While the horror genre has made interesting strides in recent years with the likes of Resident Evil VII, it likewise has a darker side. Five Nights at Freddy's proved to the world that simple, jump-scare horror games could be big sellers for minimal budget, much like the J-horror remakes of the 00s did in film, and just like that trend, it more often than not leads to trash.
I don't dislike Five Nights at Freddy's as a lot of people do, although I'll say it isn't what I would call high caliber. It was a trendy game made cheaply, with an interesting hook built around one of the most hated tropes in horror, games or otherwise, and it worked for what it was. It was short, cheap, and, outside of a myriad of cheap imitators, harmless. Similarly could be said of Amnesia: the Dark Descent, a game released to great amount of praise and fanfare, but a game that has equally lead to a reproachful trend in the horror game landscape. It was novel for a time, being weaponless and having to sneak around monsters that made disgusting noises, but it quickly wore out its welcome as the gameplay reached its limit to what could be innovated within its bounds. Even Frictional Games' follow up to Amnesia, SOMA, suffered from dull gameplay, albeit just barely staying afloat with its interesting and well executed story. Yet here we are, with yet another sneaky game following a trend with Bendy and the Ink Machine.
That isn't to say that I outright disliked Bendy. Bendy's art style, as has been said by just about everyone who has played it, is very well done. It captures that odd style of a 20s or 30s cartoon, and does so in a way that covers up for an obvious lack of either skill or budget. It's a smart decision, one that also paid off with Cuphead a year after chapter one of Bendy released, although with much better execution on gameplay. Bendy does a few things competently, such as providing an atmosphere that was so near to Bioshock I was left impressed once I'd given myself time to reflect on it, but therein lies the crux. Because at the time, it was a massive turn off.
Bendy is, perhaps not so succinctly, a rip-off blend of Amnesia, Bioshock, and the gimmicky tone of Five Nights at Freddy's. There is a conflict sensed throughout Bendy that the developers had an apparent passion for those works it takes inspiration, but an inability to understand what made them great. It wasn't just the character of Andrew Ryan or the dystopian world of Rapture that made Bioshock great, it was also the subtly, the symbolism, and the mechanics that made it shine. In Bendy, Andrew Ryan is replaced with a Walt Disney stand-in with an unconvincing voice actor, and a plot that just doesn't make sense. Sander Cohen's section was great in the original Bioshock, easily one of the stand out moments, but ripping it off wholesale for chapter three of your game does you no favors. The RPG style gameplay invoking the sim-PGs like Deus Ex and System Shock from Bioshock is gone in place of a rudimentary and unresponsive combat system, and Amnesia type stealth that is far more grating and patience testing than it is rewarding or effective. And while there is a point to Bendy as there was with Bioshock, it is stiffly given with little to ruminate on, simply stating "this is bad" and moving on, because that's not really what Bendy is about. What Bendy is about is trying to appeal to those preteens that still conflate dark and cool with scary. It's a Hot Topic game, through-and-through.
I'm not confident Bendy really tried to be scary past a certain point. Enemies are the farthest thing from scary, usually looking more like the kind of monsters a kid would draw on their notebook. All of them are 90% ink blob, usually with one feature that differs between them, such as having a film projector as a head. This isn't scary. It isn't even interesting, as it was one of the major criticisms leveled at Resident Evil VII's monster designs outside of the family. Blobby monsters, no matter how much you make them writhe or gurgle, are just silly. And to the game's credit, they began moving more into a funny or action based tone towards the end, but let the credit be rather shallow. The game mechanics didn't allow for action gameplay to really be utilized in any sort of satisfying way. It's stiffer than Silent Hill, and that game at least deigned to imply a reason for it.
Much of this could be forgiven, as in SOMA, if the story was interesting, but that isn't the case. The story has you walking through your former employment, an animation studio turned into a carnival of horrors full of odd experiments and absurdly deep, bunker-like facilities. By the time it reaches the end, there is a distinct air of sloppy fanfiction as the game tries to tie up its loose ends into something symbolizing a meaning to all those spooky images it threw at you. The game feels extremely amateur throughout, most evidently with regards to story, but also when considering the puzzles.
Every puzzle in this game is "retrace your steps to find the objects". Every single one. It's dull padding for any other game, but to direct that particular claim on Bendy is to say that Bendy is nothing more than a stylish hallway, and I don't think that is fair. Bendy wants to involve you in its world, it just doesn't have the skill or artistry to pull it off. Instead it leaves you with an aesthetic cheapened more and more as you go on. Every object required for a puzzle is plainly obvious when you first encounter it, but it isn't until the puzzle is triggered you are allowed to pick them up (something also in Bioshock, but that's a game six or so years older). Walking back and forth between hallways may be a good way to elicit jump scares, but a poor way of keeping your style and environment fresh.
There is virtually nothing to recommend in Bendy once you know it is all a waste of time, but I won't pretend that while I played, not knowing the story would lead to such a trite conclusion, I didn't want to see what all of this was leading to. I was sure there would be one of a couple twist endings that seemed so obvious at the start, but it turned out they weren't exactly true. Instead I was left with a game I felt tricked into playing, but credit where credit is due. I was the fool, not them.
4.0
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