Slender - Run! F#cking Run!

Surprise, Muthaf#cka!

I posted earlier that I wanted to branch out in terms of my reviews, so today I am bringing you the first game review, and it's a corker. Based off some dodgy mythology about a figure known as the 'Slender Man', this 1st person exploration game gets superbly creepy. Your character has climbed into a fenced-off, heavily wooded area for some unknown reason and has to try and collect 8 pages of doodles left for him by the Slender Man before getting caught.

It is absolutely, balls-to-the-wall terrifying. I didn't think that a computer game could be so horrifically disturbing. The game map is put together so that confusion is the first order of the player - the woods all end up looking the same and there are only ten landmarks (such as a decrepit truck and a run down collection of tiled rooms) to help you get your bearings, upon eight of which will be posted pages. The Slender Man pops up whenever he feels ready, though it reportedly gets more frequent the more of his notes you collect. I say reportedly because when Esteban and I played together, we were so tense that our first sighting of the aforementioned fiend caused us to leap away from the game controls and thus guaranteeing our avatar's demise without someone to control his hasty escape. Oh yeah, we literally played together, Esteban on the WASD keys and yours truly on the mouse - it's just that scary. I ended up literally sweating and yodelling 'Run! Just Fucking Run! Ahhhhh!' everytime we ran into him.

Some minor gripes - it's annoying to not be able to sprint with the torch up, the graphics are pretty average and apparently the game engine can screw up occasionally and cause the thin devil to appear right in front of you from nowhere, but they are ultimately very minor. Esteban had this sentence to contribute: Slender man creates some chronic suspenses so you will not want to watch but you have to to make page finds.

 I can highly recommend this if you're after a shocking night in - 7 out of 8 ominous, handwritten warnings.

Some nice links -
The game download site: http://slendergame.com/
A steely player finishing like a boss: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayVyc0K5tCA
11 drunk guys playing Slender (vulgar yet undeniably hilarious): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXwkfSmYkf4