To top it off, all that allure of being the naive kid investigating his neighbour’s house because he might be up to no good? There’s no pay-off as such. Get used to it though because they can’t be customized in any way. The controls hurt the experience a lot with their general clunkiness. This manifests strongly from Act 2 onwards (get ready for some hardcore box stacking) and while the surrealistic turn was pretty neat, especially as the game’s aesthetics shine all the more, it isn’t magically fun. There are also instances where Hello Neighbor is really interested in platforming. " Hello Neighbor started out as something nifty – an adaptive AI presented in the guise of childhood nostalgia." Yes, it’s that kind of puzzler, meant for old-school adventure fans who weren’t sufficiently tortured by the classics. It’s quite another to create a world that’s so obtuse that the only real way to progress is by looking up solutions online. It’s one thing to drop a player into a world and have them figure everything out. In fact, you’re not really led towards any kind of solution. You might have to pick up a toy truck and then jump on a train on the side of a building to reach a certain convoluted spot. There’s a point where you have to hit a few levers on some pipes but the game hasn’t led you to that conclusion. That wouldn’t be such a big deal if the puzzles weren’t the kinds of obscure, cryptic horrors that want you to think outside the box, then light the box on fire and dance around the ashes wearing a wolf’s head. However, for a game that seems so free-form, there’s only one straightforward solution in every case. “Losing progress” is still meant to be a big deal in Hello Neighbor because of its puzzles. By comparison, Hello Neighbor‘s titular antagonist is just a random reset button that’s meant to slow down your progress and little else. Also, it’s AI incentivized you to stay one step ahead and react intuitively. The Xenomorph in Alien Isolation made for great gameplay because of its intelligence and unstoppable nature, which mixed well with that game’s tense exploration and mood. When you fail to define the right conditions under which an enemy can detect the player, it’s all just one big toss-up. When you strip away any consequence of being caught, there’s not much incentive to stealth, much less being moderately sneaky. "Yes, it’s that kind of puzzler, meant for old-school adventure fans who weren’t sufficiently tortured by the classics." With how randomly the neighbour behaves, setting up traps in places that you may visit, there’s simply no real consequence to losing. This doesn’t rob the game of its stealth approach but it does erase any sense of urgency that each playthrough has. You simply start the area again with all the items you previously picked up. Then again, it would be wildly unfair if there was some consequence to being caught. It’s wildly unfair at times but it’s also extremely random. Sometimes you’ll be completely undetected despite being mere inches away. Hello Neighbor‘s biggest fault is that its introductory gameplay hook, the neighbour himself, isn’t even consistent. Clipping issues, the neighbour’s AI, objects suddenly vanishing, the list goes on. The premise itself sounds simple enough but the game’s bugs and overall lack of polish hit you immediately. Maybe it’s just that they’re so bare-bones as to rob the game of any personality that its visuals may have offered. However, there’s a lack of polish in the animations. The game’s aesthetic looks appealing enough – the mix of cartoonish colours with an unsettling atmosphere convey the sense of grim mystery well enough. This quest is divided into three acts where the house layouts become more complex. Obviously it’s not that simple but that’s the basic premise that most will be entering the game for. The high-stakes adventure revolves around sneaking into your neighbour’s house and seeing what he’s up to. "The premise itself sounds simple enough but the game’s bugs and overall lack of polish hit you immediately." Even if it were still in Early Access, it would be in the bottom-most rung. Even though the concept had legs as an unorthodox stealth title, Hello Neighbor offers a buggy and horribly designed experience. What possible horrors could be lurking in that mysterious land just across the street? If Hello Neighbor has proven anything, it’s that such questions are better left unanswered. After all, especially when you’re a kid, some things just don’t add up and your mind wanders in all kinds of directions. This social pondering has been explored in classics like Rear View Window and have come alive in many a childhood. At some point, you’ve always wondered what your neighbour is up to.
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