Help Wanted 2 is the second Five Nights at Freddy’s VR game, where you are, supposedly, playing as a new employee getting acquainted with all aspects of the pizzeria, whether it be food service, first aid, or playtesting games.  Having watched both Help Wanted games on Youtube, I was excited when they were finally released in flat mode, but due to their price tags, I decided to pick just one.  In the end, I decided that the sequel held a lot more appeal to me due to its heavy emphasis on Security Breach (the game was terrible, but I still loved it, nonetheless), its replayability, and online reviews confirming that this game is more fun to play in flat mode than the original.

I want to start by emphasizing that this game is, essentially, just a mini-game collection.  Normally, I’m not a big fan of mini-games, but due to my love of FNAF, I thought these looked rather fun, and it didn’t hurt that I had a gift card from Christmas.  The mini-games are broken down into 6 folders, listed below:

• Backstage has such mini games as Arts and Crafts and the Salon
• Food Prep has three levels where you prepare food in various locations
• Staff Only includes First Aid and five nights of preparing Fizzy Faz
• Fazcade has games like the whack-a-mole-inspired Bonk a’ Bon and the shooting gallery, Fazerblast
• Ticket Booth is a weird one, as it only contains the Log Ride and two Carousel levels
• Sister Location has levels based on FNAF 5

There are 40 mini-games in total, and there’s a pretty decent variety, though many are just harder variations of games you’ve already played.  Most of the mini-games are pretty fun, and it helps that many of them have randomly generated elements, making each playthrough different.  For example, the Food Prep levels have you serving up a random assortment of snacks and microwaved entrees to Staff Bots, and in First Aid, you never know what injuries poor Helpy is going to have.  The games also offer a good challenge, with most of them being satisfying to complete without being too easy or overly frustrating.  (Most of them.)  The challenge usually revolves around completing tasks in a time limit or keeping an animatronic away.  There are also a few that are more game-oriented, if that makes sense, like bowling, the aforementioned Bonk a’ Bon, or various shooting galleries, one of which takes place in a log ride, while several more are based around a few of the original FNAF games.  There are also a handful of office levels that play similarly to the original FNAF games, as well.

I think one thing that made these games more fun than your average mini-game is how involved some of the tasks are.  I feel like a lot of mini-games that can be found in most games are just simple diversions without a lot to offer.  In Help Wanted 2, you will be preparing various orders in Food Prep or figuring out how to take care of Helpy’s injuries in First Aid or fixing the Carousel while keeping Moon away.  Some of the mini-games are pretty darn charming, as is the case with Captain Foxy’s Log Ride and the various Fazerblast mini-games, while others are kind of amusing, such as when you’re forced to deal with impatient Staff Bots in Food Prep or trying to choose the right makeup and accessories for Roxy while she constantly demands that you look at her.  Sun’s dialogue in the first Arts & Crafts level is also pretty funny, as he takes children’s art projects far too seriously, and you even have the option to eat the crafts, thus ticking off this already impatient animatronic even more!

Furthermore, I also liked the relative freedom the game gives you in playing the mini-games.  When the game first starts, you already have a handful of options, and as you complete more mini-games, more and more open up.  So if you get stuck on one game, you have plenty of alternatives to play instead until you feel like retrying the one that gave you trouble.  The game also has a decent number of secrets to discover and two separate endings.  There were also a few really cool surprises for first-time players, which I won’t spoil.  And completing levels also gives you various rewards, such as character models that you can look at on this stage, which is pretty cool, too.

While this game was originally made for VR, most of the mini-games translated pretty well into flat mode, though the transition wasn’t perfect.  While I can’t speak from experience, from what I’ve seen, reaching out and grabbing objects in VR looks far more natural than clumsily trying to select objects with a control stick.  Plus, in VR, you can look around and reach for things separately, but in flat mode, you can only look at what you’re trying to grab.  This led to some mini-games being more difficult than I think they would have been otherwise.

For example, in Bonk a’ Bon, VR mode allows you to use both mallets to hit two objects at once, while in flat mode, the two mallets can only hit the same object, making the second mallet redundant.  When I looked up a guide for DJ Music Time: Pro, the person playing in VR could look around and flash the Mini Music Man while still fiddling with the control panel, which is not possible in flat mode.  The same issue arose when trying to complete the Salon levels.  In VR, you can rotate the table and look up at the accessories on the Staff Bot heads at the same time, while in flat mode, you can only look down while you rotate the table, then stop and look up for the accessory you need.  I’m not sure if there even is a solution to this problem, seeing as playing in VR and playing with a traditional controller are two very different things.  In fact, it’s very possible that Steel Wool did their absolute best in translating this game into flat mode, but that doesn’t stop some of the mini-games from feeling quite clunky to control.

I also want to mention that I got the game on the Switch, and it runs very well.  The Switch also features different control options, like touchscreen and gyro controls, though I never used them.  I did encounter a few glitches, though they weren’t a big deal.  When I first attempted Pizza Pizza Pizza, I couldn’t put sauce onto the pizza dough.  If I remember correctly, I think the button that should have ladled out sauce merely caused me to pick the dough up.  This would have been an issue if it had continued, but after a few attempts, everything started working again.  Also, sometimes the cameras in the Office levels wouldn’t work unless you pressed their respective buttons a few times.  This didn’t lead to any unfair deaths, fortunately, but it was mildly annoying.

With all that said, I must emphasize once again that this game is a mini-game collection.  A fun and replayable mini-game collection, sure, but you are still paying $40 for…mini-games.  If it wasn’t for my great love of FNAF characters and the fact that this game lends to some really fun Youtube commentary, I’m not sure I would get nearly as much out of it.  And as much as I enjoyed the game in flat mode, I do think it would have been way more fun in VR.  Not only would it have controlled better, but the scary elements would have hit home far better, as well.  Because I seriously forgot that this was intended to be a horror game!  But again, that’s the problem with playing the game outside its intended form.  In VR, I imagine angering the DJ and having him chomp his huge teeth at you or seeing Funtime Freddy step out of the darkness would have been far more intimidating!

FNAF: Help Wanted 2 is available for $39.99 on PS5 and PC in both VR and flat mode and Nintendo Switch and XBox Series X/S in flat mode only.  With 40 levels, the game can take anywhere between 9-18 hours to complete.