Here is a Spoiler-Free review of Secret of the Mimic as a VR experience.
TL;DR: "Good, not perfect"
For more detail, please read on. This review is designed for people who specifically want a breakdown of FNAF:SOTM as a VR experience without spoilers. Played on PC with Valve Index.
About me: I'm a long time horror game fan, and also separately a long time fnaf fan. I'm also a regular VR user. My first playthrough of FNAF:SOTM was in VR mode, only this week, and I have done my best to avoid spoilers for this past year before heading in.
FNAF:SOTM as a game experience is functional, but not exactly ground-breaking. It is a mostly linear experience going from spooky set-piece to spooky set-piece so you can poke at a thing and then get chased by something until you get to the end of the game. A solid entry into Mascot Horror that, aside from the occasional collision bug and awkward control setup, is an entertaining experience.
The atmosphere works well, there's a lot of interesting and unique areas to see, and the pacing between puzzle/chase/stealth generally holds together. If there is a weak point in the gameplay, it is the "Bosses". The game tends to throw something resembling a boss fight at you at the end of every chapter that comes with unique mechanics. However, I found these to be more miss than hit. Some are boring, some are awkward to interact with in VR, and some are just... very opaque and confusing. None of them are truly awful, but many fail to sell the emotional climax they're supposed to represent. To say anything more would be spoilers, so I'll have to leave it at that.
As specifically a VR horror experience though, FNAF:SOTM does have some great things going for it. While there are control-related issues, especially if you're trying to play sitting down, the game generally does well with VR viewing and VR interactions. The immersive soundscape and detailed environments are great for poking around in and feeling the spooky vibes. The lines of sight and visual direction is also surprisingly solid for a VR game, the game is great at using subtle tactics to get you looking in the right direction when it needs you to, and it's rare that I found myself stuck on where to go or what to do.
I played with joystick directional movement and smooth turning and despite the very movement intensive gameplay, I felt motion sick only once.
The game is also surprisingly... bright. The game uses darkness very sparingly. This is a double edged sword, in that on one hand, it makes the game significantly less spooky than it otherwise would be, but comes with the benefit of being able to take in the detailed vistas and dense environments presented to you. The game tries to compensate for the lack of spook by filling areas with furniture and junk that block line of sight and create a claustrophobic feeling. This decision works well with VR, as your ability to lean and peek through tiny gaps in the area helps you track where the enemies are without being seen. And at the risk of a potential spoiler, the game DOES have some effective darkness related spooking towards the back half of the game. Consider yourself warned.
And finally, as a FNAF game, FNAF:SOTM has a lot to offer. Its plot is surprisingly self contained for a FNAF game, but has a lot of new lore and confirmations of old speculations for long time lore fans. There's a lot of collectables to poke around and find, many secret areas, and cryptic bits of puzzles that any long time fnaf fan will love. But it does also have some serious problems too.
The main problem that persists for any lore buffs or completionists is the linear nature of the game and the auto-save system. The linear nature of the game makes it not just feasible, but almost guaranteed that you will miss things that you cannot backtrack to find again, be they actual collectables or just lore teases. And for collectables specifically, there is a problem that collectables are not automatically saved unless you can find an autosave point after obtaining them. Since autosaves generally only happen at moments at which you progress the linear plot, that means backtracking for collectables is inherently dangerous, as a death will erase any progress on collectable collecting until you actually make story progress.
As an example, there is a specific achievement that requires you to interact with a certain number of specific "things" (excuse the vagueness for spoiler reasons). The catch is, the game does not show you which or how many "things" you have already interacted with, and if you die between interacting with a "thing" and hitting an autosave, the game doesn't remember you interacting with that specific "thing", and also doesn't give you any indication that it does or does not remember you interacting with the "Thing" This means if you want the achievement, you'll basically have to do a run with a guide and manual checklist and hit every "thing" in a single run and just hope you don't miss one.
And the biggest problem of all for lore buffs: There are no chapters to load from and no save states to restore. If you want to see something again, you're playing through the entire game again to see it. And then it's autosaving your progress when it happens. Need to see that corner of the boss fight again? New Game.
Bottom line:
I liked it. I had fun. I got some spooks. I enjoyed some lore. I spent about 10% of my time fighting weird controls, and 90% of my time with a smile. But I really wish I could have played this a year ago. Now I guess I can go resubscribe to all the fnaf youtubers I had to unfollow to avoid spoiler thumbnails.
