It's very important to remember, when discussing JD Vance and his wife, that the cuck chair refers to the person sitting on it, not the chair itself. The chair is actually getting quite a bit of action.

I do a weekly "virtual movie night" thing with some friends of mine where we all log onto Xbox chat and hit play on a movie at the same time. Someone suggested Fight Club to start the month and I happily voted in favor of it. Gave me an excuse to finally do a full run through David Fincher's filmography like I did with Scorsese late last year. As of today, I finished it:

Get yer Lauren Ipsum books!
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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CCMSTTSW

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Well, this was… rough to say the least. I remember back when Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 came out. It caught me so off guard that only like 3 months after the original’s release, we had our hands on a full-on sequel. Back then, and for a long time, I thought that FNAF 2 was the coolest thing out there, that it was on par with the original, and in some aspects, better. In retrospect, I should’ve known better. Back in my review for FNAF 1, I mentioned that while I know the mechanics of the game, I didn’t know how the games felt. FNAF 2 is the perfect example of that, while on paper the mechanics and concept are good, in execution, the game is overwhelmingly, and ridiculously punishing in ways that are unfair.

The first big, notable thing about FNAF 2 is the game cranks things up to 11, literally. Instead of there being 4 main animatronics, by Night 6 there will be 11 animatronics you have to deal with. And I think it’s an important thing to note that every future entry aside from Custom Nights never dares get close to this number of active animatronics per night. And that’s simply because 11 animatronics is just overkill. It’s too many all at once, and a good majority of them function the same way, with really only 2 deviating from the general template. This ultimately leads to the game really overwhelming by end game, really frustrating. The two deviations from the template, Puppet and Withered Foxy are really good mechanically, but do not mesh well with the fact that you have to balance them on top of 8 different animatronics trying to enter your office all at the same time.

The big obvious mechanic unique to FNAF 2 is of course the Mask, and it’s a little rough around the edges. In early nights, when you’re dealing with only the Toy or Withered Animatronics, it’s very manageable. All you have to do is put on the mask when the animatronic enters your office, or you see them in the vent in the case of Balloon Boy, Mangle, and Toy Chica and Toy Bonnie. Now those 4 are fine for the most part, with the only issue being that sometimes they take a bit too long to leave. The Withered Animatronics, Freddy, Chica, and Bonnie are the big problems here. Noticeable in Night 4 and overwhelmingly obvious in Night 5 is how little reaction time there is to put on the mask if they enter the office. As well, they’re very picky on if they force you out of the monitor, or if they appear after you close the monitor itself. I can definitely see that as a way to make the player jump in a way, startled either by them suddenly appearing, or by being forced out of the monitor suddenly. However, if you want to startle the player, the window to react quick enough should be larger than it actually is, as it makes the game feel unnecessarily cruel at times. This combined with the fact that there’s you know, 11 animatronics all trying to kill you at the same time, is troublesome to say the least. In FNAF1, there was balance, but there’s a clear lack of balance in FNAF2.

While I still keep my promise to avoid the discussion and analysis of the series’ lore, I do think the Death Minigames are worth note. I died a good number of times in FNAF 2, especially during Night 5, and I was able to get one of these. In a way, Death Minigames accomplish two things. One, they reward you for dying; while dying does mean you have to restart the night, it also means you have a chance to get a snippet of the game’s lore. I also just think Death Minigames are a good avenue for delivering lore. It still is a chance-based occurrence, but it makes it much easier for players who don’t know how to find secrets to stumble upon them naturally. Plus, while the art style of the Death Minigames isn’t accurate to how games on Atari or the NES looked, it still evokes that era, and it creates a unique aesthetic for the series going forward.

It’s interesting how the matter of barely over an hour and a half, my perspective on FNAF 2 entirely shifted. It goes back to the idea I mentioned prior, while I knew FNAF 2’s mechanics, I didn’t know what it felt like to play FNAF 2. And I can now say with confidence that it felt bad. While it has some of my favorite animatronics of the series, and conceptually it is a really interesting game, its major flaws cannot be overlooked. If I had this much frustration and general disappointment with FNAF 2, I don’t know what’s going to happen by the time I reach the end.