Hello Neighbor - PC Review

Hello Neighbor starts off strong, your Neighbor has locked something interesting in his basement and you want to know it is. Hence begins your breaking and entering journey as you attempt to find out this man's secret. All while avoiding traps and his grasp. It's an interesting concept that incites interest at the beginning but quickly falls apart towards the end. 

You play as an unnamed protagonist attempting to break into his Neighbor's basement. To accomplish this you'll use various tools, keys, and tactics to outsmart your Neighbor. Every time you're caught the Neighbor adapts to your previous tactics such as including traps in the area you were caught, blocking doors with chairs, barricading broken windows, and much more. 

Checkpoints are very lenient and getting caught is much of a consequence, you just end up back to the last checkpoint. Hello Neighbor is all about trial and error, learning from your mistakes and trying again. It quickly loses its fright factor and eventually you'll take stealth as more of an option. During my second playthrough, I was able to easily outsmart the Neighbor's AI using clever platforming making him less of an opposing force and more as a minor annoyance.

Fear Rooms mix up the pace by providing puzzle focused areas for the player to solve. These involve platforming challenges, hide-and-sneak, and locating specific items. It offers more context to the story and breaks up the house sequences. After running, and avoiding, the same enemy for hours I was begging for another Fear Room to popup.

Hello Neighbor doesn't give you much direction on where to go and what to do but that's the point. When entering the house it's up to you to find out what you need and then look for it. Whether it's specially colored keys or keycards you must look for it. It doesn't become terribly annoying since there's no way to fail and opening things constantly along with some basic critical thinking skills will lead you to your goal eventually. Once you know the location of everything it becomes easy to speed run through most of the game.

This leads to Hello Neighbors biggest issue, value. For a $30 game, Hello Neighbor is lacking in content and can be completed in about 3 hours. There's very little reason to return for another playthrough since everything plays the same, with the exception being you know where everything is. The Neighbor's AI, while good, doesn't offer much of a challenge to encourage multiple playthroughs. Once you learn the mystery behind the basement Hello Neighbor quickly loses much of its appeal.

Hello Neighbor starts off strong, with a strange mystery and interesting place to explore. As you progress through the game's act it quickly loses momentum eventually ending with a whimper instead of the game many were hoping for since the early alphas. Hello Neighbor serves as an adequate distraction but doesn't offer enough to justify the $30 price tag.

Adam Siddiqui, NoobFeed
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