DCfnaf Video Game Reviews: Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location

DCfnaf WARNING: Some viewers may disagree with this opinionated review. If you do, PLEASE respect my opinion and let me know why you have yours NICELY. Thank you. (Also: SPOILERS!!!!)

The room brightens. An absolutely horrifying animatronic clown girl is presented on our computer screens. We can hear an interview in the background between an entrepreneur and robot designer. A very calm yet creepy voice tells him the features of the animatronic. "She can dance, she can sing, she's got a built in helium tank..." As he says this, we get a close-up of the character's ghastly face. The entrepreneur then cuts off the other voice by saying, "With all due respect Mr. Afton, those aren't the design choices we were curious about...”. Hmm...what design choices? What is going on here? I'm on edge...

On my last post titled "Quality Quadrilogy", I did four quick mini reviews of the other four FNaF installments. Now I am here, ready to review the most recent title: Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location. Considering I've been playing through this game as of recently, I figured that I would review this game first. I was a little worried about how the free roam mechanic would work, but once I started playing, I was intrigued and absolutely horrified. Now I do want you to know that this review is 100% trustworthy. Do not trust any reviews from people that are sick of the games. Those reviews are completely biased and they just hate this game because "FNaF is totes milked guyzzz..." Anyways, enjoy.

Title: Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location (PC)
Developer: Scott Cawthon
Publisher: Scott Cawthon
Released: October 7, 2016
MSRP: $7.99

Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location is monumentally different from all of the other FNaF Installments. Instead of taking place in Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, this game takes place in Circus Baby's Pizza World, a sister location (roll credits) of the aforementioned pizzeria. The gameplay of this entry is also completely different from the other games. Rather than surviving each night in the same environment with the only difference each night being that the difficulty increases, Sister Location offers a new experience. In this title, you are assigned different tasks to complete each night, whether it be activating a maintenance panel, sneaking through an auditorium, or repairing one of the animatronics that you have learned to fear in this franchise. This constant change of your environment each night keeps the game fresh from beginning to end. It assures you that the game will not get repetitive. Even if you do repeat certain tasks, something has changed about said task, such as working on a different animatronic. This is definitely much better than just winding up the same music box over and over.

If you aren't necessarily a fan of this new way of playing a FNaF title, Custom Night DLC was released. Custom Night acts very similar to the original games. You sit in a private room where you close doors and check cameras. There was a huge amount of nostalgia that was flooding through my head as I played this part of the game. This time, you are given certain keyboard controls to use if you want to check the monitor or close the doors. This gives you the ability to shut a door while you are in the camera, something that the original game didn't offer. You also need to listen a lot to hear if Freddy, Ballora, and others are going to attack you, so this mode doesn't feel like a lazy rehash of the first game. Every night in this mode is pretty simple to complete, except for Golden Freddy mode. That mode is so hard due to all of the hearing and sight that is required. Either way, this gamemode is great for players that didn't care for the new gameplay but enjoyed the old gameplay.

The most immersive and appealing thing about Sister Location, however, is definitely its storyline. The story this time is marginally better compared to the other four FNaF titles simply because we are given an actual in-game plot. Due to your constantly changing goals and the voice acting in this game, it was pretty smart to have an actual plot. The plot may not be the best that I've ever seen, but it was nice to have it nonetheless. The characters this time also give us actual character, most notably Circus Baby and Funtime Freddy. Thanks to the stellar voice cast of Sister Location, we are presented with antagonists that actually have interesting voices and personalities. Funtime Freddy was easily the most entertaining character, by giving us a highly enthusiastic voice that spooked the crap out of me when I first heard it. Circus Baby is easily the most interesting character however, as she actually has a huge backstory and a big role in the plot of the game. She is actually your guide this time around, as you never actually run into her as an adversary in game. There are moments where you can trust her, and moments where you question her advice. This makes you wonder if Circus Baby is someone you can trust, or someone that will be the death of you. The writing in this game is outstanding too, as it constantly swaps from dark and tense dialogue to dry humor. The segments where you sit down and watch a vampire soap opera were clever little ways for the game to have some charm and silliness, despite it being a deliberate horror game. There are also multiple endings to unlock which allows players to explore and find ways to change up your protagonist's final outcome.

While the game may not be as great in the visual department as Five Nights at Freddy's 4 was, Sister Location still looks pretty good. It's certainly not going to win any technical awards and the game sometimes tricks you into thinking the graphics look gorgeous when they really aren't, but the graphics are fine. Luckily, Scott is really good at designing character models. The animatronics look absolutely stunning. If we go into the Extras Menu, we can see pictures of the villains we face in game. We also get to see how Scott created them. As I scrolled through the "Making Circus Baby" section and saw how Circus Baby was created, I was stunned at how carefully detailed and beautiful Circus Baby's model was. Scott must've put a lot of time and effort into making her as well as the other animatronics look absolutely stunning. Sure, the PC is capable of more, but it still works. Unfortunately, there are moments where the character models will swap from great to awful in the blink of an eye. For example, on Night 2, Funtime Freddy looks polished and shiny, but once you enter the parts and service area on Night 3, you'll notice that Freddy looks incredibly dull and flat close-up. What's even more strange is that when you see Circus Baby in the parts and service room, she is much more appealing to look at. This doesn't necessarily mean I HATE Sister Location's visuals, it's just that they could've been better than the 4th entry's visuals. Sadly, they just weren't. Sister Location's music is also pretty good. Most of the game's soundtrack is brooding and dark. If you want to know what the sound of impending doom sounds like, listen to this game's music.

While Sister Location contains mountains of Scott's best work, it also contains some of his absolute worst. The biggest and most annoying problem of the game is the awful checkpoint placing. If you don't understand what I'm talking about, I will explain one instance of this. On Night 2, you need to crawl through Ballora Gallery, then manually restart the power next to Funtime Freddy. I died at Funtime Freddy and was disheartened to find out that I had to crawl through Ballora Gallery again in order to try again. Why couldn't Scott just add a checkpoint after beating that segment? The most annoying time this happens is during Night 5's private room challenge. If you run out of power and die you have to start all the way back at the beginning and you need to find your way back to the private room. This really ticked me off after dying three times.

Another huge problem that I noticed while playing is that the gameplay difficulty changes randomly. Unlike the first four entries that had the difficulty get higher every night, this game's difficulty is all over the place. Night 1 is a guaranteed win for you since you are never attacked and you simply get used to it all. This means that there is no difficulty at all. Night 2 is the scariest night, but it's still pretty easy if you know what you're doing. The first part of Night 3 is on the same level of difficulty as Night 2 was, but the second part of Night 3 with Bon-Bon is very ridiculous and its mechanic is extremely tough to get used to. I can guarantee you that it will take several tries to figure out what it is you are supposed to do. Night 4 is the hardest night. The environment is perfect with no music playing and minireenas crawling up your suit, but the difficulty is extremely hard here. It will take you several tries to actually get it right. Night 5 then drops the difficulty and is much easier. If you do the private room challenge of Night 5, that will be extremely hard because winning is based on luck. Combine that with the aggravating checkpoint placing and that convinced me to go into the game files and unlock the Custom Night artificially.

Overall, Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location is a great game that has some major faults, but when one looks back on their experience, there is certainly more to love than hate. The random difficulty spikes and the awful checkpoint balancing may tick me off, but the horrifying and immersive gameplay, the stellar voice acting and character cast, and appealing storyline are the reasons this title has replaced Five Nights at Freddy's 1 as my favorite installment in the franchise. I personally think that this entry is worth your time and you will enjoy it from the main story mode to the custom night. On the other hand, I wouldn't recommend that newcomers of this franchise start with this entry. You could and there wouldn't be any problems, but this game is massively different from all of the other titles so you may not like the first four games if you start here. I hope Scott chooses to do similar things with his future installments so he can build on this concept and give it some time in the spotlight. Get rid of those problems and the next game might be something truly gorgeous.

8 -- Great ( Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location is an impressive effort with a few noticeable problems holding it back. It won't astound everyone, but it is worth your time and cash.)

How I review movies/video games: http://www.thetoptens.com/best-movies/48379.asp

Next Video Game Review: Paper Mario: Color Splash

What's happening guys, this is DCfnaf! I hope you enjoyed my first video game review. If you enjoyed this, be sure to check out more of my content and stick around for more high quality reviews, responses, and rants. Thanks for reading and I will see you soon. Peace.

Comments

Once again, phenomenal job. - visitor (1/20/2017)

Once again, a big thank you. Maybe give this game a try. - DCfnaf (1/20/2017)

Once again. Yfufucucfufuvjkud7j. - AlphaQ (7/24/2017)

Great Review - VideoGamefan5 (1/20/2017)

Thanks. I reccomend this title, but you should start with 1 or 4. - DCfnaf (1/20/2017)

Well written review! But I've never played FNaF, so I have no opinion on the games. - visitor (1/21/2017)

Thanks a bunch! If you want high quality, trustworthy, unbiased reviews, I've got you covered. - DCfnaf (1/21/2017)

Awesome work. This is literally perfection. - visitor (1/30/2017)

That's a really nice thing to say bro. Thanks for this beautiful comment. - DCfnaf (1/31/2017)

Great review. You should do reviews of songs and albums more often. I think you'd make a pretty good music critic. - AlphaQ (7/24/2017)

Songs and albums? Huh. I'd probably need advice from Wonkey or ProPanda or yourself to do that. I'm more knowledgeable with movies, and I honestly need to review a video game again. Haven't done that in a while. - DCfnaf (7/24/2017)

What video game are you planning to rever next? - AlphaQ (7/28/2017)

That's a hard one. I could do Overwatch, I could do Injustice 2 if I get it, I could buy Breath of the Wild and play that, I could...wow, there are tons of choices. - DCfnaf (7/28/2017)

Outdated review. I'd give this a 6/10 now that I think about it. Bare in mind that some of the mechanics are not explained and basically require a YouTube video's assistance. - DCfnaf (7/28/2017)