Game Reviews

Slender Rising

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iOS
| Slender Rising
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Slender Rising
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iOS
| Slender Rising

If you've never heard of the Slender Man myth, playing Slender Rising could scare you more than waking up to find a clown perched at the end of your bed.

If, however, you've been following the strange gentleman's progress for a while, or you've played the unsettling free Slender game on PC, then you're more likely to experience the kind of 'mild peril' found in the average 12A movie.

With horror, familiarity breeds contempt, and despite a couple of smart ideas - like a night vision mode that restricts your vision even more - this is a first-person fright-'em-up that plays it too safe to be really scary.

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Unlike the execrable Slender-Man, Michael Hegemann's effort is coded and designed to give a promising first impression.

Whether you pick to explore the Cursed Ruins or Desolate Town, you'll immediately be submerged in soupy fog through which shapes and shadows morph into familiar signs of human desolation - abandoned cars, log cabins, and empty streets.

The Unreal-powered graphics bring to mind the oppressive atmosphere of PSP title Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, and the maze-like quality of the stages means it's easy to feel disorientated and vulnerable.

Your goal, as ever, is to find enough pages tacked to scenery to fend off the mostly sporadic attacks from the sole otherworldly enemy - a tall thin man in an anachronistic suit. When he appears in front of you, the screen fizzes and crackles, and if you don't peg it out of sight he'll wrench you in with black tentacles that shoot from his back.

Swiping frantically at the screen might free you a couple of times, but eventually you'll be hauled towards his blank face and the oblivion of the restart menu.

In The Endless Stare mode, death is inevitable no matter how many pages you scrape together, but A Chance To Escape gives you exactly that if you manage to grab a lucky seven.

Did you hear that?

The game does offer a helping hand in the form of screeches and fly buzzing effects that hint when a page is close by, also adding to the growing feeling of dread.

It's definitely a creepy game, and newcomers will relish the slow build to the Slender Man's first appearance.

Old hands will mostly just enjoy how polished this incarnation of their favourite mythical creature is - especially if you switch from the default point-and-click mode to the more immersive swipe to look and joypad to move combo.

But there's no doubt the Slender Rising's familiar shocks lack the variety or originality to keep you gripping your iPad in pure panic after a more than a couple of goes.

Slender Rising

While easily the best Slender Man title on App Store, it's unlikely to chill the blood of anyone who's stared down the skinny apparition before
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Paul Devlin
Paul Devlin
A newspaper reporter turned games journo, Paul's first ever console was an original white Game Boy (still in working order, albeit with a yellowing tinge and 30 second battery life). Now he writes about Android with a style positively dripping in Honeycomb, stuffed with Gingerbread and coated with Froyo