Poppy Playtime Chapter 4 comes across as extremely rushed. There are bugs galore, animations are janky af and the game itself is overall not scary. It is almost like Mob Entertainment were pushing this out regardless, to meet some arbitrary date. I dont believe this game was thoroughly play tested and overall, whilst there are some good story moments, and some interesting reveals that set Chapter 5 up well, this is an absolute step down from chapter 3.

It says I have played zero hours, but this is not correct. I have the game and have played it through it entirely.

Below are specific critique's tied to spoilers:

Mob devoted large amounts of effort to introduce the nightmare critters, they get their own backstory and everything, just to do absolutely zero with them in chapter 4. The same applies to Pianosaurus who gets 10s of screentime just to be killed off immediately, never to be seen again. They re-use assets like the cardboard cutouts of the smiling criters, as opposed to creating ones for the nightmare critters? Why do some of the smiling critters in the safe haven talk, and some don't? This just wreaks of sheer laziness from the devs.

Yarnabys animations are jank. He moves almost like a robot and his chase that leads to his death was anticlimactic. If you compare this to the chase scenes of Huggy or Mommy Long Legs, it falls extremely short. You run past some boxes, go up some stairs, swing on a chain, which he (somehow???) gets caught on then burst into flames? I also experienced the bug of Yarnaby not spawning for most (if not all) of the No Man's Land stealth sections, so the whole interaction with Yarnaby was disappointing.

Further, Sawyer didn't really feel like a protagonist and his death was also disappointing. This is not only due to the fact he is killed very quickly, when you kill him, you are chased by several of the robots, forcing you to run backwards or up the stairs, completely missing his death.

In Chapters 1-3, everything was an immediate threat, often resulting in immediate death. In Chapter 4, this is extremely toned down as many interactions cause you to take damage, dramatically reducing the fear and intensity of the engagements. The Nightmare critters, baba chops (in his bigger form) and Sawyer's robots are more an inconvenience as opposed to something that induces fear and terror. In the previous games, pretty much every experience I was scared sh*tless. I was not scared sh*tless in the slightest in chapter 4, and that was a disappointment.