2025 December Media Post
Five Nights At Freddy's 2 (Movie)
I had fun watching this, albeit not as much fun as with the first movie. There's less of that campy family movie vibe, the goofy moments didn't hit me as hard, and I wasn't as engaged by the story. There are still some standout elements though, I think the animatronics were used in more interesting ways (particularly Mangle got a great scene), and Marionette actually scared me a tiny bit. I guess scaring me even remotely should probably be a low bar for a horror series, so I guess that 2nd compliment is backhanded. The ending was shockingly abrupt, so much so that it left me a feeling sour for a bit.
Here are my live reaction notes.
Pizzapocalypse
This was a quick, charming time. Pizza might be the greatest thing to theme a video game around, or perhaps I'm just biased towards my limited food preferences. It was neat how all 3 levels were just 1 long map. The gameplay was solid, although nothing about it stands out to me. The game is free, so feel free to check it out.
Prodigal
I don't normally find myself playing Legend Of Zelda style games nowadays, that series consistently frustrates me, but after loving Curse Crackers so much I really wanted to check out Colorgrave's other games. Thankfully I did not have a bitter, miserable time with this game, I had a good time. I still got stuck and gave up, but that was during the postgame so I don't feel completely deflated by the experience.
This game has a similar structure to what I ended up loving in Curse Crackers, in which the main plotline is pretty simple, but the abundance of the side stuff really fleshes out the world and characters. I'm somewhat mixed on how a lot of the side quests occur, from what I could tell they're not straight up triggered randomly, but I had a hard time guessing when they'll occur. This leads to a lot of nice surprises, and it helps the world feel lived in when, but they can be really inconvenient when you're trying to engage with them. I wasn't a big fan of Oran (the protagonist), he's too well defined within the world for me to view his silence as an opportunity to self insert, and that seems to be the only angle his lack of dialogue is to be explored from (he has internal thoughts at least). I also feel very lacking in his perspective, a huge plot point is that he robbed and abandoned his own family, but you never get to see how he was like back then.
I wasn't a fan of the run mechanic being tied to a powerup and unlockable equipment (to be clear it's available with one or the other, you don't need both). I get that balance wise it makes dodging attacks easier, and the devs probably wanted to make sure you were taking in the world, but it felt like my time was being wasted whenever I didn't have access to the run. The death system also felt like it wasted some of my time, respawning in the church and having to return to shops to purchase lost powerups also pushes you to experience the world more, but it gets repetitive fast.
I enjoyed the puzzles, they use Oran's unorthodox toolset very well. I had some trouble figuring out how to progress the plot sometimes, but for the most part I think the hints were pretty reasonable. As partially mentioned earlier, I ended up getting stuck, and looking up the solution I do think the hint was flawed, but frankly I was kinda looking for a reason to put the game down. I might get back to it later since I plan on playing its sequel (Vertuis) as well. I definitely don't think I'll bother 100%-ing it though.
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