Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 is virtually unplayable on any night past shift 4 and I’m tired of pretending it’s a good game. Sure, the horror factor easily reaches one of its peaks in the franchise, but given I played these games when I was 21 and not 11, there’s some glaring issues with the game I feel people have looked over because of their nostalgia for this game (I just wrote that out and felt existential dread, bring me back to Black Ops 2 multiplayer and Pokemon Alpha Sapphire wonder trading).

First and foremost, let’s talk about the toy box. The game encourages you to look at each of the monitors since there is some terrifying stills throughout the building, but to do so would be wasting your time of winding the toy box, putting down your camera, putting up the mask, and getting jumpscared because Toy Bonnie should be hung for being the worst fucking animatronic this series has to offer. There’s no skill, it is just getting yourself in a rhythm and hoping the game doesn’t cock block you out of a 10/20 win for the upteenth time.

Speaking of Toy Bonnie, why the fuck are half the animatronics just outright terrible? Balloon Boy doesn’t make the game more interesting nor is he notably scary, as well as Toy Bonnie and Toy Chica. There are good additions to the cast with The Mangled being one of my favorites, as well as having the best versions of my two favorite animatronics, those being Classic Freddy and the Puppet. But for every great scare, the game takes away from it with its dogshit gameplay loop. Like, why the hell does the maintenance office have two vents with lights on each side? Five Nights At Freddy’s 1 and 3’s offices made sense and Five Nights at Freddy’s 4’s bedroom makes a lot of sense given the narrative of the game. No building in human history has, is, or will be built like this Pizzera.

Also, the jumpscares are weak. Classic Bonnie, Classic Freddy, Foxy, and The Mangled are the only ones worth noting. Golden Freddy’s jumpscare is easily the worst in the entire franchise besides the White Woman Jumpscare™ from that new game I refuse to pay $40 to play. Toy Chica’s is kinda frightening because of her missing beak, but it is still ultimately whatever. Like I said, there are good jumpscares (My first playthrough I purposely let the toy box fully unwind, heard the lullaby, looked in the camera, saw the puppet floating out of the toy box, audible say “Huh…,” checked the vent, saw a fucking endoskeleton, and had just about shit my pants in a panic before getting jumpscared). The Mangled’s jumpscare is also really cool because I got it for the first time on my first attempt of 10/20 at 5:00 AM and heard the police scanner then felt my fucking heart stop beating.

I don’t get the praise for Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. Five Nights at Freddy’s 3 is better in every single way imaginable and Five Nights at Freddy’s 1 is much scarier. The game is mediocre and the horror completely falls flat because the gameplay loop does not allow you to feel scared. I mean, sure, it isn’t terrible, but one of the best horror games of all time? Eh… no.

Rating: D
Genre(s): Point and click adventure, survival horror