Five Nights Of Stockholm Syndrome
Mar. 7th, 2015 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodyrosemccoySo, Five Nights at Freddy's is over.
And you guys, it's kind of embarrassing to say this, but I feel a bit wrung out.
Seriously, I'm going to miss these characters. Last time I got Stockholm syndrome THIS bad about a video game bad guy, it was GLaDOS.
You get closure in the last one--good or bad, depending on how you play it--and I wouldn't have thought that I'd need closure on a game that started out seeming to be nothing but spooky jump scares. But that's the cool thing--the games had a simple enough mechanic on the surface: just stay alive. A lot of people who were unimpressed by it just saw this surface feature (see: the Honest Trailer for FNAF2), and yeah, that does get old fast.
But the REAL game--the thing that really pulled you in--was figuring out the story. Sure, you could just spend a few hours giving your limbic system a nice workout avoiding getting startled by monstrous robots. Or, if you dug deeper, you could piece together a whole sad, strange ghost story spanning decades. And while the jump scares are fun, the true excitement for me came from figuring out that story--even if I, specifically, was reduced to combing through YouTube videos to get it because actually playing it was TOO GODDAMN TERRIFYING. Such an experience of immersion, of emotional involvement, is rare, so we need to celebrate it when it comes along.*
And really, it's a brilliant way to show off what video games can do. You can become so involved in the mysteries behind the game that you got some real brain exercise--and that's a feeling that can't be beat. We love solving mysteries, and this was a good one.
Plus, watching YouTubers curling up into a ball when grinning haunted robots came screeching at them was, admittedly, pretty entertaining.
FUN FACT: I actually own Five Nights at Freddy's on Steam, despite the fact that, when I bought it, I was pretty sure I was never actually going to play it. At that point I'd had so much fun just watching other people play it and studying the mystery that I felt like I still owed it to Scott Cawthon to toss some cash his way just for making something so enjoyable.
*Speaking of which, if you're sick of hype, enjoy the Nostalgia Critic's discussion of hype that gets out of hand, which explains a lot about backlash. I would add that the backlash also comes from the people who AREN'T completely enchanted by something who are tired of being left out and could respond with backlash. Hell, I was underwhelmed by The Dark Knight, and it was difficult not to be rude about it when people were gushing. So I guess what I'm saying is, if you're sick of hearing about Five Nights at Freddy's (or Frozen), um ... sorry? Hopefully time will settle them out as classics, but meanwhile I say let us have our excitement.
And you guys, it's kind of embarrassing to say this, but I feel a bit wrung out.
Seriously, I'm going to miss these characters. Last time I got Stockholm syndrome THIS bad about a video game bad guy, it was GLaDOS.
You get closure in the last one--good or bad, depending on how you play it--and I wouldn't have thought that I'd need closure on a game that started out seeming to be nothing but spooky jump scares. But that's the cool thing--the games had a simple enough mechanic on the surface: just stay alive. A lot of people who were unimpressed by it just saw this surface feature (see: the Honest Trailer for FNAF2), and yeah, that does get old fast.
But the REAL game--the thing that really pulled you in--was figuring out the story. Sure, you could just spend a few hours giving your limbic system a nice workout avoiding getting startled by monstrous robots. Or, if you dug deeper, you could piece together a whole sad, strange ghost story spanning decades. And while the jump scares are fun, the true excitement for me came from figuring out that story--even if I, specifically, was reduced to combing through YouTube videos to get it because actually playing it was TOO GODDAMN TERRIFYING. Such an experience of immersion, of emotional involvement, is rare, so we need to celebrate it when it comes along.*
And really, it's a brilliant way to show off what video games can do. You can become so involved in the mysteries behind the game that you got some real brain exercise--and that's a feeling that can't be beat. We love solving mysteries, and this was a good one.
Plus, watching YouTubers curling up into a ball when grinning haunted robots came screeching at them was, admittedly, pretty entertaining.
FUN FACT: I actually own Five Nights at Freddy's on Steam, despite the fact that, when I bought it, I was pretty sure I was never actually going to play it. At that point I'd had so much fun just watching other people play it and studying the mystery that I felt like I still owed it to Scott Cawthon to toss some cash his way just for making something so enjoyable.
*Speaking of which, if you're sick of hype, enjoy the Nostalgia Critic's discussion of hype that gets out of hand, which explains a lot about backlash. I would add that the backlash also comes from the people who AREN'T completely enchanted by something who are tired of being left out and could respond with backlash. Hell, I was underwhelmed by The Dark Knight, and it was difficult not to be rude about it when people were gushing. So I guess what I'm saying is, if you're sick of hearing about Five Nights at Freddy's (or Frozen), um ... sorry? Hopefully time will settle them out as classics, but meanwhile I say let us have our excitement.
