Slender is the OTHER most popular game in existence... right now. Or at least it's popular in the sense that people make videos of them screaming into a camera while getting "scared" by the game (I will talk more on that later). In this game you collect eight pages, the more pages you collect, the higher of a chance you have getting caught by Slenderman. This is supposed to be a very scary game, apparently.
But it's actually a very boring game you see. There is a noticeable lack of immersion, something that I believe sells a scary game. Finding pages is a very boring thing to do, as you walk at the speed of molasses. If you don't find the pages fast enough (such as not finding a page within ten minutes), Slenderman will get you anyway. It's a long tedious process of map memory and cat & mouse. It's not fun. I wont spoil the end to the game, but it really makes you feel like you've wasted your time.
I do not see the scare factor in this game. Sure, there's a childish slam down on the piano whenever you turn too quickly and Slenderman is behind you, but that's just a jump scare, it isn't really scary, nor is it tense. It's a dull flashlight simulator. I can't even call it a "walking through the woods simulator" because the woods are kind of interesting and things actually happen sometimes. If you want the full walking through the woods experience, get Miasmata, it's actually kind of tense and scary in a way.
In the graphics department, Slender is a pretty good looking game. Despite a good 90% of the game taking place in the dark, the very few times you see colours and geometrical shapes, it is quite wonderful. This however, is because the Unity engine is actually a pretty good-looking engine and not really because of the game designer.
Also, I know I mentioned this but, this game is darker than Doom 3, but luckily, like Doom 3, you have a nice flashlight. The flashlight can be turned on or off, which surprisingly, not a lot of people understand. The flashlight batteries can also run out if you are too slow at collecting pages and because your character is a cunt, they don't bother bringing any sort of back-up batteries. As I've said above, it is the perfect flashlight simulator for all you flashlight enthusiasts.
There is no real plot to this game, as far as I can tell. You're in the woods looking for a bunch of pages randomly scattered about. Why are you in the woods? Why are you looking for pages? Who posted that pages? Basically it is a bunch of questions that do not get solved within the game. I'm guessing the creator went with the "just make up your own story" approach, but that's really fucking lazy. I probably shouldn't expect much from a free game, but come the fuck on, at least put something on your website, a small little idea of why.
In the end, I highly disliked Slender: The Eight Pages. It wasn't scary, nor was it interesting. Now these people, these people who make videos of them getting scared at this game, I'm willing to bet that 80% of them are hamming it up simply for the camera. HOWEVER, there is a percentage who are genuinely scared of Slenderman. They are scared of when he's going to pop up and they're afraid of this game. It's pathetic in a way, as it's not scary, there's no tension, there's nothing to this game, it's just bad. It's a bad game that isn't fun and that's about it. Goodnight, folks.
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