Posted: 04/15/13
Last year’s breakout experimental horror indie game, Slender: The Eight Pages, caused quite the stir, asking players to venture into a dark wood while desperately evading the grasp of the malicious Slenderman, relentlessly stalking you at every turn. With the hope of expanding upon this premise to create a more fleshed out experience from this modern urban legend, Slender: The Arrival definitely brings a few good scares, but the concept is stretched just a bit too thin.
You’ll go through a sequence of five areas beginning with the game’s intro which sets a perfectly eerie foundation as you explore an abandoned house riddled with unsettling drawings of a freakishly elongated figure. Slowly and cautiously pushing open doors with your mouse, the deafening silence broken only by your own footsteps, the Arrival wastes no time building an unsettling atmosphere and a sense of tension.
Once you arrive to the dark forest, those who played Eight Pages will quickly understand the name of the game. Armed with only a camera and a flashlight, you embark on what quickly becomes a frantic rush to find eight pages hidden near landmarks scattered throughout the enclosed section of forest. Each page you find causes the Slenderman to become increasingly aggressive, frequently popping out of nowhere for a great, if slightly cheap, thrill. Get too close, and you’ll suffer a static-infused shrill at the game over screen, forcing you to retry from the beginning with no pages and a randomly reconfigured forest.
The visuals and effects are noticeably improved from Eight Pages. Trippy video hitches that occur when Slendy draws near can really disorient you, and the addition of a zoom function for your camera and the choice to toggle your flashlight between low and high power are all great gameplay tweaks that enhance the immersion.
Reaching a set of underground tunnels introduces a second type of enemy that you’ll have to deal with while you search to activate six power generators. The realization you can use your flashlight means to temporarily stun this creature gives a shimmer of empowerment to an otherwise continually victimized player. You’ll soon realize however that their behavior switches between standing idly and unresponsive, to overwhelming, unrelenting attacks that give the player absolutely no chance to escape to continue their search. Success can start to feel arbitrary, and the game’s immersion takes a serious hit.
The broad notion of scrambling to find a complete set of items while being closely hunted down is frantic and fun to gaming horror masochists, but when you so frequently fall fate to enemies and are stripped of all progress, genuine fear gives way to real frustration.
Slender: The Arrival is an atmospheric package relying too much on one admittedly terrifying trick that overstays its welcome far too early in an already short series of events. There are a handful of stand-out moments, though, and those who played and enjoyed Eight Pages will certainly find this expanded vision an improved and more complete experience. But if you aren’t willing to endure repetition and a few immersion-breaking flaws, you’d best save your fright for another night.
Reviewed on PC.
Reviewed by Chris Nguyen.
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