Five Nights At Freddy’s: Into the Pit PS5 Review. If there’s one word that could sum up my experience with Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit, it would be surprising. Over the 10 years since the parade of possessed animatronics graced our screens, it doesn’t ever feel like Five Nights at Freddy’s has ever truly found its stride. From the original games that birthed a cultural phenomenon to the spin-offs of varying quality to the new direction of the main series, Five Nights has thrown everything and the kitchen sink at the wall to try and work out what works.
And it seems that 10 years’ worth of idea-slinging may have just borne fruit; Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into The Pit is everything that the series should have been after the success of the original game, it’s staggering. While not without its own mistakes and shortcomings, this entry in the uneven franchise capitalises on what made the original so fantastic, while managing to make a story that – while appropriately contrived for a series all about haunted animatronics in a pizzeria – managed to support itself until the end, and offered some great setpieces along the way.
Unfortunately, this incredible experience is a bit lost under a few crippling bugs that managed to almost totally torpedo my experience, as well as some general clunk that could have been done with a little bit of care.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit Review (PS5): A Surprising if Bumpy Ride
Breaking into New Territory
Most people know Five Nights at Freddy’s for its quite stationary gameplay of looking at cameras and protecting yourself from an increasingly irate cast of colourful animatronics, with minimal story and exploration being involved. And while 2022’s Security Breach introduced players to the idea of a more adventure-focused experience, this smaller-scale project trims the fat and manages to deliver a tightly-crafted adventure that maintains the atmosphere that fans know and love.
Being based on the short story of the same name, Into the Pit follows the story of Oswald as he tries to save his kidnapped Father from an inexplicably evil yellow bunny and a time-travelling ball pit in a pizzeria. While the game wastes no time explaining any part of what’s going on for new players, that doesn’t mean that this story isn’t effective in its own right. The premise is strong enough and manages to bring some genuinely strong setpieces to the table for a short game like this, and it does more with the concepts being played throughout the franchise than ever.
There’s a genuine element of fear that comes from being a kid being hunted down by something that nobody else can see and being unable to defend yourself alone in your own house. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was caught off-guard by just how intense the first 30 minutes of this game was.
The dialogue can be a bit stilted at times, with the writers not really capturing how a 10-year-old would actually talk in this kind of situation, but it was never enough to take me out of the moment and what was happening.
I just wouldn’t; go into this game expecting all (if any) of your questions to be answered with a satisfying conclusion. For fans of the series, you’ll feel right at home with this style of storytelling, as is the trademark of the franchise.
Hide and Seek
As mentioned above, Into the Pit forgoes the regular formula and fully embraces a classic adventure format to deliver its story and gameplay. And while I wouldn’t say that this game manages to reinvent the wheel when it comes to the survival horror genre, it’s certainly a step forward in a direction that should have been taken a long time ago and is engaging regardless.
Ultimately there isn’t anything here that hasn’t been done before; the AI for the enemies you come across isn’t notably intelligent or dynamic and can quickly become more of a pest than a genuine threat, which is common enough in survival horror games like this. I could roll with it for how short of an experience Into the Pit is in the grand scheme, there wasn’t space to carefully nurture and develop an intricate AI with dynamic behaviour patterns.
Luckily, there are enough interactive wrinkles to help give the illusion of some dynamism, and those come in the form of short minigames that change depending on your chosen hiding place. One option might ask you to monitor Oswald’s breathing so he isn’t discovered, whereas another one might task you with moving side to side to avoid being spotted in a wardrobe. These small minigames helped to add some much-needed energy to the cat-and-mouse chases that take place across Oswald’s house and the pizzeria itself, and I enjoyed the tension that these brought.
Light puzzle exploration missions also do work in ensuring that the journey through Freddy’s is more than a linear rollercoaster of canned scares, you have to be ready to explore the areas you enter, regardless of the threats that could be hiding around each corner. By the end of the game, I was intimately familiar with the layout of the pizzeria, which was a great feeling to have during more intense segments.
Astonishing Atmosphere
Into the Pit makes an eerily strong use of atmosphere and environmental design, to an extent that I was never expecting based purely on screenshots. The game opens with a heads-up that headphones are recommended and I took this recommendation with an admitted shrug of the shoulders. I’d played the other games in the series – I knew what I was getting into. Or so I thought. What followed was some genuinely unnerving audio design that had me on edge more times than I’d care to admit.
Animations are slick and environments popping with grimy details to explore, even in the quieter moments the atmosphere was borderline palpable. Being adapted from the short story of the same name, Into the Pit wastes none of the description from the pages and manages to distil it into a pleasant pixel art style that animates smoothly.
Environments are full of details and secrets that forecast upcoming threats or just add to the derelict atmosphere of Freddy’s; while you never really interact with them, the looming shadows of the endoskeletons in the darkened backstage room, or an opening door with a pair of eyes in the dark added to the narrative journey of Oswald throughout the game, and really made the most out of what is quite a small setting.
One half of me wishes that interactable elements were a bit more obvious in light of the rest of the detail on screen, then another part of me is thankful that I did cover each area from top to bottom in my hunt for precious trading items or just one more battery for my flashlight.
A Bumpy Ride
On paper, all of the above sounds like a brilliant new direction for the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise as a whole; a direction that builds upon what made the franchise stand out to begin with, and forgoing the (frankly) absurd science-fiction elements that have become a mainstay. Unfortunately, the transition to an adventure title in this sense hasn’t been the smoothest, with some pretty major issues dampening what should have been a short but sweet time.
My own experience with reviewing the game has been marred by bugs and oddities that created significant obstacles in actually playing the game. While my initial issues of the in-game flashlight not working have been fixed through a launch day patch, this issue was replaced by one that prevented me from even getting past the title screen without deleting my entire save game from inside the PlayStation 5 system menu.
Outside of the various bugs that I’ve come across, the game itself feels quite clunky in its movement and interactions with the environment. Menus felt over-sensitive and there was what felt like a good half-second of input lag throughout, which wasn’t ideal when trying to run away from a charging animatronic rabbit.
Like I said, most of these will probably be patched by the time you read this review, but I would be remiss to not mention the issues that I had throughout – which stood out all the more in a game that is already limited in scope.
When it comes down to the wire, Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit is a light survival horror experience with some great ideas buried just underneath some clunky execution that could easily be polished if they continue with this direction—which I very much hope they do. Five Nights at Freddy’s isn’t going anywhere, but if we’re to be stuck with the haunted animatronics, this is how I’d want it to be.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Into the Pit is out now for PS5, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox Series X/S.
Review code kindly provided by publisher.