| FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S: SISTER LOCATION |
  In 2016, just after the turn of the year, and dthe release of FNaF World, came the next installment in the series, and while Five Nights at Freddy's 4 was a departure, this onen is a HUGE departure, changingn the game mechanics, setting, and the general robot design overall, and changing the lore.
See, up to this point, this was a fairly grounded "Survival Horror" series or so it seemed. A bunch of murders in some Chuck-E-Cheese-Alike resturants that lead to the animatronics being possessed by the spirits of the dead. Perfect horror movie premise. But this go out, we play as someone going into an underground lair of Pizza Baby's Circus World - a rental center for Animatronics where people can rent them out to come to their home for birthday parties. Whereas before, the main gameplay was statically staying in a room for 6 in-game-hours a night fending off homocidal robots like some kind of isolated, single-room game of Berzerk without laser guns, now you were crawling through vents, playing survival games of tug-of-war with robot babies, zapping animatronics with "Controlled Shocks", playing camera games with a pastel version of Foxy, and ultimatley committing hary kary with William Afton's surgical backhoe. The Day Freddy Jumped The Shark - My experiences When Sister Location's first images showed up, I knew we were in trouble. Gone was the felt covered, seemingly hackish by comparison animatronics from the previous games - made to stand on a stage, sing songs, and entertain their young audience. But here we had these complex, seemingly almost Military Class robots that would turn out to be weaponized and have cavities for storing humans in (!!!). Look, I get that Cawthon was a sci-fi game guy beforehand, after all, the Flan game or the Desolate Hope is more his usual style and closer to this, but it just sort of felt the franchise was going off the rails from what I loved about it at this point. While there was some snarky humor of the business variety here too. Most of the game felt a little convoluted. I was expecting something more like being in Fredbear's Family Diner, or at least, defending yourself in an ivy clad walkway in some later Fredbear and Friend's location or something. Not bionic clown kid and the Pastel Plethora in an underground bunker rental facility. Does this mean I can find a cache of Snapper mowers in a Rent-A-Center basement in town? The voice acting was a nice touch, but, god, Funtime Freddy is over the top, which actually is one of the very ffew moments in this game that makes him terrifying. Except I don't know what makes him more frightening....the fact he's running around me while I'm trying to do the Local 151's job on a digitized fusebox, or the fact he sounds like a former alcoholic bassist I used to be in a band with. "C'mere mikeyyyyyy!" (shudders). "MIIIKEYYYY!!! I SEE YA OVER THERE!!!! HOWS THE BIRTHDAY BOY!!! (sweats profusely, clenches fists, cocks pistol, presses button) Robot Cat: "Now just take your Corona and Steinberger and go back to sleep!" The flashbacks.....the flashbacks.....gaaaaaah! Anyway, this is when the series jumped the shark for me. When it turned from a survival horror mystery with a "creepy nostalgia" element into some kind of Sci-Fi Existential Thriller about robotic fluids granting life (remnant)...nah, I'll take "mysteriously stuck in a pizzaria in a broken job for six in-game-hours for $5/hr bob!". |
