The Dolls Reviews

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    From the makers of The Final Take and more recently Shut Eye, comes a more controversial release; The Dolls: Reborn. Launched in May, 2016, the game was taken down due to copyright issues as it resembled another, much more well known, jumpscare horror title. The Dolls was eventually re-released in late June of the same year, after the developers put just enough effort in to it to bypass any potential lawsuits.

    In case you couldn't guess, the game that I was referring to is Five Nights at Freddy's. Even with the insignificant changes to The Dolls, the game still manages to be nearly identical to the acclaimed jumpscare franchise in every way imaginable. From the phone call you get at the beginning of each shift, to the way that the clock rolls over at the end of the day, to the door and power mechanics. The lights are different, since you carry around a flashlight, and you can actually move around a 3D environment instead of sitting stagnant in an office, but that's pretty well all that's different other than of course the main "scary" enemy being dolls.

    In fact, it's better that you don't sit in the little office. You can almost always skip the jumpscare if you're walking aimlessly around the small, horribly lit building. That's another thing... why do all of HUSH Interactive's games have a really terrible, dark, sepia filter? I literally felt like I was playing 95% of the game with my eyes closed, even with the flashlight on. The Final Take was just as bad, and in either game using a flashlight barely makes a difference; you still can't see more than two feet in front of you. Anyway, the scares aren't even scary whatsoever, and you can walk right into the dolls that're sitting around without being harmed. You'll know when you're about to get "frightened" due to a very obvious noise, so if you move away quickly enough it doesn't happen.

    There's really no rhyme or reason to the scare mechanic in The Dolls: Reborn, it just seems to happen at random; it's most likely an invisible enemy following you around or wandering the hallways. Not only is it a decrepit ripoff of Five Nights at Freddy's, but it's just plain boring. I'm not a fan of the aforementioned franchise, but what does make it so successful is that it actually has decent mechanics, a good story, and a lot of innovative gameplay. This is just a soulless, dime-a-dozen title in a field of copycats that've attempted to leach off of the success of FNaF. You should not only avoid this title, but HUSH Interactive as a whole; they've proven over the three shovelware games that they've piled onto Steam in the last year that they cannot fathom obtaining an original concept.

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