The only real complaint I have with the review is that the trailer didn't really suggest that you were going to wander around the house. Otherwise, I can definitely see where you were coming from.
Perhaps the animatronics rarely appearing was supposed to invoke Nothing Is Scarier?
That's the impression I got, personally. When I saw each of the "rooms" shown in the trailer, I thought that we are going to actually have to traverse through the house to get to them. Those red corridors, for instance, which turned out to be where Bonnie and Chica come from? I got the impression that they're one of the locations in the house that you'll have to sneak through, and always check if there's nothing lurking at the end of them before walking through them. It couldn't have been that much of an ungrounded misinterpretation on my part, could it?
I too thought thought the trailers indicated that you were going to get to walk around the house. I don't know exactly how that could've worked, but it might've been interesting.
I absolutely agree, this cheap tactic of making the player jump, not because something is scary, but because you forced them to raise their volume and suddenly A HUGE BLARING NOISE EXPLODES INTO THEIR EARDRUMS is horrible. One of the worst, cheapest trick in the world to do and really shows that one honestly doesn't seem to think that one's work is decent enough to evoke a proper reaction from the player.
I disagree that the jumpscares were actually scary... then again, out of the current FNAF games, not a single one had anything in it that properly scared me.
@catmuto: I guess what I meant wasn't that they were genuinely scary, but Scott at least tried to make them scary, which I don't think he did in FNAF2 and 3.
@ZuTheSkunk: I get what you mean... then again, I think they were not that good at being scary from the get-go. Yes, they are based on animatronics... which can come across as creepy, but not everyone finds them creepy. (In fact, I find them all to look laughable in every game)
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Disappointed
I'm gonna sum up my feelings after trying to play the game, failing to get past the second night, and just watching the rest of the game on YT in defeat...
First of all, I must say that the trailer was VERY misleading. It made the game look as if you were actually going to wander around the house and have to be constantly on the move, sneaking around and trying to outsmart and evade the deadly animatronics. It really felt as if Scott was going to throw the formula on its head and make it a real revolution, the big, epic conclusion to the series.
And then I played the game and it turned out that basically, this game is just the same basic formula of you staying in one room and having to check the doors. Except this time you aren't given any cameras to work with and it's a lot harder to tell whether you closing the door actually did anything.
We still have the basic Puppet mechanic in the form of you having to look behind you periodically in order to avoid unleashing Freddy on your ass, and there's also a between-nights minigame where, if you manage to win, you are able to start the night two hours later. And this bonus is lost if you die, so in the end, it's completely meaningless.
This time, Scott decided to have the game rely on you listening to sound effects and taking clues from them on which door to close and when. Good concept, it's just too bad that he decided to make all the sounds in the game fairly quiet while making the jumpscare sound as loud as humanly possible, and then deliberately ask us to raise the volume. Very cheap move, here. This one decision makes me pretty much unable to beat the game, because, you know, I'm Genre Savvy enough to always keep my volume low in these games...
On the upside, the jumpscares are actually scary this time (or at least look scary), something that FNAF 2 & 3 failed to accomplish. The atmosphere is pretty good too, with a nice sense of dread going on.
However, at the same time, the game feels just empty. There's a grand total of, what, FIVE "locations" in the entire game? And the only times you see the animatronics are the single "fleeting glance" animation and the jumpscare animation.
I'm hitting the word limit already, so I'll say this: I feel disappointed with this game. Even FNAF 3 was more interesting and fun to play than this.