He always comes back
Indie games are a huge part of the gaming ecosystem, as in it's literally the foundation of its backbone- holding up the rest of the industry on taut and lofty shoulders. I have a feeling that supporting structure is destined to only grow wider and take on more customers as the years go by and more talented chunks of gaming's best break off and start forming studios of their own, likely coinciding with the wider gaming audience slowly being driven further and further away from big studio's thanks to their constant death march towards ideas and systems that ruin everyone's good time. And it would make sense given the absolutely ludicrous heights some of these franchises have grown to, some of which now rival those AAA funded titles that are supposed to be the bread and butter of the industry. Point in case: just look at all the excitement now that 'Five Night's at Freddy's: Security Breach' it out, the latest entry in a ludicrously successful indie swangsong!
It seems almost disingenuous to think of FNAF as an indie series even though that is what it ostensibly is, so as long as you can divorce yourself from the fact that your supporting dollars might end up in the pocket of the next political megalomaniac American moron, (I'm being a little bit unfair there, but I stand by the harsh tone of the sentiment) you too can bask in the mirror gleam of the newest face of this long swinging franchise. I remember the whole journey, all those years ago when this was just an ingeniously different sort of horror game that was contained almost entirely within, I think we're far enough along for me to say it without being struck dead by the omnipotent fandom, a single pretty ugly parallax scroll. Now we've got a much more traditional sort of horror experience, but one with a layer of professionalism that makes it nigh-on indistinguishable alongside many of it's esteemed peers. (sans a few prominent technical difficulties)
And the reach of this franchise has been long- insanely long. There's supposed to be a movie in the works, although Nick Cage already managed to get ahead of that with a parody movie he stared in. There's been countless short stories written on the universe, a continuous book series, more fan games than one person could feasibly play in their lifetime and, of course, a stupid number of mainline entries. One my favourite from the pile of fan games was The Joy of Creation, for the way in which it transported the formula into a sort of minigame gauntlet weaved into a loose horror narrative with meta strings slipped in there. It was simply spectacular as far as I'm concerned, and now that's kind of what the main series itself is getting around to with their most recent games from Sister Location onwards. And Security Breach is absolutely no exception.
Much of the fun of these games comes in the speculation. The months of build-up before the fact where marketing sets up their own online ARGs in order to tease the brainiacs who theorise on the overly convoluted lore of these game. You'll get your screenshots with secrets in them, cleverly put together teaser trailers, and a vague in-universe video series that features strange glitches that, when taken a screenshot of and aligned in a grid alongside every other screenshot in a particular order, makes up the face of the series' newest antagonist, Vanny. (As you can likely tell, I did not make that up at all. These pre-release secrets go wild) In that sense, the release of the game itself is almost like the lesser part of the ride, the destination of the journey now reached, which doesn't quite excite like windingly perilous journey once did. With the express exception of Ultimate Custom Night, which kept itself going for months after launch thanks to the absolutely insane challenge it proposed people complete. (Almost like the end of Hollow Knight Godmaster, which I've only just rocked up upon. Pray for me.)
Security Breach ditches the static camera operator position that almost every other Fnaf game before it has at least made reference to and instead has a full blown exploration of a new eighties-themed animatronic facility in the after hours. For which I must say that the visual design is fantastic, overly neon and impractical, sure, but you just know that if an animatronic restaurant had anywhere near this much revenue to make a real restaurant in this manner, they totally would. In relation to gameplay and exploration, however, I will admit that this latest map is perhaps just a tad too open for it's own good. The main floor in particular just stretches out a bit further than I think is necessary, which isn't a huge problem by any means but horror game environments tend to stick out a lot for their various successes and failures, so it's a nitpick that can stick with you.
The characterisations of the animatronics themselves is perhaps my favourite part of the game, made popular by the almost polar opposite approach to how these versions of the popular animatronics are presented compared to how they were in the origins of this series. Previously the animatronics have been haunted Chuck.E.Cheese style robots with a presentational focus on the mystery rather than how they actually move and react. In fact, in the original game only Foxy moved, the rest where stalking puppets that blinked from room-to-room when you weren't checking on them, which meant that mystery was a big part of who they were. In such a horror-primary setting, it makes sense for these characters to be more scare-delivering devices than actual characters without personalities and the like, that changed when the humour snuck into the game.
Pizzeria simulator was the start, with it bunches of joke animatronics, but since then we've really had the characteristics of these animatronics take front and centre. Now this time around we're seeing their AI play out fully with standouts like the desperately narcissistic Roxy, the bully-girl Chica and the blundering well-meaning Freddie. Although my favourite has to go to the Sun/Moon animatronic who has a split personality depending on which celestial body is prominent on it's dome. The sunny side is overbearing and friendly in a creepy way, whilst the moon side is sinister and altogether traditionally creepy. The voice talent is great around the board but I think these two in particular are just spectacular, I loved their little maze arena just for the vocals alone. (Especially since the task at hand wasn't the most imaginative and fun concept ever devised by the creative team.)
The only drawback is, I think, with the gameplay; not that it's bad, just that it plays things mostly safe. Most horror games are guilty of either this or being obnoxiously slow and obtuse, and I definitely prefer the former over the latter, but there's still a certain individual charm which is missing from the picture here. I enjoy a decent horror title, but I don't see this being the world shattering standard for the genre like the original Fnaf game became after it's stardom. I wonder if future Fnaf games will have that sort of courage to try something new and wild, or if we're going to see things gradually grow trite from here on out until the team get struck by a sudden wake up call in the middle of the night and decided that they simply must cast an 8 ft vampire lady in the next game. Actually... now that I mention it that wouldn't be all that bad, would it? Animatronic Dimitrescu- I can dig it.
