Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach Review

Five Nights at Freddy's has a rich history of being one of the most defining indie horror games of all time. Each new installment adds more mysteries to the franchise that fans analyze with great fervor. Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach delivers an intense experience as you attempt to evade killer animatronics while uncovering the many mysteries inside Freddy Fazbear's Mega Pizzaplex.

Despite the impressive art direction, the title suffers from numerous technical issues and artificial difficulty problems. Despite Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach's appealing visual design and interesting mystery, the many shortcomings cannot be forgiven.

Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach stars a child named Gregory. After being trapped inside Freddy Fazbear's Mega Pizzaplex, he must team up with Freddy, an animatronic seeking only to aid the young boy in escaping the facility.

Quickly, you learn that the other animatronics are not operating as intended, instead of seeking to capture Gregory for some insidious means as you venture through the massive building teeming with more mysteries to uncover, especially something with the security guard, Vanessa.

The narrative is vague but plentiful, with secrets to uncover. Many of these require you to take risks as they're tied to collectibles. The game makes this harder by not saving any progression unless you save the game, meaning any collectibles you gather are not counted unless you save the game. The worst part is that there's a glitch that doesn't count your collectibles, even if you've saved them.

That's not the only glitch in the game; there are many. Another serious one is linked to one of the game's many endings. You have to play a series of arcade games in order, but the developers forgot to program the controls on the PS5 versions, making them unplayable. This, coupled with frequent crashes and the various animatronics glitching out, makes the original release of Fallout 76 look stable.

Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach is largely a sneaking game, but your options are limited. You can crouch, run crouch, and run normally with a stamina meter linked to how long you can run. You can also hide in specific areas to evade capture, distract using specific objects that cause sound, or use items granted through progression to disable the robots temporarily. 

There's no leaning, sticking to walls, or peeking out of hiding spots, and this is to encourage the use of the camera system. You can spot enemies using this system to better find a path, but often just running is the best option. This is because the game artificially increases by overwhelming the player with minor segway guards and robotic janitors.

With the main cast of animatronics limited to Roxy the Wolf, Chica, and Monty the Gator, the developers decided to add segway guards that patrol and call the animatronics when spotting Gregory. This is a good idea, but its execution is poor due to the massive number of these guards. There are so many that the models will often overlap with one another.

They cannot spot you unless you step into their flashlight, but after a short, annoying jump scare plays, the animatronic teleports to your location. You heard me right; instead of having the animatronic run to your location, it just teleports. It's ridiculous. Couldn't the developers program the animatronics to run to your location often? The animatronics will just appear in areas because the game calls for them without any explanation of how they got there.

The animatronics are very well-designed and have distinct personalities. Roxy is shown to have low self-esteem, Chica is obsessed with food, and Monty acts as the cool one. Freddy is the protector of Gregory, but still sees the others as his friends, offering safety by providing an option to climb into his chest. This makes it impossible for the others to see you, except for the Daycare attendant.

This animatronic appears at certain times and can only be avoided by using a charge station, a booth used to recharge Freddy's batteries, as he's a limited-use animatronic. If drained, he will attack Gregory. You can call Freddy at almost any time, with the exception of when Freddy is unavailable or you don't have a map of the area. However, Freddy getting caught in the environment is a common issue.

The animatronics have an insanely precise vision, able to see Gregory from any distance if they're looking in his direction. This, coupled with the absurd number of robotic guards and the need to avoid detection, is vexing. Like other games in the franchise, you die instantly if caught and are reset to the last save.

To increase the difficulty, the game often removes the option to save and, during critical moments, when there is only one path, punishes the player for making a simple mistake. This game is not forgiving, and often, you'll feel like you've been cheated.

The challenge is finding a balance, especially with a single standard option, but Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach fails in this regard. Not counting the multitude of technical problems, such as crashing and enemies shifting between alert and searching seconds apart, the game punishes any mistakes. In fact, the game outright removes the option to save once you reach the endgame.

There is no reason for this; the game provides no explanation why you cannot save other than "Deal With It". Other games in the horror genre provide limited items used for saving, and that would've been an ideal option. But removing the option to save, not track collectibles unless you save, and die with one hit if you make one mistake or if the game crashes is just foolishness.

Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach can cause motion sickness due to the framerate. At times, the game's frame rate drops, causing stuttering, which has made me feel nauseous at times. It wasn't anything serious, but the fact that they greenlit a game that causes actual sickness is astonishing.

Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach excels in atmosphere and art direction. The Pizzaplex is amazingly decorated with a variety of areas to explore that are each distinctively designed.

Unfortunately, navigation isn't great, and the game doesn't give you directions on what to do or where to go. This would be fine if they didn't place dozens of enemies in every area and make getting around so tedious. I was often floored by how amazing each area looked, but having to deal with the stress that one mistake could mean instant death made exploration a chore.

Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach's appealing setting and sense of discovery encourage you to head out and explore. But once you start to actually play the game, many problems start to make the attractive parts vexing, whether it's the overabundance of patrols, insane cone of vision from the main enemies, framerate stuttering, crashing, or saving problems.

The game is not hard due to the challenging encounters, but rather difficult because the developers have added archaic systems. 1-hit deaths, no checkpoints, no collectible instant saving, and removing saves altogether after a certain point. Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach may look appealing, but once you dive into this game, you'll find it's presented with glamorous wrapping but requires a chainsaw to open.

EDIT:

After replaying Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach, we discovered that another glitch exists where the player is locked out of entering Freddy. Because of this, you cannot progress in the game since you're required to enter Freddy to evade Moondrop.

If you enter Freddy through the charging station, you cannot exit Freddy. After discovering this, we have decided to reduce the score from 40 to 15. Since this is not a finished game and is broken on such a technical level, it should not be considered a finished product.