Here's the thing: we shouldn't need to. If the game truly wants to stand well on its own, it needs to weave stuff that the player is expected to know into the exposition. That said, I greatly enjoyed the original Slender without knowing anything about the mythos of Slenderman; all I knew was that I was in the woods and that a scary-looking thing that looked human except for its odd proportions, blank face, and seemingly unnatural speed which he ceased taking advantage of once I looked at him (which on its own gave me uncomfortable flashbacks to the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who), and that I knew nothing about him but that I should consider his intent hostile, resulting in me running for my life and being genuinely freaked out. The fact that so much was unknown about my pursuer made it even more horrifying, almost akin to Lovecraft's tendency to barely describe the creatures that appeared in his stories both in terms of their appearance and motives (especially their motives), except while a Lovecraftian abomination would echo deep sea creature blended with gigantic space monster, Slender made its antagonist creepier by having it strongly resemble something one would see in everyday life, a man in a suit, but with little things like the creature's too long arms and legs, its blank face, and the way it always seemed to get closer only to stand still when gazed upon, almost as if it were trying to psychologically attack me, combined with the pants-shitting realization that I had no idea what the hell the thing was going to do to me. It took the unknown, something that is becoming a rarer commodity in this day and age, and weaponized it. Knowing the exact details of the Slenderman mythos was interesting, but if anything, it diminished the experience, because it now gave me a name to assign to my enemy and an idea of what it was capable of, diminishing the mystery that made the original game so scary.

As to your post indicating that people need to know this in order to enjoy the game, I surmise that this was posted in the belief that people do not like this game have not immersed themselves in the mythos, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the chief complaint voiced by almost everyone in this forum is not how they don't understand what is going on, but that the game was apparently designed by a retarded chimpanzee in that it is so poorly optimized that even fairly powerful computers are not able to run it at a satisfactory frame rate. I picked up a top of the line Thinkpad 2 years ago which has run some majorly demanding games no problem, but this game consistently runs like an early 20th century film with every other frame missing and played in slow motion; somehow an indie game has a poorer framerate than any AAA title I have played on this thing,, and as far as I can tell, there is no reason for this, as I have played games from roughly 10 years ago with better graphics.

tl;dr: why defend the story when the problem is that the game seems to be designed to run on the Monolith from 2001 despite looking like a game from last decade?

I wish I hadn't played Hitman before I saw this. Now I can't stop thinking he looks like Agent 47. If only he had a different colored tie.

I really liked this game, but I can see why some people would dislike it. The random-luck approach to gameplay and enemy encounters can get annoying, and it is short for the price point.

However, I am getting really annoyed that all the single sentence user reviews that basically say "This game is awful, don't buy it." are rated the most helpful while all the actually well thought out reviews that acknowledge the good parts of the game as well as the bad are getting maybe 10% helpful votes.

I'm totally behind the fact that this game needs to be optimized. I have a 3.2Ghz processor running 8 threads and OC'd to 4.5Ghz, 16GB of RAM, and a GTX670 video card that plowed through games like Far Cry 3 on max settings. There is no reason this game should put so much pressure on a high-end system. I'm also behind complaints that it is a little short, its story a bit obtuse, and lacking in game play variety--I enjoyed it nonetheless, but it's a totally valid reason to not get into it.

But to shout down the game as "terrible" and the page getting bombed with pretty acerbic reviews is a bit much. It's one thing to not like Slenderman or the fanbase or the tonnes of mods and copycat games that have been made in this style, but if you take this game as simply a further realization of the first game (i.e., an HD remake) and manage your expectations according to that, it's far from an abysmal game. It's more like Dear Esther with more aggressive and oppressive game play. Of course, if you didn't like Dear Esther, you won't like this--but again, you have to give the developers credit for these facts:

1. They came up with this gameplay idea. Even if other people have copied it to death, they shouldn't be hated on for using their original system to fully realize their vision.
2. The environments, textures, and animations are all incredibly well done. Poorly optimized, but the sweeping vista on the mountainside, the part in the forest where you're running through the tall grass, and the first sunset in the game were all very visually memorable to me.
3. The sound design is faithful to the original game and expanded upon appropriately and tastefully--that last audio log before the game's end was chilling the first time I got there.

Now, again, if it wasn't for you and you didn't like it, I can understand why. It's certainly not the best horror game ever made, not by a long shot (that honor, for me, would either go to Silent Hill 2 & 3 or Amnesia: The Dark Descent). But it's not the piece of abject garbage the reviews on this site make it out to be.

That's reassuring to know. The game stutters a little on my new workstation I got a couple of months ago and it got me worried it wouldn't run other demanding games well.

First game so far that had me open the task manager and shut down non-vital processes to free up ressources.

Anyways, this is my first real horror game I played (guess I've been living under a rock for the last couple of years) and I find it's ok.

Gameplay is nothing extremely spectacular, but I enjoyed the atmosphere.

I agree that the full price is a bit much for this game, but I got it on special and unlike some other games I've played, this game had the good sense to end before it got tedious.

I dont know about this one, I started playing the "free" one, I mean the SLENDER THE EIGHT PAGES, and I found it a very very very SIMPLE GAME, but very enjoyable also.

Golly, I guess I'm odd man (girl) out. I like the game and it plays with no problems.

Well, I've changed my mind. It was fine at first, but last night I went in to play some more and it was a mess. Everything was jumping around and I wasn't able to get the cursor nor flashlight to move where I wanted it to go; as tho I had no control. Very disappointing.