I can't play much of FNAF 4 in all honesty, I tried multiple times and the tension builds up on me to the point where I would end the game. FNAF 4, in my opinion, is the scariest of the bunch, and definitely makes the last 2 games before it a bit junk.

Here's my ratings, scariest to least scary.

1. FNAF 4
2. FNAF 1
3. FNAF 2
4. FNAF 3

I thought FNAF 3 was not scary, at all. Sure I jumped and yelped a bit when I first played, but after a little bit the game grew repetitive and rather not scary. The jumpscares were not intense enough, and the ones that were wouldn't kill you, so they didn't do much justice on scary you either. (I believe half the fear is dying on the night depending how much time you have left).

Someone on YouTube brought up some good points about FNaF, as a whole, and as a horror game. FNaF is an okay horror game. By no means is it spectacular, it's okay. As a whole, the story isn't really special and can be summarized in a few words and/or sentences. The gameplay is very simplistic, basically Clicking Simulator 2014-15. But besides that, let's look at it as a horror game.


-Is the protagonist relateable?

Not at all.

-Is there motive for the monsters to want to attack our protagonist?

Barely, and they only do by the 3rd game. Well, actually only one has motive to. I think everyone knows what I'm talking about.

-Are the games legitimately scary?

Jumpscares aren't scary. They're frustrating, they're annoying.

-Why does our protagonist continue to attend his low-end job for barely any pay? Actually, WHY DOES HE KEEP COMING IN THE FIRST PLACE?

We don't know. If our protagonist were believable, he would have left immediately and never even looked at the place ever again. It's just common sense.

-What do the games do right?

A lot, actually. It would be an outright lie to say they're a failure and everyone knows it. For instance, the design of the animatronics in the first game gave off the "unintentionally terrifying" vibe that all of us got at Chuck E Cheese when we were kids. The gameplay mechanics are okay, but let's be honest they get repetitive quickly. And we've already seen them in Night Trap back in the Atari days. Voice acting is actually pretty good, due to how little of it there actually is and due to the delivery of the lines. The first game was okay in the scary department, though as the games went on, the scare factor faded. But finally, the game has a huge fanbase, which is really a hard thing to accomplish, yet Scott managed it. And with that fanbase, the series made a lot of money too. Which, even those who hate the series or dislike it, such as myself, can agree is very impressive.


But before I piss someone off, I'm gonna stop talking.

INCREDIBLY LONG THOUGHT-DUMP AHEAD, BEWARE!

D-9999 wrote:
-Why does our protagonist continue to attend his low-end job for barely any pay? Actually, WHY DOES HE KEEP COMING IN THE FIRST PLACE?

We don't know. If our protagonist were believable, he would have left immediately and never even looked at the place ever again. It's just common sense.

I actually thought about a pretty interesting thing which is pretty weird and neat.

In all games, except for the last one and pherpaps the first, our protagonist has no idea the animatronics are hostile. As far as he knows from what he's seen, the animatronics are just glitchy and attempting to get into his office, he doesn't know they'll jump out at him at any point. And everything story-wise happens independent of the protagonist, to him, it's just a weird job, he's not looking into what happened, he's just a bystander. And if you die, that only happens one time in-game-lore, you get no retries.

In FNAF 1 this could also be applied to certain point until the call where Phone Guy dies. Although he does mention getting stuffed forcefully into a suit. He'd probably be pretty aware. With all the early hallucinations and such i'd expect Mike to have some sort of mental problem, but that's unlikely.

In FNAF 2 there are no mentions of being FORCEFULLY attempted to be put into a suit extensively, like, phone guy just briefly mentions it. It might as well have been disregarded by Jeremy since most animatronics don't really have any noticeable strenght other than for moving to perform their basic actions.

In FNAF 3 the protagonist literally has no idea what Springtrap is. He's most likely young and if he sees any hallucinations he'll most likely attribute it to the bad ventilation. (Which is strangely bad, it seems the ventilation system is badly designed in such a way that it's sucking out of the room more air than pushing it into the room, and that can happen.) All he knows Springtrap is a working animatronic and that he follows sound, therefore walking into his office.

Well, in FNAF 4 you're a kid and you're most likely having nightmares, there's most likely no real animatronics present.

But this is pretty much only hinted and i'm mainly inferring from what i could see, so really don't take my word on it.

So far i'm absolutely in love with FNAF 4 (havent beat it yet!) since the way it's designed really exposes the player to uncertain jumpscares, while they don't vary it definitely keeps startling me every time without any signs of getting used to it, Scott really thought it off this time because it seems like it really catches the vibe of really good horror games by not telling you if you fucked up just enough yet for the big spooky thing to appear, there's no warnings, nobody peeks out, no lights flash, you're forced into this horrible feeling you're not sure if you're doing it right.

D-9999 wrote: -Is the protagonist relateable?

Not at all.

I think this is purely subjective. While i don't really relate to any of the protagonists in previous games, in FNAF 4 it's pretty easy to relate to the kid. Playing it really makes me remember the exact same situation of the kid. Like, you're stuck in your room, you're really scared, you don't want to go anywhere, you feel surrounded by some scary prescense which you think is real because you're a kid/squid, you really can't gather the courage to get out of your room.

D-9999 wrote: A lot, actually. It would be an outright lie to say they're a failure and everyone knows it. For instance, the design of the animatronics in the first game gave off the "unintentionally terrifying" vibe that all of us got at Chuck E Cheese when we were kids. The gameplay mechanics are okay, but let's be honest they get repetitive quickly. And we've already seen them in Night Trap back in the Atari days. Voice acting is actually pretty good, due to how little of it there actually is and due to the delivery of the lines. The first game was okay in the scary department, though as the games went on, the scare factor faded. But finally, the game has a huge fanbase, which is really a hard thing to accomplish, yet Scott managed it. And with that fanbase, the series made a lot of money too. Which, even those who hate the series or dislike it, such as myself, can agree is very impressive.

I think it's the way it was delivered. FNAF 1 was definitely on a heavy atmosphere and was scarier than FNAF 2 (The fucking right-door Freddy at 1. Holy fuck.), but i don't think you can really just like the game because of voice acting or how the animatronics are designed, there's something else hard to pinpoint other than an uncomplete story being offered. It's hard to say.

Actually, i'm gonna quote Jim Sterling here, who didn't really "get" the games or like them too much, but he was the main inspirator for Scott Cawthon after he had told him his beaver game sucked big balls:

Scott could have easily got away by giving out the same formula to the fanbase and it would pretty much have triumphed similarly, but he did something a bad developer doesn't, he revised his formula and gave a try to scrambling it a bit, even if just attempting to milk the game, he tried to put more quality in the next title because he loves what he created and he recycled this formula while still giving something neat to look at. This is most noticeable like, in 3 and 4. And at the end of the day he delivered something many people love after receiving harsh criticism for his previous game, while he could've done like any terrible Greenlight developer and pretty much insult Jim until some sort of drama happened. Scott may have pulled out games faster than some shitty-shovelware developer, but he definitely put a lot of effort into each one. But i do get it's not some century-jewel of a game, but it's definitely a remarkable feat of these last 2 years.

Well that was a definitely a long ass post, it's alright if its hard in being interested in reading it, i mainly wanted to dump my personal thoughts after all the games being released with me following them through from the very start; it's been nice to see a previously small developer turn into this, and i pretty much hope i reach something similar someday lol.

D-9999 wrote:The gameplay mechanics are okay, but let's be honest they get repetitive quickly. And we've already seen them in Night Trap back in the Atari days

I'll have to stop you there, I always see fnaf compared to night trap when in reality the games are completely different.

In FNaF, the cameras are mainly used to track your pursuers and occasionally make sure they dont pop out at you such as in the case of foxy.

In night trap, the entire game is cameras and they're used to locate the enemies AND stop them. This isn't the case in FNaF and the first game can even be played without using the cameras at all for the first 2 or 3 nights.

Irontaco wrote:snip

I'm really glad you took the time to write this, it's nice to see that I got a decent counter-argument that's civilized, hehe. But I have nothing to say against what you said, most of what I said was just from my opinion and from said YouTuber's perspective, so it's rather subjective. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, so you are too.

Combine wrote:snip

I will agree with you there, as my analogy was just very loosely based on my own experience of the two cases. So apology if my comparison wasn't exactly on-point, lol.

Edit: Why are you reading this thread, it's fucking awful.

Cridone wrote:If there's one thing that I think FNaF is missing is animations.

The reason animatronics are so creepy is due to their movement, but in FNaF they're just motionless.
The only times you get to see any movement is Foxy running down the hall and the Bonnie/Chica head occasional glitching, which I guess is a nice
touch considering doing more animations would take up a lot more game memory, but it's still something missing that would add to the creepy factor of the game.

-snippyty snap, im a fucking idiot-

Cridone wrote:If there's one thing that I think FNaF is missing is animations.

The reason animatronics are so creepy is due to their movement, but in FNaF they're just motionless.
The only times you get to see any movement is Foxy running down the hall and the Bonnie/Chica head occasional glitching, which I guess is a nice
touch considering doing more animations would take up a lot more game memory, but it's still something missing that would add to the creepy factor of the game.

Yeah, I think the definitive "OH SHIT" moment in the original FNaF was Foxy's 100m dash on the cams. It was just one of those super visceral moments that totally stole the show. It's a shame there weren't many other parts like that in the franchise, although perhaps it would be less effective if there weren't as many static animatronics to provide such a stark contrast to. The limping window Freddy in 3 was another pretty cool moment where the animation looked great.

FoxMccloud64 wrote:

Cridone wrote:If there's one thing that I think FNaF is missing is animations.

The reason animatronics are so creepy is due to their movement, but in FNaF they're just motionless.
The only times you get to see any movement is Foxy running down the hall and the Bonnie/Chica head occasional glitching, which I guess is a nice
touch considering doing more animations would take up a lot more game memory, but it's still something missing that would add to the creepy factor of the game.

uh pretty sure 2 had some very basic animation, 3 used bunch of sprites for springs. jr and 4 has a lot of them

I hope you know he was talking about FNaF 1.

SyphenTV wrote:

FoxMccloud64 wrote:

Cridone wrote:If there's one thing that I think FNaF is missing is animations.

The reason animatronics are so creepy is due to their movement, but in FNaF they're just motionless.
The only times you get to see any movement is Foxy running down the hall and the Bonnie/Chica head occasional glitching, which I guess is a nice
touch considering doing more animations would take up a lot more game memory, but it's still something missing that would add to the creepy factor of the game.

uh pretty sure 2 had some very basic animation, 3 used bunch of sprites for springs. jr and 4 has a lot of them

I hope you know he was talking about FNaF 1.

oopsies

ignore my post then