Slender: The Arrival
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Critic Reviews for Slender: The Arrival
Slender delivers plenty of solid jump-scares spread across the story mode, but there's far too much repetitive gameplay in between the actual action to make it worth the experience.
With the move to current-gen consoles and a few new levels, horror hit Slender continues to offer up scares, but at the cost of its own mystique.
Slender: The Arrival has solid qualities, as well as some hit or miss tendencies, leaning towards the miss side.
Slender: The Arrival boasts some genuinely scary moments, but offers little beyond them. Chapters serve as a mini party game with friends, making this point-and-click game more of a horror movie than an actual interactive scare fest. The lack of a real story dampers things further, and if by some weird chance that players suffer the Slenderman hunt a second time, the feeling of that genuine fright will be long gone.
When you're not getting annoyed at being unable to find the final item in a given area, Slender: The Arrival is an excellent horror game that will leave your pulse racing. It's terrifying to be chased by these relentless enemies - frightening to see them no matter where you turn as you lose yourself deeper and deeper in the game's maze-like environments. It's just a shame that it can get so unbearably annoying to have to find a single scrap of paper hidden in a forest while enemies seem to guard its location over aggressively. If you can tolerate these moments, however, you'll experience a truly frightening game that will leave your guts in knots as you try, and fail (and fail, and fail), to stay alive.
Slender: The Arrival is far from the greatest horror game on Nintendo Switch. With the likes of Outlast 2, Layers of Fear, and Resident Evil to compete against, this bland and bare horror title shows its true colours separated from the hype of 2013. Unlike the mystical powers of the Slenderman, there's nothing compelling here in the slightest, unless you like looking at poorly rendered forestry.
Slender: The Arrival is neither a bad or exceedingly good title. If you've played the last-gen version, you'll be getting the same thing here. If you're a newcomer, you'll be getting a fun but quick-to-finish game. The graphics haven't improved all that much and even the same glitch remains, but nonetheless it is still a title that provides entertainment. The soundtrack can be top-notch in places and the run of adrenaline can spur you on to keep playing when you see Slender Man for the first time. At its reasonably cheap price of £7.99/$9.99, the game isn't on the highly recommended list. Slender may be starting to lose his frightening charm, but he still manages to keep us on our toes, even if it is just for a short while.
Short of the performance and presentation improvements, this is the same survival horror game that you've probably already played. It functions fine now, and is perfectly adequate if you're in the market for a cheap and cheerful blast of terror – but don't expect much more. Small in both scope and budget, Slender: The Arrival is little more than a rest stop on the way to something bigger and better.
