POPGOES - Fangame Review (Revisited)

so it's difficult to come across fan games that haven't been through so much development he'll actually make it to a finalized state through persistence or just plain luck most oftentimes to hear about somebody's fan game being canceled as is a running joke with the vast majority of these finished tributes likely jito and experienced developers under estimating just how much time effort on teamwork needs to go into even the simplest of fan games other times the worker can just get too overwhelming people might drop out the team things just might not go to plan welcome to free on a project as ambitious as a playable fan game can be pretty taxing pop-goes is one of those anomalies what began as a fairly different experience early on in development turned into a pretty different fan game in a lot of areas to the point where its developer Ken Carter refers to the game as either pop goes 2015 or 2016 depending on which point in development is being discussed the dividing line around Christmas 2015 and after some fairly unfavorable road bumps along the way pop goes finally pushed through and made its way to game jolts and released on June 26th 2016 this is a fairly fascinating fair game to discuss and not unlike my review of five nights at candy's remastered I'll be at that technically an updated version of the same game this is a nother review yeah I kind of figured the video I pronounced epitome as epitome counts towards being one of my biggest sins so hey thought I'd give the game a second chance with a proper critical view this time going over the game as a whole and generally you know properly reviewing the thing it was like 15 when I made that initial review what he expects competence but hey we're here now I'm ready to just review the piss out of this thing so yeah here we go before I truly dive in I want to establish that there is a lot more to the story history and universe of pop goes then just the one fan game spanning years of content the playable teaser was even developed and published as its own spin-off game taking the form of an RPG a few months prior to release but just for the sake of keeping this video at a reasonable length I'll be avoiding anything that isn't just like the core fan game also I should probably establish the pop goes alone has like a [ __ ] on a law which I would not be throwing myself very far into I want to focus more on the game as a whole rather than sit here spelling out the story to you alright good cool yeah great awesome is weasel hours so pop goes opens up to a bit of an unexpected title screen no you typical game logo rather welcome to weasel we're a little odd but I figure it's some kind of problem a feature to the game or something anyway game well it's and this is already particularly unique in terms of location well not the building as a whole rather way or situated specifically in the building the building in question the pop goes pizzeria names after the restaurant titular character pop goes the weasel' yeah this fine games got a bit of a thing for wordplay get used to it pop goes takes place one year after fazbear's fright and this fan games a little unique in the fact that it branches off from the law presented in five nights at Freddy's 3 and forms its own cannon as a way to neatly tie up loose ends only considering those first three Freddy's games in other words therefore anon words aren't canons of the Vagos timeline the second opening card before the title screen boots up makes that much clearer and canonically the pop gasa pizzeria was built from the ground up with those original restaurants in mind to the point where pop goes as hats is the very same that originally belongs to freddy fazbear acquired from the post fazbear's fright auction by the owner of said pizzeria a man who only goes by the name Fritz know so Fritz myth right last so I can only assume them to be especially considering the game strong resemblance to five nights freddy's 2 as a whole the animatronic plastic shells the general designs of said animatronics they definitely take inspiration from two story animatronics the sleeker more futuristic feel and the environments the whole aura of this being the newest safer and more technologically advanced restaurants it's fairly in line with the location in freddy's 2 even some of the easter eggs and small plastic figures scattered about are just straight-up toy animatronics oh and speaking of easter eggs i must have gotten this one a fun time foxy about four times in comparisons are like two other toy animatronic elisa nations i get us because she appears in the room you'll check pretty often but i don't know just so that's kind of odd but sir yeah for the nice segments instead of an office to kick about and you'll be sitting in front of one of the publicly accessible pcs for customers of the establishment to use during the day in the primary dining area and sure enough the very animatronics you're tasked with stopping from ending your playthrough are in the immediate vicinity right up there on the show stage i already dig this concept well this is pretty unusual this establishes on the spot that this is unlike most fan games to draw the animatronics out to be like bloodthirsty killers by default or whatever instead starting off with robots close by almost as if the game is assuring right there and then that they're not intent on making a beeline to you well so I find it kind of funny that the reason you shoved in front of one of the internet cafe monitors not given your own room is because the owner logistical he just couldn't scramble anything together for you in time and besides as he explains one of the phone calls he's already actually chilling over in his own office across the hall from you the entire time very orderly he had assumed that defeats the whole purpose of having a night watchman right you can swivel around 360 degrees with the weasel and squirrel animatronics pokers and the squirrels sister Sara and saffron respectively propped up behind you the Badger animatronic Blake sitting over on the far side of the restaurant to your left and out the window to your rights the crow character Stone fixed outside the window and yeah these guys are just chillin man it really doesn't seem like this game is as straightforward as animatronic bad right off the bat you know there's certainly got to be something more to this as Fritz does explain to you in the course safety and transparency really are the restaurants top priorities and us seems to be the case the euroval seem to abide by that policy for once also yeah it seems to be pretty commonplace by now most fan games were greeted by a phone call at the beginning of each night from fritz himself unlike a lot of the exposition dump phone messages a lot of fan games seem to fall into the trap of Fritz ax schools are pretty engaging over there out and they're certainly quite well written the mechanics aren't how I explained to you a lot of the time either explanations on how certain mechanics work and how animatronics behave are woven into stories I think a good example as Fritz is retelling of watching a kid interact with Blake in the server room playing Simon Says which is you know pretty much exactly what Blake's mechanic is requiring you to read the color of the monitor on the camera pressing the corresponding colors button on the desk and calling him over to use drag him out the room one really cool feature with these phone calls is at the end of each one you're treated to one of three questions to ask the guy a multiple choice can a deal which is an element of replay value I've never really seen any other fan game pull off these cool segments are almost always just the extra lines of dialogue the dabble a tad further into the background of Fritz and the restaurants and well they're not like you know super insanely exciting additions to the game or whatever you know it's still cool to be able to replay a night and elicit their an option you would have had the first time around it's definitely some neat little variation for a replay value which is definitely something you'll have to worry about to get all the endings here more on that shortly oh and speaking of the phone calls we do get an explanation for what that we's aware thing was on the menu as explained by cameras okay with that context okay yeah that menu UI is pretty cool it's like an extension of the in universe visa where interface expanded upon sir introduces to the game itself that's pretty neat so to replace the typical tablet or monitor at your disposal is set phone allowing you total access to the building's various tools to prevent the animatronics from oh well not reaching you rather completing a task it's a little unconventional and really not something you see much of in these fan games so I appreciate the direction Caine's gone for here but goes the weasel' will wander into the restaurants main lobby and we'll pick a room at random to make use of his perspective 3d printer is intent on printing various animatronic parts to build a black plastic replica of toy bunny known as black rabbits you'll have to put a stop to that by pushing the room shutdown button Sarah and saffron will make their way around to you via the linear ventilation system you'll have to activate the laser heat beams on any given vents camera to prevent them from progressing further like the Badger will get up and operate in the server room you'll have to press the corresponding button on your desk to match the color that appears on the monitor and then push the yellow button on your left to call them over to you and finally standard yeah okay so you'll of like leave notes as the panic meets from the bottom left and as established by the relatively harmless way the game presents these robots to you they can't kill you not by any conventional means anyway instead they'll do their best to increase your panic level with stone the CRA's mechanic being the most obvious example of this in order to reduce panic you got to look out the window every once in a while bits on occasion this [ __ ] will lag your final shoot right up so you've got to flick back away from the window for a second however Sarah saffron and Blake one directly affects your panic meter rather the squirrels will swipe your phone from you and Blake will kill the connection both outcomes resulting in the loss of the use of EDS causing you to panic fairly quickly and without a way to prevent the animatronics from making things worse this will end your playthrough though while those are the most obvious examples I can give those aren't actually the only ways to increase panic making minor mistakes like shutting down the wrong room heating up the wrong vents pressing the button to call back over at the wrong time even simply looking at the animatronics or clicking the cameras too quickly will she'll panic by small increments more cleverly things like shutting down the room popgoes isn't just before he attempts to print an animatronic part that will also increase your panic a little - according to the developer a lot of these specific situations increase your meter to mimic that of these actually being stressful situations after all the act of having to keep tabs on all these different mechanics can become pretty challenging and boy howdy does this game get stressful it's please of course works fairly differently to the previous games I've reviewed on this channel mechanically anyway every mechanic in the game is built off of a legitimate functional asset in the restaurants and I strange as power-driven doors no mask no ridiculously unconventional methods of traversing from point A to point B no every mechanic you'll come across will have some kind of canonical purpose as a significant element to the restaurant in daylight hours which is very cool however the way Caine's gone about implementing these means that none of the mechanics really play off of each other out of what I mean by this instead of utilizing one or two main defenses against a myriad of enemies that all behave fairly differently in one way or another and having to strategize depending on who's closest to you pop goes instead offers you a slew of enemies that behave completely differently from each other each with their own unique respective way of preventing them from getting to you take one night at flumpty's - for example you're equipped only with a light switch and a pair of vents doors and while the majority of enemies work fairly differently from one another in terms of how they'll attempt to approach you they're all able to be stopped through flicking the lights off for toggling in the correct vent door this means you're always strategizing trying to figure out the best possible option in your line of defense to execute in turn this keeps the gameplay varied and enjoyable throughout or here's another example five nights at candy's your only defense is closing doors but the variation in how the enemies work changes up the gameplay and makes things fairly interesting throughout most notably some of the robots like in those glowing eyes forcing you to check the cameras outside the doors and the animatronic that will slowly rise from its stand only to smash through the glass screen in front of you if you miss your cue well pop code certainly knows the variation in enemies it almost feels like clockwork trying to get through a night especially the later ones and this is likely entirely due to the fact that there's not one overarching defense of your disposal rather it feels like you're going through a checklist stuff to do is that really don't connect in any way okay before you get mad at me I don't hate this game all the mechanics themselves they're all pretty solid as far as original fan game mechanics go but at least from my standpoint I think they work best when they're threaded together to produce a more organic experience that works with itself rather than just a collection of totally separate distractions I also feel like pop goes as mechanic is a tad flawed in itself to in the fact that he'll always face the room he's about to enter which personally I don't fully understand as surely that removes some of the challenge I think changing it up so that he's facing a fairly general direction instead forcing you to click around at ads to try and track him down would have been a tad more engaging I do like totally get it though some people really do enjoy this kind of stressful mess of mechanics and while that's all totally valid in its own right it's just not really my cup of tea but hey after you be tonight and once a little pop goes the weasel jingle plays you're taking straights to a mini game closely resembling the ones you play in five nights at Freddy's 3 at least that's what the playable characters are styled after each night you'll traverse the same map as a different pop goes animatronics tone saffron Sarah Blake and finally Bob goes in that order all the map stays the same the pathway you'll take will change as various rules open and close guiding you towards a respective toy animatronics stuck in some kind of web the towing question is always fairly beat up with some bits and pieces of them laying about the path you'll take to reach them and once you do well you don't get to see what happens there minigame cuts outs and you're taken straight to the next night well there's clearly some significance to these minigames it's hard to determine so I will say that the environment urine looks awfully organic like like you're wandering through somebody's inside or somebody's brain or something it's definitely at adults but sort of cool nonetheless oh you do also get some pretty intriguing little sketches if you hover over a certain piece of any other given robot scattered about some tap the space bar a few times you'll be brought to one of these I'm guessing they're like snapshots of the story in a sense pieces of a puzzle you're expected to put together but yeah that's pretty much how the game will play outs new mechanics are introduced each night you've got a call from fritz survived night son of a [ __ ] yeah the notorious sixth Knights wouldn't be a fan game without lying about it in the title of the game Oh Knight six is nothing special of course it's the most challenging main Knights but the most notable change here is that Fritz is seemingly void about a revelation he's just made asking you if you could trust someone who while they have made big mistakes in their life dint regret it will in the end you're simply given a yes or no option at the end of the call with neither having any bearing on any potential endings or scenarios let alone even another voice message from fritz on ok again this isn't like a huge difference or Nothing it's a bit of a twist on the previous night's multiple choice answers otherwise the night is the same as usual but you have been nice six and you'll get a fairly simple ending card with pop goes gang all lined up in front of what is clearly a stunned The Crow reskin but he's like made of ice or something holding a sign telling us two finds of the truth okay I'm guessing from this alone there's certainly more to this game than what it's offered to us at face value though I'm pretty sure I've seen this guy before yeah he appeared in a couple of those mini games and even on the cameras occasionally I can have seen this guy's a little more significant than what's being led on so once you're taken back to the title screen you'll unlock access to a slew of extras and unlocks character profiles character Roman prophet of elements even scraps concepts with a fair amount descriptions to accompany detailing the history behind them as always I really dig the behind the scenes stuff for this sort of thing especially for fan games these are after all fan passion projects made entirely for free so to see this much bonus content from the infamous Muslim all to a canceled sequel to even a freaking graphic novel outlining the popco story is truly really cool oh hey you're able to view the mini game map from here now I don't see why you would Organic like like you're wandering through somebody's inside or somebody's brain or something hey I don't mind them showing this at all so hey in addition to all that funky stuff were also treated to a custom Nights all the good nights has the game refers to as and these guys certainly went all out you got specific challenge Mars rewards for zip modes even some cheats and bonus challenges with special phone wallpaper unlocks for beating the main challenge modes with the added difficulty one thing I think kind of defeats a bit of replay value here is that said phone wallpapers only appear on custom nights and you know having unlockable fun wallpapers is such a cool little concept and it's kind of a shame that you can't play through the meter the game with them enabled a bit of an obscure example of a kind of like how new Super Mario Brothers would give you touch screen wallpaper unlocks in return for collects and the games hidden star coins and sure enough he can go back and play through the entire game if you wanted with those enabled you know I just think that's a neat extra that went a waste a little here but hey speaking of the custom night difficulty modes being a [ __ ] of fan games as I am I went ahead and beat the toughest vanilla mode on my third try and got absolutely nowhere with any other challenges applied yeah gah motion sucks at fan games yeah can't be five minutes counties to 720 yeah go on bully me yeah I'll see I'll see you on the comments oh what's that you think you're good at pop those guy merchants no no I don't but hey is that all of what pop goes has to offer no of course not well okay before I get into that you do unlock some interesting little extras in the character profiles menu these funky metal statues of each animatronic and strings oh damn yeah we plays this mechanical friggin spider thing I don't even have a juggler there's I just need and hey that does explain a lot so you're only able to rotate at sharp 90-degree angles while your panic level is measured by a meter while your phone flips up and down even listening back through the phone calls they've been intentionally redden to serve as a double meaning both as calls for a human night watchman and for artificial intelligence and hey this is another example of Foucault's taking a fan theory and converting it into an element of his own Canon while a bit of the less popular theory back in the fourth one days people thought that you could have been playing as a robot I mean sure it had explained sitting the same six hour shift after being threatened with like death or whatever so on top of the six main nights and the custom that challenges there is also an alternate secret ending to work towards whoa it's pretty simple to get to just go through the game and die to each enemy take a screencap of each one of their game over screen assume that this number over here translates to the number of seconds you'll have the time itself from at the beginning of each night before checking the camera here find this lanky boy press the corresponding color on the desk and responses I color furnish tonight playing mini game gain ultimate sentience skillet I repeat for five nights aside to black rabbit on the sixth night I'll be done in seconds here in the room here time himself with a sixth night when lanky boy again finish the night play a minigame oh [ __ ] change race kill let's do them hmm sorry typo it didn't mean secrets I haven't see convoluted Azul hell no okay okay yes this is quite a convoluted method of reaching what is the game's like true ending it would certainly take one person a huge amount of trial and error to even begin to find all but that's because pop-goes was designed to be picked apart by the community that it had built up for itself right up to release I figured they were going for something similar to the process involved in reaching that secret ending in five nights at Freddy's 3 the totally obscure puzzles and collectables that had people tear in the game about to reach that was also entirely intended as a community efforts and while due to some unfortunate circumstances the Saint didn't end up happening for buckos all the pieces were certainly in place with something like that to have been possible the idea was for people to share their own screenshots and experiences for example one person finds any one of the robots respect to death screens somebody notices the code in the top-left somebody else experiments with the data and fails and other person figures out what to do with said data and succeeds one person manages to find the strange purple skeleton do than the cameras in response to said data it was all built with the community in mind while you could call this fairly ambitious this is a very cool idea especially for fan games that not many people knew very much about in the grand scheme of things beforehand yet had a pretty sizable following regardless and you know it really is a shame that things didn't go to plan a lot of the game secrets were leaked fairly quickly on its release day but how that not happens I have no doubt it would have been a very similar situation to five nights at Freddy's 3 speaking of that game Lord this is just one of the ways that that specific core Freddy's game influenced pop goes well while I mentioned the fun a theory asking minigames another good example is pop goes is building black rabbit mechanic that was a popular theory around the build-up to Freddy's 3 concerning this teaser here that spring-trap would build an animatronic to go after you from the box of parts well of course I never did end up happening despite how strangely significant this teaser made the box out to be the idea of an animatronic being built right then and there during the night was carried over into pop goes it's little things like that that you got to just sit back and appreciate taking a concept there's so many fans latched on to and actually doing something interesting with it and not only that but to give it a twist such as not simply shoving robot parts together rather 3d printing them is just friggin cool man I mean the entire concept of all these animatronics being 3d printed it's honestly such a rad idea and so as the premise of the pop goes pizzeria itself being a hub of sauce for kids to come along and print their own figurines again it's taking a functional in-universe purpose and translating it into a unique game mechanic but now you might be asking yourself why the 3d printer spread out across several rooms in the building and how are they possibly printing life-sized animatronic suit parts so quickly that doesn't seem very realistic and so that I say this plastic rabbit is levitating but hey what the [ __ ] am i rambling on about right it's it's game time so hey the card you get for finally reaching this ending is definitely something the animatronics are all gray with white glowing joints stones been turned into a gravestone and this spooky a skeleton we keep seeing on the cameras but rest in peace Jeremy Fitzgerald okay so Fred says Jerry Fitzgerald what how yeah it do be now this game being as low heavy as it is combined with me trying to keep this review as focus mainly on the game plays out of things as possible means that there is a lot here that I'm not discussing with the way anybody could reach this conclusion included and hey you can interpret anything you like from this for example does this mean Fritz is dead well yeah probably if hey I am NOT here to explain all that find the truth yeah now upon beating this ending you're granted access to a few extra character unlocks Simon Lux animatronics and gravestone with some extra descriptions detailing just who these mofos really are oh and hey looking through the character profiles again the gravestone and okay gemstone yes very cute two birds one stone again this isn't just wordplay for the sake of wordplay but it's cleverly integrated nonetheless having gemstone a physically transparent character representing this idea of transparency and like nothing being wrong and having gravestone the opposite and okay character representing what's really going on and speaking a work play this dude being named Simon makes all this make a whole lot more sense that Simon Says minigame that is essentially what Blake's mechanic is well here you are doing literally as Simon Says copying the colors that appear in his eyes on the camera and hey speaking of appear currents pop goes definitely has won this game visually has a fairly strong aesthetic everything from the UI to the main night segments all seep this futuristic technologically advanced almost industrial aura even featuring a cool white color temperature to tie together the environment uh denote it almost gives the place like a cold late-night vibe which should you know make sense after all Fritz does mention in the phone calls that they're entering the winter time and you know it's also the middle of the night I'm all it's not too far off from Freddy's 2's visual style like I mentioned earlier it's almost like it's been tweaked just enough to give it as own identity each room is appropriately decorated and colourful enough in its own right and nothing feels overpopulated with props the lighting in some rooms is very OnPoint it's generally very well designed and hey speaking of designs the robot sure do have them and for the most part these are all fairly solid reminiscent of the toy animatronics of course however there aren't a few design choices then never really sat well with me most notably the oversized foreheads on pop-goes and boy as well as the choice to not extrude the bellies of the animatronics you know the way the toy animatronics have exactly that weird I always I think stone is pretty bland in the grand scheme of things he does hold that bright red sign but aside from that's is a very basic looking bird if there is nothing going on at Overlea but hey I certainly think that both strings and Simon are very neat looking models Simon is this deep purple Terminator looking ass and he's just tall enough for it to be a little unsettling especially through a cutscene you get for beating that secret ending that's one hell of a cool little moment we don't see much of strings of course but as far as curiosity BOTS go yeah you could do worse unfortunately there's one elements across each one of the character models here that's a bit oily yeah I don't know what was going on here but instead of making the animatronics look and feel like matte plastic the modeler opted to go with this gosh I don't even know it's it's like this waxy looking oily got a deal it's super difficult to describe and it's not like a huge blemish or nothing but in someone doesn't they just don't look that great thankfully all the models were totally revamped and given updated and far more accurate materials to reflects that of these guys being 3d printed after the game's release for the now cancelled focus remake the difference is night and day and not only do these guys now look like they're genuinely 3d printed but the vertex assigned texturing issues and some of these guys have been totally fixed with far more segmented pieces to get these guys to look further reminiscent of what they're meant to represent Bob gosu has those strange pokey corners on his forehead yeah I'd never knew what was up with that but hey while that remake was canceled a full-on reboot of the entire series was announced on April 1st of this year yeah pop-goes 20/20 edition has some kind of anti April Fool's joke or something with the promise of totally redesigned animatronics and I'm fairly intrigued to see what gets changed and messed with this time around hey that is pretty much the majority of what's here to cover and certainly one of the most intriguing fan games I've looked at and honestly I can safely say it's not bad at all well I definitely think the game's flawed in a few areas I have to say that for the most part it's a fanging that really holds up and it's still a good time if you're up for some anxiety inducing multitasking the presentation is definitely on point and fairly consistent from the teasers the game itself even a very enthusiastic trailer it all exhibits this quick-paced snappy atmosphere it has his own identity and pause a lot of unique concepts from that to build what is in turn a very unique tribute and doesn't forget to shaken those extra little experiences for example if you go back to those same cameras at the correct times instead of seeing Simon you'll see a Lux animatronic pushing that replayability just a little more and well I hardly covered much of it at all in this review there is a lots to this game story and while you know a fan game law isn't everyone's thing if you're at all interested in digging deeper into a story you can solve on your own there is a ton of material to sit through to really figure out what's going on this game also just does a lot of things to counter the norm one good example as I discussed starting the animatronics off right beside you that sure did get a couple of less players at least and in that regard you know I feel like there are a few areas where that may have backfired a bit like requiring you to listen really close to the phone calls to figure out how some of the mechanics work for yourself well that's a neat idea most players will be going into this expecting the mechanics to be explained to them at face value kind of like most other fan games and while pop-goes does do a fair amount rights I feel like it lacks a tad and making things obvious enough for people more used to how phone calls in these things usually work but overall this is a really solid fan game everything from the visuals to the punchy and satisfying sound design to the gameplay mechanics pop-goes isn't a perfect fan game there's quite a bit about it I'm looking forward to seeing tweaks in the upcoming reboots but for the most part it's a fun time so would I recommend this I'd say give it a go if you're feeling it well not everyone will got a kick out of it there's still a lot to be liked and appreciated here so uh hey give it a download give it a play and we'll just have to wait for the reboot to see how Kane handles the game a second time you [Music]

Channel: gomotion

Views: 497,373

Rating: 4.9648943 out of 5

Keywords: gomotion, go motion, popgoes, popgoes fangame, popgoes fnaf, popgoes the weasel

Id: 208jP0rZ9uE

Length: 27min 8sec (1628 seconds)

Published: Sun May 31 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Elusive_Aubergine]

Haha, it's a Popgoes promotion

[u/Sea_pupper2]

Popgoes

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TTEM

[u/Realshow]

Really well done review. For the most part, I completely agree.

[u/justsaneandsensibl]

again.

[u/manaosdepera69]

ok

[u/[deleted]]

That's a weesl

[u/Bearmam123]

Weasel