Quick Review: Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location

Funtime Foxy will work just fine;
just SHOCK 'IM!

After FNAF 4, Cawthon believed the series was done. He tried his hand at a spin-off (FNAF World) that kinda crashed and burned. So he went back to the main series. However, it’s safe to say that he took it in an entirely different direction. Or, at least, attempted to tread entirely new ground. Welcome to Sister Location, released on October 7th, 2016, and home of Circus Baby’s Entertainment. We do have a Freddy… but we also have a Baby, and more new faces! Also, you’re not the night watchman here; you’re the after-hours technician, making sure that everything runs smoothly during the day. Gee, wonder why there isn’t one of those in that other pizzeria haunted by robots…

As a result, your tasks are quite different here. You spend every night doing new things, and the product as a whole feels a lot more involved in telling a narrative. The previous games told one as well, but not as overtly. While it’s not cheap on jump scares, it usually reserves them for anytime you fail the task or mini-game of the moment.

How the Hell do you want me to type anything
on THIS piece of crap of a keyboard?
0/10, don't recommend.

I strongly appreciated the tone throughout Night 1 and 2; it delivers on the creepy atmosphere we expect from a horror game, and FNAF in particular, but it includes many comedic moments that also serve as additional puzzle pieces towards the grand story of the franchise. It’s a sign of good writing where even jokes that seem innocuous actually have greater ramifications. The HandUnit malfunctioning when you write in your name (and correcting what you wrote to “Eggs Benedict”) is an early indication that something’s wrong with the place, even if we don’t yet know just how WRONG it’s about to get. It’s also one Heck of an odd name to end up with.

Your reward for each successful night is that
you get to go home alive and watch your
favorite cartoon (?) with a bowl of popcorn.
Exotic butters not included (yet).

Oops! Where is Ballora?

You spend Night 1 shocking animatronics to force them to perform, and this alone brings up a whole bunch of implications. The scares proper begin on Night 2, where you suddenly have to hide in a vent from little things called Bidybabs. And things only get worse from there. Although, this time around, the motivations for Circus Baby’s Entertainment’s animatronics are quite a bit different…

This is the FNAF game I’ve enjoyed the most so far. I believe it’s due to a combination of actual variety between sections, and the fact that the story takes center stage. I actually wanted to see where the plot was going, I was more engaged and I wanted to experience more, whereas previous games didn’t really give me that thirst. The previous games were doing fine with their simple concepts, but the franchise had grown to the point where it needed to do something more elaborate.

F... F... Fuck!

At least the post-mortem mini-games are back,
like they were in FNAF 2.

That said, the game didn’t exist in a vacuum, and is very closely tied to the overarching storyline, which made it a must-play for those who followed the series closely. Those who were struggling with the franchise’s gameplay up to that point could have given it a try, since it’s so different from every entry until then (barring FNAF World, a spin-off), but then they would be missing the information given before, which is necessary to understand that’s going on here.

That is, unless they read up on the lore and everything involving the Afton family.

On this, see you soon for the final entry I own.