Slender: The Arrival Review

Slender: The Arrival is meant to be one of those creepy games that builds up the atmosphere to a point where a single scare will make you shit the bed faster than a pug dog on bonfire night. Well guess what? IT FUCKING ACHIEVES ITS GOAL WITH EASE!

Christ on a bike, once this game reaches fever pitch the relentless onslaught of jumps, scares and frightening appearances of Mr. Slenderbollocks will send your heart rate through the roof while leaving your palms sweaty from fear. Blue Isle, the team behind the game, have taken the small indie title from last year and given it an overhaul in the graphics department to make everything look more appealing on the eyes. Alongside this we have more than just the eight pages to find giving us more than one playthrough of the game to punish ourselves with.

Oh hello there.

In order to get started, you are eased into the game with an instant false sense of security. During the introduction storyboard, we see that we’re driving a nice, safe Volvo - something you would always associate with a secure environment.

However, things don’t go to plan as the car crashes on the way to your friend’s house which you later discover has been overturned, scrawled with images of a forest and Slenderman over the walls and that no one is home. It is at this point that you’ll be repeating one of these three phrases; “Oh well that’s just great.” - “Oh fuck me.” Or “Fan-fucking-tastic” as you go from room to room finding clues as to what is actually going on.

Ohhh, purdy!

The great thing about Slender was that everything was contained in one large area with no interruptions in the pace. Sadly, The Arrival breaks all sense of fear, dread and terror as it has to go through a loading screen to get to the next point in the game. While this is a slight annoyance because the build-up you've created investigating your friends house is shattered by that break, everything is left to accumulate once again as you discover the eight notes and suffer more frequent interruptions from Slenderman himself. 

Unfortunately, once you have done all eight notes and completed that task, the extra levels are essentially rehashes of the same idea, instead of eight notes you have to go find eight generators, six generators or eight buckets of chicken. Ok I made the chicken one up, but each level will still have you searching for a number of specific items before you're able to progress to the next stage.

Cowbags

The introduction of a creepy sidekick also adds to the frightening nature of the game, especially when you first encounter the small hoodie wearing bitch, but that too quickly becomes an astronomical pain in the rectum when you're chased down, forcing you to flee the scene and missing one of the items you need. Granted it still has that shock factor, but nothing really stands out as warranting a purchase over what the original and more importantly, free version of this game had.

That being said, this game will still make you shit yourself silly. The updated visuals and greater emphasis on the audio side of the game does have the desired effect of keeping the player on edge. Subtle sounds in the background, the occasional footsteps when no one is around; then the sudden shock of your UI and audio going bonkers when you spot the lanky streak of piss really does an outstanding job of setting every alarm bell ringing, resulting in yourself becoming a quivering mess in the chair.

It's rather dark in here.

The varied environments are fantastic too, going from the forest to an industrial area as you investigate an abandoned factory filled with shipping containers and corridors with no power really do help in building up a wider picture of the whole scenario. I know that in this review I’ve been torn between two separate trains of thought, on one hand the game is good with the scares, on the other I’ve been critical about the breaks in atmosphere and repetitive nature of the tasks. It is annoying that you get sucked into the game only to have a loading screen break everything and I guess I was hoping for a complete non-stop shit yourself fest with Slender: The Arrival. The game is still good, it will still achieve the desired effect of scaring everyone who plays it but for me personally there’s one too many of those little annoyances that stop it from being great.

Play the game with the lights out and headphones on and you’re sucked into the immersive world of the Slenderman, kidnapper of children and iconic character of many an urban legend. Just keep your gameplay to short controlled bursts otherwise extended periods of time will start chipping away at the atmosphere making the game less of an ideal scary game for Halloween and turning it into a mediocre adventure with a few jumpy moments. Coincidentally Slenderman wouldn't be out of place on the set of Coronation Street, but that’s a different story altogether.