How Good is FNaF Secret of the Mimic?
PREMISE
In this game you control Arnold, a Fazbear technician who’s been sent to Murray’s Costume Manor to retrieve an animatronic Edwin Murray was contracted to work on for Fazbear. It’s an endoskeleton that is supposed to be able to adapt to any costume and become any character. However, Edwin has gone silent and thus, everything he worked on for Fazbear is now theirs, and you’re sent to retrieve it. You have to enter the manor and find out as much as you can while managing to avoid The Mimic. There’s a bunch of mail you can read too, deepening the lore but that’s far beyond the scope of this video, but it’s really interesting stuff.
GAMEPLAY
In terms of gameplay, like mentioned before this game follows heavily in the footsteps of RUIN’s gameplay, where your objective is to solve puzzles while running around and not dying. Unlike RUIN however, there’s an actual threat to your existence while you roam around the manor. There’s a few rooms where you’re completely safe but for the most part, you are gonna have to hide from the mimic. His AI isn’t a joke like previous games either, its pathing and chase states are really well made, to the point of actually being a bit annoying because of how good it is. There’s been times where it camps around an area I need to go and becomes hard to lure away due to it resuming the normal pathing once a distraction ends. Good luck getting it off your tail if it ever sees you, because not only does it go mach 10 to reach you but isn’t easily fooled like SB’s AI. Although, as much praise as I’m giving it there’s definitely room for improvement. There’s been times where I got away with things I shouldn’t have and the camping problem really shines in the game’s secret ending. The Mimic will also change its outfit every so often, making for a good bit of visual varietyThe times you aren’t dealing with the mimic aren’t half baked either, with them either being chase sequences or standard rooms, sometimes even both.
Jackie is the first of the alternate threats, and despite seemingly being the mascot of the game–with her showing up in all the marketing material and being heavily featured in the HW2 mimic update–she’s not really in the game for long. You open her box, go to another room and then starts her chase sequence. She absolutely thrashes this poor bot and throws him through the wall, allowing you to escape as well. The chase goes on for a few rooms, with a small lever sequence before you slam a door on Jackie. She’ll reappear in a vent ahead, but the vent collapses and she’s never seen again. A real shame since I really like her design and was looking forward to her being featured more, but alas, we can’t dwell on the what-ifs for too long.
After crash landing back into the security office, you’re instructed to go to Big Top’s showroom, and as luck would have it, he’s your next obstacle. Thankfully, this encounter is much more involved than Jackie’s with you having to play minigames to earn spins, and between each minigame you have to go reset the power so Big Top doesn’t kill you while avoiding the mannequins that will speak if you get near them. Now I imagine this sequence is probably more fun if you’re playing with a controller, because oh my god do the puzzle controls feel absolutely horrid on mouse. Now, I should’ve maybe expected this considering the fact that the pause screen shows a controller, but these controls feel flat out untested on mouse. There’s no keyboard support either, which would fix this problem for PC players. The primary puzzles that suffer the most are the power and crane puzzles. Oh my god the crane puzzles. It got to a point in my original playthrough where I plugged in my controller just to end the frustration. Other than those, I actually like how interactive this game is, with the little things like having to manually rotate your Data Diver, the cranks on presents and the locks on safes.
Getting back on track, after you deal with Big Top you gain access to the roof and this is where his chase sequence begins. The roof is criminally underused, with it only existing for this sequence and nothing else. I’m pretty sure there was a trailer shot of the mimic being up here, which would’ve been super cool to see some sort of objective up here. Getting off the roof, you have to run through the building, avoiding Big Top and the thing I like about this chase is that the path you take is random as Big Top will block off random doors each time. Then you have a crawl segment, which isn’t really fun but it’s a lot easier than the first part of the chase. Finally, we end with another crash sequence, where you’ll end up in a room right outside the security office with Big Top decommissioned.
Dispatch directs you to the workshop next, where you’ll have to build your own animatronic suit while avoiding the mimic. This is where the mimic AI shines in both how good it is and how annoying it is. Take this clip for instance; where the mimic spawns directly in front of me and I die. Classic Steel Wool moment right there. Ideally you’d like to get the mimic on the opposite floor that your next part is, but sometimes it can be tricky to get it to stay there. If you’re stuck on where the parts are, the cameras by the office can show you where the parts are, as a couple may not be so obvious. Afterwards you’ll get to–you guessed it–control the animatronic you just built, getting to do some neat puzzles with it. The first room you have to do a power puzzle (ugh) and run back to your suit–which is halfway across the room–and get back in before the mimic destroys you. Then you do some more puzzles where you have to do something out of the suit and then hop back in the suit, but this sequence also gives us our first look at the tiger. They’ll become important later but for now, finish up the room and enter the theater, where you have to shoot targets to progress the play. It’s an interesting idea for sure, but feels like it drags on just a bit too long. This–yet again–leads to another crash sequence (seriously, how many of these are there) where our next threat is introduced, the nurse.
We somehow survive falling so far down in a giant animatronic suit (truly a first for this franchise) and in order to survive the cleaning process we have to escape the nurse, so we do just that. You have to repair the door and open it with the terminal, then go through. This room is a fairly usual situation, where you have to throw compacted pieces of parts into the trash chutes and push a button in the middle-ish of the room. Hitting the button opens the maintenance room, which is where we’ll kill the nurse by using the trash to push her into the fire. Head into the power reactor where the nurse somehow survives, which you should know considering the achievement didn’t pop when we dunked her into the fire a few moments ago. Next up is–sigh–another chase sequence where you have to run away from the nurse. This eventually turns into a stealth segment, where the nurse still isn’t defeated because the achievement still hasn’t shown up. Finally, you’ll enter the elevator where the nurse will try to break in through the top, because for some reason she can’t just melt the roof of the elevator but anyway, following the instructions will finally, truly, for real this time, destroy the nurse, and you can be sure of this because the achievement finally shows up.
You’ll finally be directed to the warehouse, where you have to do another power puzzle while avoiding the mimic. Nothing too hard and then you get the crane puzzle. I already said my grievances with this puzzle earlier but this was the most frustrated I had ever gotten with this game. Next up is an office stealth segment, with this area housing the final Data Diver upgrade. Something that feels weirdly spaced out but more on that later. Afterwards, you’ll enter the basement and this is probably my least favorite sequence of the game. This area is covered in darkness and you have to traverse to each spot of light in order to avoid being jumpscared, with the tiger chasing you if you’re in the darkness too long. Some lights will have the tiger show up in them, but they’re easy to avoid. Eventually you’ll reach a gold star that you have to traverse a maze to insert, which despawns the tiger for this area. Repeat this a few times and you’re nearly done.
Finally, you’ll head to the security office for the final time, where you have two choices. The normal ending sees you turning in your data diver and leaving, being killed and stuffed by the mimic. However, on the terminal there is a new program–called parachute.exe–which will open a vent next to you and allow you to progress down the secret ending. By going back to the show stage from the beginning of the game, you can lower down to the depths of the manor. By some miracle, Big Top shows back up, despite us getting the achievement for his death earlier. Your elevator will occasionally break down, but just pull the levers with the glowing red light above it and you’ll be good. You’ll eventually get to a brand new room, showing a giant Freddy Fazbear head that holds the generator that will let you to the next room, all the while dispatch is bombarding you with questions. You’ll enter a room that seems to be a prototype of the fnaf 1 building, with early versions of the animatronics around the place. To progress you’ll have to drain the office’s power and this is a really cool concept. Actually getting to play as an animatronic is a really neat idea, something that’s heavily underutilized. Through exploring the area, you’ll finally reach the security office where you’ll find out the dispatch that has been talking to you isn’t actually dispatch and is instead Fiona, Edwin’s wife. It’ll tell you to head to Edwin’s house, and that’s exactly what we do.
The house segment is probably the most annoying, as you have to collect 5 film reels and watch them, making sure to note the numbers shown at the end. The color of these also matter, with the colors on the polaroid being the order that you need to input the numbers. My problem with this area is The Mimic’s AI loves to camp the stairs sometimes, making it really hard to get the upstairs reels back down. I typically just go for 4 reels and brute force it that way, since I’m only missing one number. After this you’ll have the final chase sequence, where you’re running from the mimic and this is probably the most fun chase sequence in the game. After you leave the manor, you’ll get ambushed by the mimic and it’ll crash your vehicle, stealing your data diver and the game will end.
And that about does it for the gameplay, overall it’s solid but insanely repetitive. The pacing of your data diver upgrades feels really weird because you get the first 2 almost immediately and then go a fair length of time before the last 3 show up. The puzzles aren’t different enough between areas to break up the monotony of them, because this game loves throwing the same puzzles at you. Throw in the jank puzzle controls and constant moments of complete inaction and it’s hard to recommend this game for its current price tag. It’s not nearly long enough like SB to feel worth $40. If you’re a fan of puzzle horror games, definitely pick this game up on a decent sale.
The atmosphere is among the better in the series, with the visuals and sound design being insanely well done. I was a fan of the visuals all the way from when the game was initially revealed, and the full game did not disappoint. The manor is a really well designed location and it blows SB/Ruin out of the water, especially with how hard the mimic is compared to anything those games offered. This game is also fairly stable, with no weird game breaking glitches that let you bypass death. I hope this level of quality is the standard going forward, but I’d really like to see a different format in the future, as I’m not personally the biggest fan of the puzzle horror games, or at the minimum make the puzzles more unique between areas.
CONCLUSION
Overall, Secret of the Mimic is a good game but just comes off as disappointing for me personally. The puzzles are too monotonous and janky to make me want to play, and while the stealth segments are the best they’ve ever been, I wish the scope could’ve been a bit bigger while maintaining the polish this game has. But for now, I’d like to thank you all for watching, stay hydrated and I’ll see you next time.
video link: https://youtu.be/F5VDJ-BpkEM?si=l74BdDWtkkbiyJq5
short director's commentary: i'll be blunt; i did this video purely out of a sense of obligation. i did not want to
make it because replaying this game was a massive slog, probably being the thing that took me the longest to do. i
barely put that much effort into this and it definitely shows, but i wanted to work on a shorter project before i took
on a really big project that has since been put on hold but i promise will come out next year.
ADDENDUM DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY: i decided to revist these old blogs to fix up some weird spacing
issues and making the image larger. no problem, right? turns out today blogspot (for some reason) decided that
when i copy my scripts over, it's gonna remove the color from the text and make it really fucking difficult to fix,
so i had to paste (with formatting) and manually add line breaks. so sorry if the line breaks are jank as hell in here,
can't do much about it right now. maybe this'll get fixed next time (doubtful) but if it doesn't i might just abandon
this blog all together tbh.
word count: 2,320
video length: 11:57
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