Game Info:
Five Nights at Freddy's 2
Developed By: Scott Cawthon
Released: November 11, 2014
Available On: PC
Genre: Survival Horror
ESRB Rating: Not Rated
Number of Players: 1 offline
Price: $7.99
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What would it be like to work at a place where your job was to survive? Even more, what if cute and cuddly animatronic animals were the monsters you were trying to hide from? Adding to all of this, what if there was more going on behind the scenes than meets the eye, including mysterious shadows, criminal activity and deep dark secrets? Enter Five Nights at Freddy's 2.
Five Nights at Freddy's 2 is an indie point and click horror game made by Scott Cawthon, following the success of the hugely popular "Five Nights at Freddy's." The game is set as a prequel to the original and tells the story of the "New and Improved Freddy Fazbears Pizza." It is said that the "previous location" was shut down due to it being "left to rot for quite awhile." The old animatronics from the old location have been decommissioned and new, more child friendly animatronics were chosen to replace them. These new animatronics come equipped with the latest in facial recognition technology, advanced mobility, and they can even walk around during the day. And night. Speaking of night, that's when this game takes place. You take the job of night guard and must keep an eye on the cameras, check your left and right vents, as well as a huge front entrance with no door, and keep a mysterious music box wound up throughout the night. You also have a flashlight and a mask, but more on those in a bit.
During your shift you'll start to notice that some of the animatronic characters start to move around at nighttime. Despite their programming, the animatronics were never given a proper "night code." The working theory is that when things get quiet, the animatronics think they're in the wrong room and seek to find where the people are at, and in your case, that's your office. Another glitch in the system is that, when the animatronics see you at nighttime, they'll mistake you for an endoskeleton without its costume on, which is a huge no-no, so they want to stuff you into a Freddy Fazbear suit. When wearing the mask, however, they'll see you as a normal animatronic, so whenever they attempt to enter the room all you have to do is slip the mask on and they'll leave you alone! Problem solved! One of the animatronics (Foxy the Pirate) is a bit buggy though, so you'll have to flash your light at him to get him to go away. To make matters worse, if you don't keep the music box wound up, a strange marionette puppet will sneak out of a box and seek you out to kill you for some reason.
Highlights:
Strong Points: Unique system of "hiding" from the animals that roam the game's setting, cryptic minigames are used to tell a mysterious story.
Weak Points: The game is rather short (longer than the first one) and doesn't reward the player enough for completing the game. The difficulty of the game cranks up during the later nights and is incredibly difficult to get past (I personally spent hours trying to get past night 5).
Moral Warnings: The game can be quite scary, and every time the player loses they are treated to a screaming animatronic jumping at the screen.
This entire formula sounds difficult to get a handle on, but it's a lot easier than it sounds. Check left, check front, check right, open camera, wind up music box, close camera, quickly put on mask, take off mask, open camera, look around, close camera, so on and so forth. It can get pretty old on the first few nights, but just when it starts to get boring you can be sure a scary cuddly bear will show up to make you jump. Speaking of jump, when you die the animatronic that got you will jump at your screen and give you quite the startle. A few times I was shaking so hard after a jumpscare I could barely continue playing. After awhile the jumpscares aren't as much scary as they are annoying, but for the first few nights nothing will seem scarier than a cute blue bunny lunging at your screen. Eventually more and more animatronics will come after you, which will make the later nights more and more difficult.
That's where this game starts to get... frustrating. This game includes, in total, eleven animatronics. With the variety of animatronics to fend off, by night 5 you'll be in a constant state of panic, rushing from the camera to the mask and using the flashlight (which drains rather quickly on later nights). The simple control scheme of using the mouse for opening and closing the camera, the mask and checking the vents, as well as using the ctrl key for the flashlight, makes this game a bit easier. However this game will push your limits as you try to survive all five nights. And then a sixth. And then a seventh customizable night. Besides the obvious gameplay revolving around surviving each night, on rare occasions random minigames (inspired by old Atari graphics) will randomly appear. These minigames help reveal parts of the story as well as put pieces of the mysterious lore together.
Score Breakdown:
Higher is better
(10/10 is perfect)
Game Score - 84%
Gameplay - 17/20
Graphics - 8/10
Sound - 8/10
Stability - 4/5
Controls - 5/5
Morality Score - 88%
Violence - 7/10
Language - 10/10
Sexual Content - 10/10
Occult/Supernatural - 7/10
Cultural/Moral/Ethical - 10/10
After you've completed six nights of insane chaos at Freddy Fazbears pizza you will gain two stars for both Nights 5 and 6. After this the game will allow you to customize a final seventh night. You can either choose custom presets which allow for variations of the AI for different animatronics (one preset sets ten of the animatronics to maximum difficulty, yikes!), or you can have your own levels for each animatronic (such as you can set them all to zero, which disables all of them except Foxy, due to his "broken programming"). After completing one of the custom presets (4x20 mode) the player will unlock a third star on the menu. After completing the rest of the custom presets you will get a few different adorable stuffed plushies on your desk, which aren't exactly worth suffering for through 10x20 difficulty.
Morally, this game isn't very violent. Despite the fact that it's a horror game, the most violent the game ever gets is the jumpscares, which are just animatronic characters jumping at the screen. In one of the mysterious minigames a child is shown to have been murdered outside of one of the previous locations by a mysterious "purple guy", as he has been nicknamed. In some minigames we see what appear to be pixelated dead children, but it's hard to tell due to the Atari styled graphics. This game appears to be rather clean, despite the terrifying atmosphere.
In conclusion, if you're into scary games this is a great grab. The gameplay is smooth, the controls are easy to get used to, the game pulls you in right from the beginning and the tension rises from the first few minutes of the game. As soon as you know something creepy is going on at this innocent looking place, you won't want to leave the cameras down for more than a few minutes. Even if you don't think this game is scary, it actually plays pretty well as a strategy game. Due to its pretty low price as compared to other games I would definitely recommend giving it a go.