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Ranking:
Release Date: March 24th, 2015 Movie Release Year: 2015

Slender: The Arrival

Overview -

The first true urban legend of the internet age, the Slender Man is a far cry from the hook-handed slayers of young lovers and Bloody Marys of generations past. There is no one Slender Man story, but hundreds, shared and saved forever as "copypasta" on the internet. Blue Island Studios' task is to bring the horror home, make it real, part of a dark, moody, atmospheric first-person survival horror title, making their own indelible mark on the legend.

OVERALL:
For Fans Only
Rating Breakdown
VIDEO
AUDIO
Tech Specs & Release Details
Release Date:
March 24th, 2015

Video Review

Ranking:

'Slender: The Arrival' is at its most impressive only for brief moments at the start of each chapter, where Lauren finds herself in clear, warm autumn environs of falling leaves, gentle, fading sunlight, and golden soil under foot. Each stage then fades to darkness, lit by a weak flashlight which mildly covers for its low-budget origins, but not all the way. The environments are bland, sparsely populated, but lend a certain creeping unease by the paltry light. It's not necessarily going to take anyone's breath away, but it does do its job rather well.

Audio Review

Ranking:

This is where 'Slender: The Arrival' does its best work, with a oppressively dense soundscape that uses suddenly broken silence just as well as it does the static barrage that accompanies the Slender Man's approach. The score is sporadic, but appropriately abstract, where even the predictable stings are distorted and sharp in a way you don't normally hear. If there's a genuinely strong recommendation to be had, it's to be in the room with the game for 5 minutes, and count the seconds till you start to squirm.

Final Thoughts

The final nail in 'Slender: The Arrival's coffin is the simple fact that it's been uprezzed and cleaned up for the wrong gen, a generation where Hideo Kojima/Guillermo Del Toro's 'P.T.' has many of the same ideas, executed with maturity and expert dread, where progression isn't dependent on escaping the horror, but being forced to walk up and let it terrorize you face to face, and most importantly, it's an experience that's 100% free. 'Slender' offering something a similarly unique experience, but undoubtedly lesser, predicated on the success of successive, telegraphed jump scares and repetitive exploration can't hope to compete, and couldn't even if 'P.T.' wasn't in the picture. The result is a game that feels, pun unintended, thin on content.