasty game. Though this is by no means an insult. The character and monster designs are meant to be weird and bizarre at best and absolutely vile at worst. The Trick Weapons are by far the coolest looking weapons in any From Software game, and it is obvious they put a lot of thought and effort into making the weapons look like somewhat believable pieces of machinery. Attire is also stylish, with lots of fancy hats and long trench coats with the occasional robe here and there. It matches the time period that the game emulates immaculately. Speaking of, Yharnam is my favorite location in a From Software game. It's Victorian Gothic architecture and fashion gives it a unique "vibe" that not a lot of games go for. And of course, there's the blood. Blood splatters with every hit, painting the environment with a thick crimson hue. Heck, the longer you fight, the more bloodstains appear on your character's clothing. If a fight drags on long enough, the Good Hunter might become absolutely drenched in the stuff. But the violence here feels tasteful, since this is ultimately a story about the misuse of alien blood, and a story about blood is pretty much required to show the spilling of it. Like, you can't have a vampire story where the vampire doesn't drink blood. That's the whole point of vampires. But I digress.

The only downside on the visual end of things is that Bloodborne is locked into running at 30 frames per second. This is fine, and the game holds a stable frame rate from start to finish. Except for the fight against the Loran Dark Beast. The Loran Dark Beast is a Chalice Dungeon boss, and thus it is not required for 100% completion. And it's a good thing too. Because the Loran Dark Beast is the worst boss in the game. Not because it's hard or has dangerous attack patterns, but because the PS4 literally can't handle this one boss. It is a large "monster" type boss that moves around quickly, has bounce physics applied to its fur and is covered from head to toe in electric sparks. And as it turns out, the behind the scenes graphics engine has a hard time keeping up with a large, fast, furry monster covered in lightning. The frame rate drops so low that at times, it feels like a slide show. This is the only instance of the game suffering from frame rate issues. Honestly, if it didn't have fur or electric sparks it probably wouldn't hurt the frame rate as much. Thankfully, this is a skippable boss not required for progression, but if it was mandatory, it would definitely sour my experience with the whole game.

Voice acting and sound effects are top notch. Highlights of the sound design include subtle things like the sound of footsteps changing based on the material you're walking on, being softer on rugs and carpets and "clunkier" on hard surfaces like stone or metal. I also like the mechanical whirring and clicking of the Trick Weapons as they switch from one form to another. Obviously, the sounds that monsters make vary between horrifying roars to disgusting gargling. I only listened to the English voice acting and cannot speak for the Japanese voices, but the English voices fit the game's vibe perfectly. Highlights of the game's vocal talents include Micolash's insane occult ramblings during his boss fight, as well as the Healing Church Hunter Alfred's passionate (albeit disturbing) speech about avenging his martyred mentor. But if I had to pick a favorite voice role, it would be for Gehrman. Voiced by Allan Corduner, Gehrman presents himself as a feeble old man bound to a wheel-chair. This is a façade, he is far more powerful and Insightful than he lets on. And rarely, while in the Hunter's Dream, you can catch Gehrman talking in his sleep. And his half-asleep pleading for someone, anyone, to bring the Hunt to an end is one of the most depressing lines of dialogue in any video game I have ever played.

On a more uplifting note, Bloodborne has some of the best music in From Software's catalogue. The Hunter's Dream music is a hauntingly beautiful melody that sounds both peaceful and melancholic, serving as a respite from the horrors of the Hunt. Mergo's Lullaby is a simple music box tune that sounds sinister and foreboding. All of the bosses (except for Mergo's Wet Nurse, who gets a remix of Mergo's Lullaby) get a full orchestra to announce their arrival. And all of the bosses related to the Healing Church get bombastic Latin choirs which have lyrics that (when translated into English) retell the story and lore of those characters. The best song would definitely go to Ludwig the Holy Blade. It starts off like a messy and chaotic war chant, reflecting the decrepit state you find him in. But when Ludwig becomes lucid, it transitions into a graceful waltz. It even uses cymbal clanging to represent the clashing of swords, further solidifying the feeling of an honorable duel. A fitting song for a hero's last stand. 

Image from rpgfan.com

Generally speaking, Bloodborne has earned its reputation as From Software's magnum opus. Out of all the Souls Borne games I have played, I consider to be the best so far. As long as you have Old Hunters. That DLC turns a good game into a great game. Again, the Complete Edition is probably the best way to play the game. But even ignoring the DLC, this is still a fun romp through a werewolf infested fantasy version of Victorian England, and that's a good enough sales pitch to stand out on its own. But anyway, in terms of what game is best for newcomers to Souls Borne, I would say it's a tie between this game and Elden Ring. The only truly bad things I have to say about this game is that Loran Dark Beast exists and that as a PS4 exclusive, not everyone will have the ability to even play this game. But overall, I give Bloodborne 5 stars out of 5.

Bloodborne is the property of From Software and Sony. None of the images used on this blog were created by me. Please support the original creators.

Wednesday, December 6, 2023

A needlessly long retrospective of the entire Five Nights at Freddy's Core Collection.

 Well, I mentioned it in my Halloween Special for this year so I might as well start covering it while it's fresh in my mind. This is the post where I finally review Five Nights at Freddy's. But in what might be my most ambitious project yet, I am not stopping at the first game. There are 10 games in the franchise, and 8 of those games are canon to the main story and lore of the series. For the sake of not making things overly long, I will review just the Core Collection, a bundle containing the first five games in one package. I will cover the other five games in a different post. And I would like to cover the movie one day, but I have not watched the movie yet, and I would rather not review something until I experience it for myself. A quick disclaimer for the rest of the post. There will be times in the post where I use the acronym FN@F. This is a shortened form of the title. Just a quick heads up so you don't get confused. Also, as yet another horror game review, this review might contain descriptions of disturbing subject matter. The games themselves are surprisingly tame at a T for Teen rating, however. Because of this, the franchise has earned a reputation for being a "baby's first" horror game.

Image found from Wikipedia.org

So what is Five Nights at Freddy's? It's a horror franchise created by Scott Cawthon back in 2014. Mr. Cawthon worked almost entirely as a self-published developer, and up until the fifth game in the franchise, FN@F was a one-man passion project. The series focuses entirely on haunted Chuck E. Cheese style animatronics, with some monsters being exceptions that prove the rule. And there's a funny story as to why Scott made FN@F despite having no real background in horror media. You see, he got his start making puzzle games for kids. One of those games was absolutely torn apart by critics, specifically citing that the cartoon animals looked accidentally robotic and creepy, when they were supposed to be cute and cuddly. Scott took one look at those criticisms and said, "What if I made a game that was robotic and creepy on purpose?" And that was how Five Nights at Freddy's was born. And the overwhelming success of FN@F as well as fellow horror game P.T. (Rest in Peace P.T. fans) would change the face of indie horror games for years to come. Either your indie horror game was a FN@F clone, a P.T. clone, or it did something so unusual it couldn't be compared to either game.

Despite the franchise's humble origins and almost nonexistent budget, it exploded into an overnight sensation thanks to positive word of mouth. Another reason this franchise got popular was thanks to the Internet. No, really. Between viral videos of Internet celebrities recording their "live reactions" to the series' jump scares, to entire groups of terminally online nerds (including me) being dedicated to piecing together a mysterious storyline that was carefully spread out across multiple games. Because of the prevalence of theories in the FN@F fan community, anything I say about the lore should be taken with a grain of salt. After all, everything I say here is not only my personal reading and thoughts on the story, but some details will be simplified or ignored completely for the sake of keeping this review actually readable. Without further adieu, let's begin the deep dive.

Image from MobyGames.com

Let's start with the first game in the series, the original Five Night's at Freddy's. So imagine. The year is (probably) 1993 and you are a security guard hired by Fazbear Entertainment, a megacorporation that owns a fast food joint called Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. You are tasked with staying overnight at the restaurant, ostensibly to prevent criminals from stealing the company's prized animatronic performers. This is, as you can figure out quite easily, a bold faced lie. You're not there to keep thieves out. You're there to keep the animatronics in. According to messages left by a fellow employee known simply as the Phone Guy (who is voiced by Scott Cawthon himself), the animatronics have a "free roam" mode that they switch to during closing hours. While in "free roam" mode, the animatronics are free to wander the premises to their hearts' desire. There is just one problem. Because of faulty programming, the animatronics view any adult-sized human as an undressed robot endoskeleton. And being an undressed robot is against DA RULES, so if they catch you, they will stuff you inside a costume. Now, this doesn't sound that bad, but the costumes are too tight for human usage. As such, getting stuffed into a costume will squeeze you to death. There was also an event in the company's past called the Bite of '87, though there is sadly no concrete information as to what that is, aside from sounding vaguely ominous and being gruesome enough to shut the pizzeria down for at least three whole years. Also the restaurant itself might be haunted. Again, nothing concrete, but there are hints of supernatural activity.

Gameplay in FN@F 1 is by far the most simple of the series. You spend each Night (Nights are the equivalent of levels or chapters in other games) sitting in the security guard's office. You can see any other room in the establishment through video cameras. You can light up the halls leading into your office to see if anything is nearby, and you close the doors right outside the office. But everything in this game takes power. You start each Night with 100% electricity and gradually burn through that supply as you use your cameras and doors. And you have to use these tools to stall out the animatronics. You cannot leave the office. You cannot fight the animatronics directly. Your only means of self-defense is stalling for time. Because for some reason, the animatronics become docile as soon as the pizzeria reopens. And credit where credit is due, the first game does a good job at making you feel trapped.

Image from MobyGames.com

There are four main animatronic performers that will attack you in this game, but they have predictable patterns to their behavior. Bonnie the Bunny will always approach from the left hall and can be found in any room on the left side of the building. If you observe him through the cameras, he freezes like a statue and won't move again until you switch to a different camera. Chica the Chicken works the same way, only on the right side of the building. Both Bonnie and Chica can be repelled simply by slamming the door in their face once they make to the halls outside the office. But if either of them make it through the office doors uninterrupted, you lose. Bonnie and Chica will always become active at the beginning of Night 1 and Night 2 respectively, and will attack in tandem from Night 3 onwards.

Foxy the Pirate Fox is by far the most dangerous animatronic. While Phone Guy warns you about Foxy's gimmick during the Night 2 message, if you have really bad luck he can become active on Night 1. Foxy always starts in the same room, the Pirate Cove. He will not leave so long as a camera is observing him. But if you go too long without looking at Foxy, he will run full sprint down the halls, skipping over every other room between him and the office. And no, looking at him through the cameras will do nothing once Foxy leaves the Cove. You only have a very brief window of time to close the door. And even then, Foxy will stay for a few seconds and bang on the door, rapidly draining your power. Once he leaves, he will return to Pirate Cove and you have to repeat this song and dance for the rest of the Night.

And last but not least is the big man himself, Freddy Fazbear. He only becomes active from Night 3 onwards and is the slowest animatronic, especially if you look at him specifically. But Freddy is more unpredictable than the others, since he can go into ANY room in the building with no restriction. He can approach from either side. And the doors do not keep him out. If he stays outside the doors long enough, he can just break them down. And if your power hits 0% on any Night (including Nights 1 and 2) then Freddy will teleport straight into the office and taunt you with a song. This song is the Toreador March, a piece of classical music composed by Georges Bizet for the 1875 French opera Carmen. This is such a deep cut of musical theater trivia that no sane person would care about. But now you know what song Freddy plays when he taunts you. Oh, and Freddy will kill you as soon as the song ends, by the way. So this isn't just an excuse Scott to flex his knowledge of classical music. There's a gameplay function behind the song, since it's effectively a countdown to your demise. Fun Fact! There is a rare chance that a Golden version of Freddy will appear in your office. This "Golden Freddy" is a character that is actually really important in the lore, but for now they are just a creepy secret meant to keep you on your toes.

Image from MobyGames.com

Now if you noticed from the monster breakdowns, that the main way of dealing with the animatronics is to look at them through the cameras. But here's the thing. The animatronics don't all start in the same rooms, and it's borderline impossible to get two or more of them in the same room once they start moving. This is important, because in order to do well in this game, you need to decide which animatronic is the biggest threat at any given moment and focus on that one for a few seconds before dealing with the next biggest threat. Generally speaking, your priorities should be Foxy first, then Freddy, then Bonnie and Chica last. One last important note. If you manage to beat all Five of the Nights, you are rewarded with two bonus levels. Night 6, which is the same as Night 5 but even harder, and Custom Night, where you can adjust the aggression on each animatronic yourself for a truly customized experience. Funnily enough, the most difficult Night in the game is the Custom Night if you crank the aggression on all four animatronics up to 20. This challenge has been nicknamed 4/20 Mode by the fan community. But overall, there is a beautiful simplicity to FN@F 1's gameplay loop. The tools you use are simple, the monsters themselves are simple, and at this point there the lore is simple. Things were so much simpler in 2014.

In terms of presentation, FN@F 1 is easily the scariest game in the series. The pizzeria itself is a dark, decrepit shell of its former glory, with cobwebs forming in the corner and food (or blood) stains marking the floor. The lights barely work, and unless the animatronics get right up in the cameras, you can only make out the outline of their silhouettes. The animatronics themselves strike that perfect balance between being cute enough to where you can believe why children in this setting would like them. But they still hit that uncanny valley feeling, with facial features that don't look quite right. Their mouths are too big, their eyes look devoid of life and soul, they slump and shamble like zombies through the halls. They are designed to make you feel uncomfortable. The sound effects add to the atmosphere as well, with haunting ambience and seemingly random noises that exist for no reason than to distract you. Sometimes Foxy starts singing. Why does he sing? Unclear! Sometimes Chica clashes and clangs utensils together. Why does she do this? Unclear! But these sound effects put you on edge when you hear them, which honestly adds to the experience. And of course, the jump scare scream is iconic. Even if you never played the game yourself, you probably heard the jump scare scream at least once while exploring the Internet. But when you combine that feeling of discomfort with being trapped in an office in a rundown pizzeria, you get a recipe for a game that is immensely stressful to play. It is a rather short experience, unfortunately. You could easily beat this game in anywhere between two and five hours. In fact, that's a problem the whole franchise has. These are games meant to be played in short bursts, not lengthy marathons. But overall, if you're only going to play one game in this franchise, let it be this one. I give Five Nights at Freddy's 5 stars out of 5 (one for each Night!).

Image from Wikipedia.org

Next game is Five Nights at Freddy's 2. Also released 2014, now is a good time to mention that the first four games were all developed and released over the course of a single year, with a two or three month gap between each game. As such, Scott Cawthon holds the Guinness World Record for "Most Number of Video Games Released in a Single Year." More useless but kind of neat trivia for you to enjoy. Granted, the only reason he could do this is because FN@F 2-4 use the first game as a foundation. Anyway, lore time! So imagine, you are hired once again as a security guard for Fazbear Entertainment's brand new establishment. But something's different about the animatronics. They're a little bit.. newer. Shinier. Cuter and cuddlier. And there's a lot more of them now. The pizzeria itself is cleaner now as well. It even has actual working electricity, so power management is a thing of the past. So have Fazbear Entertainment cleaned up their act and made a safe restaurant this time? HA. No. Because the year this time is 1987. Get used to me stating years when applicable, these numbers are frustratingly important. But because the year is 1987, the mysterious Bite of 87 has not happened yet, so the establishment and its performers are in their prime in this game. And before you ask, no, we don't get to see the Bite in this game. The Bite happens during the dayshift, and since your character only works the night shift, they weren't around to see the Bite in person.

Phone Guy returns to tell us that these "new" animatronics, officially referred to as the Toy Series, also have a free roam mode. But the Toys have some features that the original four animatronics lack. Namely they have facial recognition tech, and are programmed to apprehend any patron of the pizzeria if they have a criminal record. Why do animatronic performers meant to sing songs and care for kids need these features? Because of an event in the company's past known as the Missing Children Incident. Unlike the Bite of '87, we have plenty of info relating to the Missing Children Incident. Basically, a Man in Purple lured about 6-11 children to the Backstage by pretending to be one of the pizzeria mascots. Once they were out of sight of any reasonably authority figure, this Purple Man "sent them straight into the past tense" and hid their corpses inside of the animatronics themselves. The police didn't get involved until the patronage started complaining about a foul odor coming from the animatronics. And they never found the Purple Man. He's still out there, having gotten away with taking the lives of almost a dozen innocent children. If anything, Fazbear Entertainment did everything they could to cover up the Purple Man's misdeeds to protect their reputation, and the coverups were what allowed the Purple Man to get away scot free. And what's worse is that the ghosts of the Purple Man's victims began to haunt the original animatronics, creating horrific abominations known collectively as the Withered Series. Anyway, the reason why the Toys have facial recognition tech is to make sure that the Missing Children Incident doesn't happen again.

The only thing left to ambiguity about the Missing Children Incident is ironically enough, how many children the Purple Man killed. It's either six, one for each "classic" animatronic plus Golden Freddy and a new character called the Marionette, or it's eleven, one for each previously mentioned animatronic in addition to the Toy Series. It mostly depends on whether or not you believe Fazbear Entertainment was telling the truth about the facial recognition tech, or if you believe the Toys are just as haunted as the Withered Series. I personally believe it's eleven because it wouldn't be the first time Fazbear Entertainment lied about their animatronics' capabilities. That, and I'm pretty sure that facial recognition tech didn't exist in 1987. But I like to imagine that Fazbear Entertainment deliberately hires Night Guards with criminal records so they have an alibi ready in case the animatronics kill anyone. The only thing disproving this theory is the fact that later games give names to only six of the victims, not eleven.

But ignore all that Purple Man business, let's talk about the gameplay. In FN@F 2 you have a new office that has no doors whatsoever, and three different paths from which the animatronics. The cameras are nowhere near as helpful in this game, since the animatronics still move around even when observed now. Now the cameras serve as a remote access to a music box. So I know what you're thinking. "How are you supposed to defend yourself this time!?" The answer is with a flashlight, a mask and the aforementioned music box. I'm letting you know now that FN@F 2 is nowhere near as scary as the original game. But it is a whole lot harder, due to needing to juggle three different tools and needing to remember what each animatronic is weak to. Basically, if you see any version of Bonnie, Chica or Freddy (all of whom come in both Toy and Withered forms), you use the mask to scare/fool them away. The same applies if you see a new animatronic called Balloon Boy coming. Balloon Boy is the first "gimmick" monster in the series. Instead of attacking you directly, if you don't scare him away in time he will disable the flashlight. Speaking of the flashlight, if you see Withered Foxy, you flash your light at them. And you must keep the music box going at all times, because if the music box stops, a new character called the Marionette wakes up. The Marionette cannot be deterred by the mask nor can you flash your light at her. If she wakes up, you are dead. No exceptions.

More lore time! The Marionette and Mangle are two new characters and I absolutely love them, they are two of my favorite monsters in the series. But on a serious note, the Marionette is heavily implied to be possessed by the ghost of the very first victim of the Purple Man, and is the first animatronic to be explicitly shown to be supernatural (besides Golden Freddy). In fact, it's all but stated that the Marionette is the one calling the shots at the pizzeria. Not only do the other animatronics treat her as their leader, there are secret flashback minigames unlocked by dying to specific animatronics during specific Nights. These flashbacks show the Missing Children Incident and the immediate aftermath. But more importantly, it shows the Marionettes "giving gifts" to each of the victims. The animatronics only come to life after they have been "given a gift." I like to think of the gifts as a metaphor for souls. If you had any doubts about the animatronics being haunted, I feel like this explicitly confirms there is ghostly involvement going on, at least in some capacity.

Image from Wikipedia.org

Mangle, on the other hand, was meant to be a Toy variant of Foxy. But a bunch of kids didn't like how Toy Foxy was redesigned to look "softer" and more "girly." So they did the reasonable thing and tore the poor thing apart. And when the dayshift staff put her back together, the kids broke him all over again. This continued for several days. Eventually the dayshift staff got tired of repairing Toy Foxy all the time, so they repurposed her as a kind of Build-A-Bear style attraction, letting patrons rearrange his body parts in new and disturbing positions. So now the newly renamed Mangle is a horrid mess of mismatched body parts, looking more like a metallic pretzel with a fox head crudely shoved on one side than an actual robotic animal. Somewhere along the way, Mangle was given a gift by the Marionette and began to move around despite her horribly misshapen form. That's it. That's all the Mangle lore. I adore this character despite the fact that they are perhaps the least important monster in the series. And before you ask why I keep changing Mangle's pronouns, the reason is because we literally do not know whether Mangle is a boy or a girl, and the subject of Mangle's gender was a hotly debated subject among longtime fans. One side says that because Mangle is a Foxy variant, and the original Foxy is male, then Mangle should be male by process of association. The other side says that Mangle's costume (or what's left of it) is designed to look feminine and girly, with exaggerated eyelashes, bright-pink makeup and lusciously red lipstick. Not helping matters is that as a series wide joke, Mangle is referred to with different pronouns in each game the character appears in. They are called "he" in one game, "she" in another, a third game switches back to "he" and the cycle continues. Some games in the series take things further by changing the pronouns every single Night, or even in the same sentence. For what it's worth, Scott Cawthon himself made an official statement on whether Mangle was supposed the be a boy or a girl. And the answer is "Yes." Just "Yes" with no further elaboration. I can respect that kind of answer.

Anyway, a lot of what I said about the first game rings true here. If you beat all five Nights you unlock an extra hard Night 6 and a Custom Night. And the presentation is more or less the same as the first game. The pizzeria is cleaner and more pristine, which does diminish the scare factor somewhat. Like, you don't feel trapped the same way that you feel trapped in FN@F 1. I do think that the jump scare scream in this game is more alarming, due to being a deep voiced cry of "FREEDOM!!!" as opposed to the high-pitched "REEEEEEEEEE!!!" of the first game. Though the first time I heard the FN@F 2 scream I thought it sounded like "HOWDY YALL!!!" at first, and now that I put that mental image in your head you can't unhear it. But honestly, I kind of prefer FN@F 2 for gameplay and monster designs, even if I think the game is less scary overall. Like, once you get the "rhythm" down and can cleanly transition between the mask, the flashlight and the music box, it feels almost therapeutic. Plus, this game has some of the best monsters in the franchise. The Marionette, Mangle, Withered Bonnie and Toy Bonnie are all delightfully frightening fan favorites for good reason. So I give Five Nights at Freddy's 2 5 out of 5 stars. The franchise is now 2 for 2 with perfect ratings.

Image from Wikipedia.org

After that is Five Nights at Freddy's 3. This is a game I personally have mixed feelings on. Moving towards the year of 2023 (which was the future when the game first released), you are once again hired as a security guard for Fazbear Entertainment. But something's different once again. The pizzeria is so filthy and rotten it looks less like a pizzeria and more like a junkyard. It makes the FN@F 1 pizzeria look pristine in comparison. But here's the thing. It's nasty on purpose. Because Fazbear Entertainment thought to themselves, "You remember the Missing Children Incident and the Bite of 87? Let's make a Haunted House ride out of the very real crimes we hid from the public! This is a perfectly sound business decision!" But that's beside the point. The newly rebranded Fazbear's Fright is a haunted house attraction decorated with old memorabilia from the first two establishments, set to appear in a fancy amusement park a la Disney Land. But the star of the show is one single, half-rotten rabbit animatronic known as Spring-Trap. And this is the reason why I (and other fans of the series) feel so divisive about this game. The only hostile animatronic in FN@F 3 is Spring-Trap. While it is true that he can summon Phantom animatronics to distract you, the Phantoms are literally just palette swaps of characters from the first two games, so they don't really feel like new monsters in and of themselves. And these Phantom animatronics can't kill you either, since their only game purpose is to distract you from whatever Spring-Trap is doing. So your enjoyment of the third game is dependent on how much you like Spring-Trap, because this is Spring-Trap's game, not Freddy's or Foxy's or anyone else's game.

As you can imagine, your tools have changed yet again. Cameras are back to being actually useful, since you need to keep an eye on Spring-Trap at all times and you can safely ignore the Phantoms. But you also have audio lures, little devices placed in each room that can be accessed remotely through the new office. These audio lures will play a sound that will, well, lure Spring-Trap into that room. He cannot hear a lure unless it's in a room adjacent to whichever room Spring-Trap is currently in. Basically, if you want to guide him into a specific room, you need to figure out which rooms lead to where and use the lures in the right order to get Spring-Trap in that specific room. The doors return, but with a twist. You don't have a door for the office itself, meaning once Spring-Trap gets there, you're pretty much out of luck. But new to this game are vents. Spring-Trap will sometimes climb into a vent and try and get you from there. You can close off the vents to block out Spring-Trap, but you can only close one vent at a time. So you have to pay attention to which vent Spring-Trap climbs into. 

And finally, the equipment this time consists entirely of old, beaten up hand-me-downs from other establishments. Because of this, your tools will literally break down at random intervals, requiring you to manually reset your cameras, audio lures and vent doors to use them again. There are also retro flashback minigames that come in two types. If you complete a Night for the first time, you see the Purple Man return and destroy the original four animatronics. But there are also secrets that can only be accessed by clicking on certain things on certain Nights. And when I say hidden, I mean "so obscure there is no way to find this without following a walkthrough." Which begs the question of how the walkthrough authors found the secrets, but the Internet can solve any mystery if it puts its hive mind to it. These secret minigames unlock an alternate ending where the ghosts of the Missing Children Incident victims get their Happiest Day, meaning they're ready to go to Heaven. Which is surprisingly wholesome for a franchise about haunted robots. Also Fazbear's Fright burns down, causing Spring-Trap to disappear into the night. FN@F 3 is the only game in the series (besides Security Breach) to not have a Custom Night, because again. Spring-Trap is the only new animatronic. So there's not much to actually customize. In its place is Nightmare Mode, which raises Spring-Trap and the Phantoms' aggression up to eleven, so to speak.

Image from Wikipedia.org

Lore time! You might be wondering why Spring-Trap is such a big deal. Why does this zombie rabbit robot get his own game, and why can he summon Phantoms modeled after the previous animatronics? And the answer is because Spring-Trap is the one exception to the animatronic monster rule. You see, Spring-Trap is not an animatronic per se. Instead, he is a Spring-Lock Suit, a type of experimental costume Fazbear Entertainment made that could switch between being a wearable suit and an autonomous robot. The robot parts aren't removed from the suit, just pushed to the edges to make room for a human. There is just one problem with this. If the suit switches to robot mode while the human is still wearing it, all the bits of machinery will perforate their body. Simultaneously squeezing you to death while pumping your body full of holes. This obviously was a safety violation, and only two suits were made. And Spring-Trap is one of those two suits. The other suit became Golden Freddy. 

But there's more to Spring-Trap than being a failed prototype robot suit. Not only is he human, but Spring-Trap is the Purple Man himself. As shown in the flashback minigames, sometime between 1993 and 2023 (we don't know exactly when) the Purple Man returned to the Pizzeria. There, he destroys the monsters he created, though why he did this is unclear. But then the ghosts of his victims start attacking him directly. And in what might be a case of karmic irony at its finest, the very suit he used to lure children to the backstage switched to robot mode while he was still wearing it. The Purple Man died, as he perhaps rightfully deserved, but his soul didn't move on to the afterlife. Instead, his ghost just possessed the very suit that just killed him, and adopted the Spring-Trap persona with the full intent of continuing the murders as an undead rabbit monster. A common joke among FN@F fans is that the Purple Man "ALWAYS COMES BACK." This is because no matter what happens in the story, the Purple Man just refuses to stay dead and the consequences of his misdeeds haunt the future generations of this universe far more than the literal ghosts that antagonize the Night Guards.

In terms of presentation, FN@F 3 is very green. I get the intention was to show an establishment that was even more rundown than the original, but the lighting in this game makes everything look aggressively green. Heck, Spring-Trap himself looks green. He is not green. He is supposed to be golden. But the rotting decay on his body combined with the lighting make him look greener than intended. I personally find this game the least scary, but I do like the concept of Spring-Trap's design, being an unholy fusion of a rabbit costume, a robot, and a mummified human corpse. It's definitely the goriest thing in the franchise. Aside from the Scooper in the fifth game, but that's a whole other can of worms. Anyway, as previously mentioned, I don't particularly like the Phantoms because their designs are just palette swaps of previous animatronics. And the jump scare scream in this game is the weakest, being just a loud hiss instead of a proper scream. All that being said, I really like the ideas of this game. I like Spring-Trap, I like audio lures, and I like having to repair your equipment every so often while keeping an eye on one singular, but very dangerous foe. So in terms of gameplay, it's actually pretty fun. So I give Five Night's at Freddy's 3 4 stars out of 5. At first I thought about giving it 3 stars, but upon further reflection, I think I prefer this game over the next one. Speaking of...

Image from Wikipedia.org

Alright, Five Nights at Freddy's 4. Oh boy. This game. I have a lot to say about this game. So lore time! You play not as a security guard working at a Fazbear Entertainment facility, but as a small child. In fact, this is the only game in the series where Fazbear Entertainment have no involvement whatsoever. Instead, this game takes place in a fairly average suburban house. Like imagine the home of a stereotypical middle-class American family. That's the kind of house we're dealing with. And this small child is being plagued by Nightmares. And when I say Nightmares, I don't mean bad dreams. I mean the animatronics in this game are literally called the Nightmare series. And the Nightmare animatronics have followed this kid home. And also some pieces of furniture seem to magically change into medical equipment before flickering back into what they were originally. But I'm sure that's fine and is in no way symbolically foreshadowing something important.

The only means of self-defense this time are a flashlight and a pair of doors. You can only keep one door closed at a time, since the kid needs to physically run over to the door to close it. You also need to check the bed behind you every so often, as well as light up the closet with your flashlight every now and again. Unlike every previous game, sound plays an integral role in figuring out what the animatronics are doing. Basically, if you hear any creaking, gasping or moaning at the doors, close them until the noise stops. If you don't hear any noise, shine your flashlight down the hall. There are seven animatronics in FN@F 4. Nightmare Bonnie and Nightmare Chica work exactly as there FN@F 1 counterparts did. Bonnie approaches from the left and Chica from the right. Nightmare Foxy starts in the closet as a cute little plush that slowly transforms into a more monstrous creature. If he is in "monster mode" you have to close the closet doors shut until he is back in "plush mode." And Nightmare Freddy sends out tiny copies of himself that climb up on the bed. Simply shining your light at the copies will scare them away, but if you ignore them, then the real Freddy will teleport behind you and give you the "Nothin' Personnel, Kid!" special. 

Image from Steamdb.info

The final two main animatronics are Fredbear and Nightmare (just Nightmare, no extra words). Both of these animatronics are palette swaps of each other and work in more or less the same way. And these two can approach from ANY entry point into the room. Basically, Fredbear is the first four animatronics rolled into one, while Nightmare is an even more aggressive version of Fredbear. And then there's Plush-Trap. Plush-Trap is a tiny version of Spring-Trap and has a very strange gimmick. Basically, at the start of every Night, you can play "red light, green light" with Plush-Trap by turning the flash light on and off repeatedly. If you win by getting Plush-Trap to stand on a X mark on the floor, you skip the first two hours of the next Night. This makes things both shorter and easier for you. If you lose (either by taking too long or letting Plush-Trap jump scare you), you just play through the Night normally. So if you get really good at Plush-Trap's minigame, you can breeze through the Nights with impressive speed. I actually really like the idea. Especially since this is probably the hardest game, or at least it's tied with FN@F 2 for difficulty. This is also the longest game in the series so far, with eight playable Nights as opposed to 5 main Nights and a few bonus Nights here and there.

So let me preface something about FN@F 4. This game's lore frustrates me to no end. Not because of what's in the game itself, but because of something Scott said a few years ago that makes this game's story needlessly messy. So first a little context. Throughout the game you learn that your character, the Crying Child (yes, that's their canon name) is a victim of bullying from their brother. This kid is so scared of Fazbear animatronics that the mere sight of them is enough to make the kid burst into fearful tears. Except for one. A plushie version of Fredbear, who offers reassurance and cryptic pep-talks. Some of the things this plush says are in all honesty ominous. Things like "Tomorrow is another day" or "I will put you back together." The game ends with something that I am going to put a hard spoiler/content warning on. If you don't want to learn about arguably the most gruesome thing in the whole franchise, feel free to skip ahead. At the end of the game the brother and his friends torment the Crying Child on their birthday. They thought it would be "real funny" if they picked the poor kid up and shoved him, headfirst, into the mouth of Fredbear, who is in fact the original version of Golden Freddy. And well... CHOMP. We then learn that the whole game was from the perspective of the Bite of '87 Victim first mentioned all the way back in FN@F 1. More specifically, everything our character was experiencing were the last moments of the Bite Victim's comatose mind succumbing to the brain damage caused by the Bite. The medical equipment appearing and disappearing was the Victim's mind briefly becoming lucid and realizing that their body is dying before descending even deeper into the Nightmare. It's also why the Nightmare animatronics look like demonic versions of the original four animatronics (plus Golden Freddy), since those were the only animatronics that were active at the time of the Bite.

Finally. We got to see the Bite of '87. Turns out it was a prank gone wrong and had nothing to do with the Missing Children Incident or the Purple Man. There's something poetic about the first mystery in the series having finally been solved, and turned out to be a case of bullying taken too far... Is what I would like to say. But this game, according to Scott Cawthon himself, takes place in 1983. Scott claims his intention with this scene was to reveal that there were multiple Bite victims, and the Bite of '87 wasn't a one-time occurrence. But if that was his intention, he did a bad job at showing that this was meant as "there were multiple Bite victims" reveal, since the only victim we see is the Crying Child. Honestly, the whole scene feels like it was meant to be the Bite of '87, but Scott moved the goalpost, so to speak, to keep the mystery going. Don't get me wrong. I still like the story being told so far and I still respect Scott as a story writer and game developer, but this one instance rubs me the wrong way. But no matter what, whether this was the Bite of '87 or an unrelated incident, bullying is never okay and if you don't learn to treat your peers with respect, you might repeat the mistakes of the brother. There's my Public Service Announcement. Don't do bullying, or you might shove your younger sibling into a robot bear's mouth and accidentally cause them to die of severe brain damage.

Image from neoseeker.com

One last lore thing. FN@F 4 saw the introduction of the Box. Basically, the Box held something within it that would "solve everything." Scott would only open the Box (via updating the game) if the community could accurately guess what was inside it within a three month time limit. Apparently, nobody found the answer to the Box in time, and it was never opened. At least, not in the games. In the FN@F lore novels (which exist to flesh out the lore and make it less confusing), the Box contains the body of Charlotte Emily, the first (named) victim of the Purple Man, whose ghost would go on to haunt the Marionette. While I have been trying to ignore the lore novels at first, they do contain a lot of information simply not available in the games themselves, and for better and for worse, they do help with deciphering the more confusing aspects of the franchise's story. And from this point onwards, the lore novels are more or less inseparable from the main games. I will mention them when it's relevant, but I won't cover the books in their entirety. Otherwise, this post would get even longer than it already has.

In terms of presentation, FN@F 4 is the second-scariest game in the Core Collection, following close behind the first game. It's one thing if you're a security guard in a stressful or dangerous situation. You kind of expect danger in that kind of profession. But there's something about a kid, no older than seven years old at the most, being hunted by robotic monstrosities specifically designed to torment him. What's worse is that because there are no cameras whatsoever, you have to rely on sound to tell what the animatronics are doing in any given instance. Which unfortunately means this game isn't really that handicap accessible. If you have any kind of hearing problem, you might want to skip this game. I do like the jump scare scream, since it combines the first three games' screams together to make a deep, bellowing roar. It's not as iconic as the first two screams, but a definite improvement over the hissing from the third game. I also like the design of the Nightmares, in fact Fredbear is another one of my favorite monster designs in the series. The Nightmares look edgy and borderline demonic compared to their previous incarnations, featuring sharp conical teeth and jagged spikes all over their bodies. Their designs would look almost comically "try-hard" or "extra" without the context that they are the manifestations of a dying child's fears as their body falls into a coma. But with that context, they kind of work. 

But the most unique thing about this game's presentation is the Halloween Edition. Basically, if you play FN@F 4 during Halloween, all of the Nightmares are replaced with Halloween palette Swaps. Nightmare Bonnie and Chica are colored orange instead of their usual colors, to make them look like Jack O' Lanterns. Nightmare Foxy is replaced with a Nightmare variant of Mangle, which is great in my book because any new Mangle content is good. Plush-Trap is replaced with a Nightmare variant of Balloon Boy (another character first introduced in FN2F 2) and Nightmare (the character) is replaced with a Nightmare variant of the Marionette known as the Nightmarionne. This is one of two games in the franchise that have Halloween themed bonus content, the other being a VR game released in 2019. But overall I give Five Nights at Freddy's 4 3 stars out of five. The lack of handicap accessibility and the 1983 nonsense brings it down for me personally. Maybe I'll warm up to the game eventually, but right now I prefer FN@F 3 over this game, and I prefer FN@F 2 over both 3 and the original game. 

Image from Wikipedia.org

And finally, the fifth game in the series and the last game to be included in the Core Collection. Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location. This is the first sequel game to not be numbered, and none of the games after this are numbered either. I like to imagine that Scott named this game Sister Location because he thought "Five Nights at Freddy's Five" sounded irredeemably stupid. But more importantly, I LOVE this game. This game is tied with FN@F 2 for my favorite game in the Core Collection. Is it perfect? Oh, heavens no. This game marks the franchise's shift from supernatural horror into more conventional science fiction, and your enjoyment of the game hinges on how much you like the genre shift. But I have a serious soft spot for this game, and it's the one FN@F game that I feel is the most polished. Both in terms of gameplay and in terms of presentation. Which makes sense since by this point in Scott's career, he has not only acquired an actual budget thanks to the runaway success of the first four games, but he made a point to keep this game in development for two whole years, with the game releasing in October 6, 2016.

So lore time! We don't actually know what year Sister Location's story takes place in. However, it is commonly believed to take place shortly after the Bite of '87 forced the main Pizzeria to close down. So it's somewhere between 1987 and 1993. Anyway, you play as a technician hired by Afton Robotics. That's right. You're not working for Fazbear Entertainment anymore. You're working for a new megacorporation. Afton Robotics, named after its founder and CEO, William Afton, was the company that built Fazbear's animatronic performers in the first place. So technically, the Bite was their fault for building a robot with enough jaw strength to crush a human skull. But I doubt that the engineers at Afton Robotics thought that some snot-nosed brat would shove their little brother into a dancing robot bear's mouth as a prank, so I'll let it slide. Anyway, you are sent to go clean up and repair the Fun-Time series of animatronics. And the Fun-Times are simply put, clowns. They are animatronic clowns. Why are they clowns? You see, Afton Robotics intended to open up their own pizzeria to compete with Freddy Fazbear's. This was known as Circus Baby's Pizza World. Circus Baby's Pizza World was forced to shut down after just one day of being publicly available. Fazbear Entertainment bought out Afton Robotics following the catastrophic failure of Circus Baby's, which is why Afton Robotics now builds animatronics for one of their former competitors.

However, the animatronics from Circus Baby's were never destroyed. Instead, they were repurposed as rental performers. Basically, you could pay Fazbear Entertainment to send one of the Fun-Times over to your house and personally attend to your kids. Serving both as an entertainer and as a babysitter. So does that mean that they are harmless? HA. No. The Fun-Times are some of the most dangerous animatronics in the whole franchise. I'll explain why in a moment, but first, some gameplay. Sister Location is unique in the sense that each Night has a different task to perform, and pairs you up against a different threat. Night 1 you don't have any real problems, aside from the facility briefly shutting down long enough for Circus Baby (the main animatronic of this game) to talk to you. And because this is the first big budget FN@F game, Scott managed to hire multiple voice actors to bring his characters to life. In the case of Circus Baby, she is voiced by Heather Masters. Anyway, Circus Baby is unique among the Fun-Times for she is not only sentient, but is capable of speech, something that no other animatronic could do. She promises to keep the technician safe, but something about her calculated and methodical speech sounds... Manipulative. Like she's telling you exactly what you want to hear, rather than what you need to hear.

Image from Wikipedia.org

A rare moment of comedy in the franchise in the introduction of Hand-Unit, a primitive AI companion that tries to help you solve problems. But Hand-Unit is for lack of a better term, an imbecile. As such, any advice that Hand-Unit tells will get you killed, but anything Circus Baby says will keep you alive. For example, on Night 2, you have to crawl through the stage of a Fun-Time animatronic called Ballora. Hand-Unit tells you run as fast as you can. Circus Baby tells you to take things slow and steady, but make sure to come to a complete stop as soon as you see or hear Ballora moving and let her pass by. Guess who's advice actually works. And this is generally how each Night progresses. Something in the Afton Robotics facility malfunctions, you go there to fix it while dealing with each Fun-Time individually. In fact, it's basically impossible for more than one animatronic to attack at the same time. But no matter what, Circus Baby is always right, and Hand-Unit is always wrong. That is, until Night 4.

During Night 4, your character gets shoved inside a Spring-Lock Suit by Fun-Time Foxy, at the behest of Circus Baby. The suit thankfully is not in robot mode... Yet. But the locks keeping the suit from switching are slowly becoming undone. And small dolls called Minireenas are climbing all over you. You have to wiggle around to shake the Minireenas off, but wiggling loosens the locks, and you need to keep the locks on if you don't want to share the same fate as the Purple Man. And if you ignore the Minireenas, they will kill you anyway. This Night was so difficult that Scott released a free update specifically to tone down this Night's challenge. This is the only time that Scott nerfed something in his games, at least to my knowledge.

Anyway, Night 5 rolls around and now you aren't quite sure if you can trust Circus Baby. After all, she openly admitted to putting you in the Night 4 Spring-Lock suit. But the only time she was 100% honest was during an optional conversation in Night 3, where she confess the real reason why the Pizza World was shut down after just one day. Basically, Circus Baby murdered a girl named Elizabeth Afton, who coincidentally was William Afton's daughter. She has been locked away in the Afton Robotics facility ever since that day. But more importantly, Circus Baby didn't gain sentience until after committing a murder, and she herself doesn't understand why she did so. She also refers to William Afton as "daddy." The implication here being that Elizabeth's ghost possessed Circus Baby, or at least it combined with her programming. This is an important detail for later.

Image from neoseeker.com

Much like FN@F 3, Sister Location has multiple endings, though the endings here are much simpler. In the "real" ending (aka the one that is treated as canon), you follow Circus Baby's instructions to the letter. Baby guides you into the Scooper Room, and betrays you at the last minute, as you might have expected her to do. Specifically, she uses the Scooper machine, designed to tear apart animatronic endoskeletons, to rip out all of the bones from the technician's body. Baby then discards her own costume and shoves the hundreds of wires and cables making up her real body inside your corpse. She then wears your skin as a disguise to escape Afton Robotics and go live among the humans. But something goes wrong during this plan. Your character's skin starts to rot and decompose. Soon, Circus Baby is forced to abandon her disguise and retreat to the sewers. But despite having no bones and no working organs, the technician stands back up, and their body turns a familiar shade of purple...

The Fake ending, meanwhile can be acquired by disobeying Circus Baby on Night 5. Do so correctly, and you wind up in an office and get a glorious boss battle against Circus Baby herself, who has already discarded her costume and assumed her wiry "Ennard" form. Ennard combines the mechanics of all four games into one package. You have limited power, like in the first game, you have audio lures, like in the third game, you have to swap between three different tools, like in the second game, and you have to pay attention to the sounds that Baby/Ennard makes, like in the fourth game.  This is just a really cool boss fight that pays loving tribute to everything that came before it.

There's a third ending unlocked upon beating the Custom Night, which reveals a speech from the technician. He clarifies that his real name is Michael Afton, son of William Afton. William sent Michael down to the Afton Robotics facility to confirm whether or not William's "experiment" worked. Which is to see if an Afton Robotics animatronic can collect the souls of the recently deceased. The fact that Circus Baby became sentient after absorbing Elizabeth's soul proved the experiment to be successful. Not only that, but there's the revelation that the Fun-Times were deliberately designed, by William himself, to kidnap and murder people so long as there are no witnesses to the event. This is why the Fun-Times are the most dangerous monsters in the franchise. The other animatronics, advanced as they may be, are only designed with entertainment in mind, and are only dangerous because of the ghosts haunting them. The Fun-Times were meant to be killers from the moment they stepped off the assembly lines. And these are the same animatronics that people can rent out for private parties. Michael isn't happy at the fact that his father was designing killer robots (and that said robots somehow turned him into a purple undead monster man), and swears bloody vengeance against him.

So book lore time! The books just come right out and say that William Afton is the true identity of the Purple Man, just straight up. In the games, it's left ambiguous if Michael was the Purple Man or if William was the Purple Man. Michael's line "They thought I was you" implies that the two of them look similar enough to where you could mistake the former for the latter, or vice versa. Heck, it's possible they are both the Purple Man. Purple Men, plural! But the books say that William is the Purple Man who was responsible for the Missing Children Incident, and the reason he murdered so many people was to perform experiments on their ghosts. Which is... Look, this is what I meant when I said the franchise takes a hard shift from horror to sci-fi. Honestly, I'm still not sure giving the Purple Man a motivation or a backstory at all was worth it. I think whatever backstory Scott gave the Purple Man would hurt the mystique and fear factor of the character no matter what he did. But still, the fact the main villain of this franchise went from a disturbingly realistic depiction of a child predator to a mad scientist experimenting with souls is more than a little jarring.

In terms of presentation, Sister Location is overtly sci-fi in its aesthetic. The main facility is an underground bunker full of advanced technology and machinery. The Fun-Times themselves look even more pristine than the Toys did. They are also clowns. Just straight up robot clowns. Heck, the coloring on their masks was done to resemble clown make-up. Only two animatronics return for Fun-Time designs, Freddy Fazbear and Foxy. And Fun-Time Foxy is literally just Mangle if Mangle was never turned into a metallic pretzel. Fun-Time Freddy has a cute little Bonnie hand puppet that he affectionately calls "Bon-Bon!" which is a nice touch. The new animatronics include Circus Baby herself, who funnily enough never attacks in her base form and as such is the only animatronic that doesn't have a jump scare animation. And Baby is exactly what she sounds like. A giant mechanical toddler clown. The other animatronic is Ballora, a tall ballerina animatronic that is blind for the simple reason that her mechanical eyelids are jammed shut at all times. Ballora is the most human-looking of all the animatronics, and she definitely feels the most "uncanny" of the bunch. I love Fun-Time Foxy and Fun-Time Freddy's designs, but I do acknowledge that they aren't really that scary. They fall more on the "cute" side of the "cute-to-creepy" ratio for animatronic monster designs, and you need to be closer to the middle to pull it off properly. 

The only thing I truly dislike about the game is the setting. The Afton Robotics underground bunker doesn't really stand out on its own, especially compared to the pizzerias from the previous games. Like, there's no real sense that it's owned by a fast food chain, which I feel is critical to the Five Nights at Freddy's experience. I was willing to give the fourth game a pass because that game takes place in an abstract nightmare. In terms of sound, this is the first game to have multiple voice actors, as previously mentioned, and everyone involved did a good job. Circus Baby sounds mysterious and cunning, and the way she speaks sounds like she is deliberating choosing her words to get the exact reaction she wants out of you. The other Fun-Times speak exclusively in "pre-recorded" quips and one-liners, which helps sell the illusion that they are meant to be entertainers for children. And Hand-Unit says everything so casually that he sounds accidentally sarcastic. At least until he switches into an alternate voice type, where he suddenly becomes a stereotypical moody teenager. Which is hilarious. But anyway, I give Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location four stars out of five. The only thing holding it back from being truly perfect is that I find the bunker's design to be a little bland compared to the locations from the previous games. If it looked more like the property of a multimedia megacorporation, I think I would like it more. But as it stands, it's "just" a sci-fi bunker.

And that's it. We did it, dear readers. This is a comprehensive review of every game included in the Five Nights at Freddy's Core Collection. Overall, it's a pretty good bundle of horror games. The Core Collection is available on just about every system ever. Playstation 4, Xbox One, and Switch. You can get each game individually on not only the previously mentioned systems, but also on Steam and even on iPhone and Android. Yes. You can play these horror games on your phone if you are so inclined. These are not complicated games. That being said, the Core Collection does not include Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator (aka Five Nights at Freddy's 6), which is a missed opportunity, since that game is probably the best game in the whole franchise and is the last canon FN@F game to use the Clickteam Fusion engine. But overall, the Core Collection gets a total rating of 21 out of 25 stars. That's a lot of stars.

Five Nights at Freddy's is owned by Scott Cawthon and Steel Wool Studios. None of the images used here were created by me. Please support the official release.