PC (Steam)
Released 28/10/2013
5/10
The horror sequel starring the internet’s own urban legend is designed to spook, chill and outright frighten its players.
It’s horror in the truest sense. You play a woman, alone in several spooky locales armed with nothing more than a torch to guide the way. Your mission is to find out what happened to your missing friend. Though you might often find yourself running in fear, the game is primarily a story driven puzzle and mystery adventure.
The atmosphere is what makes this game work. The graphics are made as realistic as possible (though a number of blocky looking vehicles and other objects sometimes ruin the illusion. Creepy and sudden noises keep you on your toes while you search for clues and notes as the ever present Slender Man hunts for you.
The protagonist carries a video camera to record her progress, which is what you as the player look through. Should the Slender Man get close to you, your screen shakes and becomes blurry and fuzzy, disorienting you until you manage to escape – if you can. This helps to give you a clue as to if he is nearby as minor shudders can be taken as a warning to turn back. It’s quite cool that you are never properly able to see the monster hunting you, helping the character retain his mystery.
The video camera also offers a timer in the corner letting you know how long you have been playing. You might want to keep an eye on this as there is an achievement for completing the game within 45 minutes, which may also be a hint as to the short length of the adventure.
Helping to lengthen the experience are the several notes and pages littered throughout the game world. These give extra information about the story and what is going on with these characters.
The game unfortunately suffers from a few teething problems. Controls in particular are the biggest gripe. There are a number of settings for you to adjust mouse sensitivity and so on which can help somewhat, but not for everything. Most notably, the way you have to open doors. Most games allow a single button tap to open or close a portal, but in ‘Slender’ you have to click, hold and drag it. When the game does not recognise what you are doing, this can be very frustrating as you find yourself closing a door that was ajar rather than making it wide enough to pass through.
Currently ‘Slender’ still has a few problems with bugs and glitches, which will hopefully soon be seen to, though when you sometimes begin the game and can not find the torch that should be available for you to take in order to play the game at all, it makes you worry about what other game breaking problems you might run into.
The title and franchise certainly have a lot of potential, but unfortunately (and as I say, it is early days) growing pains are a bit too much to bear.
