Friday, 12 August 2016 00:00

CASE Animatronics Review

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Better Than Eating Fake Blood Sundaes

What a great idea; Five Nights at Freddy's First Person Stealth Horror. This should be as much fun as eating a fat bowl of fake-blood-covered ice cream while watching sock puppets impersonate Guns and Roses.

It's late at night.

You are an apparently clairvoyant police detective. You fell asleep on your desk at the wrong time, and now the terrifying nightmare you just had is about to come true. Run. Hide. Collect clues to find out what's going on. Try not to get eaten.

Pros and Cons:

The audio is artistically done. I don't want to betray their secrets, so I'll just say the crafty folks at Last Level know when you've let your guard down, and it's time to pounce.  In addition to requesting you not be pregnant, they recommend putting on headphones, and what they've done with the sound effects makes you glad you did. It’s got it all: appropriately scary violin noises, steps that get louder as they approach, heartbeats you can nearly feel in your chest, the little mouth noises we all make but can only hear when we are dry-mouthed in a closet trying to hide from a blood-stained kids toy with razors for teeth. However, I am a critic, so I must always find something to complain about. I think the audio could have been a bit more normalized; it's tricky getting it loud enough that you can hear the footsteps, but quiet enough that getting cut to ribbons doesn't deafen you. Perhaps my ears are overly sensitive. Whatever. It works. 

The voice acting is entertaining enough. I like the crazy killer. But the writing fails to pull me in and make me care what happens next. Perhaps it lost something in translation. You'll find little notes lying around if you have time to look for them. They are interesting to read, but due to grammatical or translation errors, you must additionally try to puzzle their meaning together, before one of those goddam evil-eyed robots eats your head. Fortunately, you can review the notes you've collected by hitting Esc. and selecting, “Notes”, but be sure you are well-hidden before you do so. 

Graphically it's not amazing, but it's an adequate palate from which to paint some video-game magic. The animations are good, but while the monsters look scary enough, they don't look like they were ever used to protect children, even though the little notes seem to suggest as much. Perhaps they were modified. To be fair, I've only collected a handful of the records so far. To get them, you have to avoid all these horrible animatrons you see, and I don't want to be scared anymore. This game is stupid. 

Sadly, having your flashlight on or off doesn't seem to matter. You can hide under a desk and leave it on, and the nasties won't find you. I wish this wasn't the case, but since the checkpoints are so far apart, and it's not possible to skip the cutscenes, I suppose I should be grateful. Running doesn't seem to matter either so feel free; they won't hear you gasping for air. It's pretty cool that you gasp for air, by the way. 

You will die a lot, but each time you respawn, the game changes a bit to keep things interesting. Unfortunately, one of the checkpoints is set right before a cutscene. /scold 

There are a few other game mechanics that I'd like to praise for their creativity, but I don't want to spoil the fun. 

Some nit-picking

In the mini-game you eventually encounter, the text hasn't been translated from Russian into English. It doesn't seem to make any difference as far as your progress is concerned, but it is one more thing that detracts from the immersion that is so critical in this genre. 

Although you can see the splash of your flashlight, you can't see yourself on the security cameras, but it wouldn't add that much to the game anyway, so I shall muster my benevolence, and let it slide. The Kevin abides. 

8

The Verdict

Due to its similarity to Five Nights at Freddy's, this FPSH has put itself in the position of having some big shoes to fill. Although it has some rough edges, it more than delivers. It's creative, and honors the game it looks to have been inspired by. For ten bucks, I think it's well-worth seeing the surprises CASE: Animatronics has in store. I bestow an eight, Last Level. Please don't eat me anymore.

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Kevin Riggs

Kevin Riggs is an analytical writer, dedicated to disc golf, cooking, and promoting science and critical thinking. But he also has a dark secret. At night, or whenever it's dark enough for dark secrets, he plays the shit out of video games on Steam under the dark, dark, pseudonym of, “Lazyface”. Kevin played his first video game at a Shakey's Pizza, back in 1977, when they cost two-bits each, and stood a good 5-8 feet taller than they do nowadays. It was called “Space Invaders”. Quaint, eh? He even remembers when pong still seemed like a pretty cool idea.

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