Five Nights at Freddy's 3

The third game of the franchise and one of the least appreciated by the fans, Five Nights at Freddy's 3 was released just a few months after the second game (same case with the second compared to the first) and gave players the answers to many of the theories that fans had speculated about, putting an "end" to the franchise's history. Even accompanied by a set of secret mini-games and offering more extras, it ended up maintaining the same style of gameplay as the previous games and significantly reducing diversity, beginning a phase of deterioration and decline in popularity.

With a similar concept to the previous games, Five Nights at Freddy's 3 concludes what is considered by fans to be the "Original Story", behaving like a gold-plated attempt that caused more disappointment than enthusiasm. In this game, the protagonist is hired (like in the previous games) to work as a Night Guard for five nights (from Midnight to 6am) in a horror attraction that explores the myths and legends of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza (the company responsible for the pizzerias in the previous games, steeped in rumours and conspiracies about disappearances). Unlike the previous games, where the player is forced to survive the five nights against a host of animatronics with vengeful spirits, in Five Nights at Freddy's 3, the player is put to the test to protect himself from a single animatronic: Springtrap, an animatronic found "at random" at the back of the attraction's building. With no security doors or protective masks, all that is available to the player is the video surveillance system, the attraction's sound system and the ventilation system. Excessive use of these vital resources can cause "system crashes" that have to be fixed by the Control Panel (an innovation that to this day divides fans), leading the player to lose useful seconds during the game. In addition to the constant threat of Springtrap, the player is "haunted" by phantoms, hallucinations of the animatronics from the previous game that cause system crashes (and disrupt gameplay). As always, we have the presence of the "Phone Guy" who reveals a little about the events that are taking place at the beginning of each night and, at the end of each night, we have access to a mini-game that narrates the story. Secret mini-games (with different endings) can also be found in different scenarios (and different nights), but that's up to the player to discover.

Even though it's the supposed end of the franchise, Five Nights at Freddy's 3 is nothing less than a failed attempt to produce an epic poem without any kind of metre. With weak horror elements and even lower difficulty compared to the previous games, as well as the constant exploitation of a gameplay that had already proved repetitive and saturated, all that saves this game are the mini-games (which carry the whole story on their backs) and the diversity of endings (there is a "Good" ending and a "Bad" ending, depending on which mini-games the player unlocks). While the previous games had "Story Mode" and "Custom Mode", the game offers a substitute mode called "Nightmare" (which is the equivalent of the sixth night present in the previous ones). It's still a fun and "challenging" experience, but the existence of only a single animatronic (which can be easily contained if the player discovers the game's programming pattern) and the implementation of the Command Panel can make gameplay frustrating and tiring. I therefore give the game a rating of 6.5/10.