Review: Five Nights at Freddy’s 2

Kala Tye, Staff Reporter

I flip between stationary security cameras in a place that looks like a nightmarish Chuck-E-Cheese. I linger on the screen where a trio of animatronics usually sit.

It hits me. The bunny is missing. Frantically I click around the map, finally finding the bunny in a room filled with presents.

I switch the camera to the music box room, furiously winding it up, too afraid to leave it alone for too long. I flip back to the bunny to make sure it hadn’t moved. It did. It’s in the party room, on all fours near a vent. Watching me.

As soon as I click away, the telltale thump of the bunny entering the vent sounds. The vent leads directly to me.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (FN@F2) is an indie point-and-click survival horror game created by Scott Cawthon. You play as a security guard who works a 12-6 a.m. shift at the pizza restaurant Freddy Fazbear’s.

Unfortunately, the pizzeria’s animatronics are malfunctioning and are out for blood.

The first FN@F was released Aug 8, 2014 and with the sequel released Nov 11. The game gained attention from popular YouTube personalities who do “Let’s Plays,” videos where viewers watch them play the game with commentary.

I noticed the game differs from the first in a few ways: there are no doors to keep the killer robots out, and the building doesn’t have limited power. Instead, you have a mask to fool the animatronics and a flashlight to paralyze them briefly. Like the first game, you are stationary in a security office.

Another addition was a music box which the player has to constantly make sure is playing to soothe one of the animatronics or die instantly.

This makes the game mechanics more about the player’s reaction times and time management skills, rather than tracking an animatronics’ movements and closing a door, which I preferred. Other gamers agreed.

“Having doors meant you had a barrier, you could isolate yourself,” Omar Freemire, sophomore in Aviation Management, said. “Now they can just get in. You never know when you’re going to die.”

After the first night, I never actually got to explore what was going on in the game in the other rooms because I only had time to wind the music box and then check if an animatronic was in my room then switch back to the music box.

It got old fast and I wasn’t alone in my frustration.

“It became a chore,” freshman Lucas Kleven said. “You constantly get a game over screen just because you weren’t looking in the right place.”

Since it was so difficult, I often just felt angry instead of scared, just like Evan Catlin, junior English major.

“It needs to be easier to be scarier,” Catlin said. “You end up only looking at the music box and your own room instead of exploring the other cameras because you have no time. You have half a second to put on a mask or you’re dead.”

I thought the ambiance of the game, however, was solid. There’s creepy children laughing, pipes getting banged on, garbled mechanical noises, and a soft overlay of music from the music box that combined to create a disturbing effect.

The security cameras are grainy and often black out, and lights tend to flicker throughout the restaurant.

Dismembered animatronics also kept me feeling uneasy, especially when their eyes are sharp red pinpricks staring straight into the camera, mouth agape to show several rows of teeth.

The story was wonderfully disturbing, with subtle clues placed throughout the game indicating the animatronics are being manipulated by the souls of dead children.

My favorite part was that sometimes when you died, instead of starting the night over an 8-bit game would pop up. The game usually led you through a story. Once, I played the grim reaper who gave “life” to children by giving them animatronic heads.

“Learning more about the story was interesting,” Kleven said. “Especially since so much of it is through assumptions.”

I do think the third installment needs a new idea in order to keep the game fresh.

Freemire mentioned he thinks in the next game you should be able to actually walk around the restaurant.

More time in development, with extra play testing, is also necessary, since there were only three months between the games.

Overall, the game suffered from too much micromanaging to be truly scary. Frustration made even the jump scares dull.

I recommend anyone with anxiety to be careful about playing, as it is incredibly stressful and will make your heart race.

The user score on video game review site Metacritic is 8.6. It has an “overwhelmingly positive” review on Steam from users, with over 1700 reviews, and is a top seller this week.