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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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!).
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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...
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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