Developer: Eerie Guest Studios
Publisher: tinyBuild
Release Date: 6th December 2022
Platforms: Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, Switch
Reviewed on: PS4 Pro
Hello Neighbor 2 (HN2) is a sequel to the original Hello Neighbor released in 2018 – it was a first person stealth puzzle game, a gameplay approach which this follow up reprises. I have never played the first game so have no frame of reference when reviewing this new release.
In addition to the games the franchise has apparently become huge on YouTube – while I was playing the game for this review my 12 year old daughter came into the room and enquired as to what I was playing. When I told her she said she’d seen videos of it – Pure Dead Craig tells me his children had exactly the same reaction!
The game kicks off with a cut scene where we see the titular neighbour attack, apparently intending to abduct, a child. He notices our character and rushes towards us brandishing a shovel. After a close escape we find ourselves inside a barn which we have crashed into and serves as a tutorial area.
HN2 is a first person puzzle game, with elements of stealth and horror. Again, like the franchise itself, this is a game genre I’m not particularly familiar with. The only first person puzzle game I have played recently is The Turing Test which is a very different beast to HN2. We start off in the tutorial area which introduces the key mechanics of the game including item manipulation and inventory management. You can’t carry a lot of items so you will be using this a lot! The player also becomes familiar with the fairly straightforward control system.
This brings me to my first minor gripe about the game – the controls. They feel like they were designed with mouse and keyboard in mind – fine for the Windows release admittedly but this was on PlayStation! They felt quite clunky in places and not really as accurate as you probably would hope for. There was one key upstairs in the first house that was inside a cupboard drawer which I found really tricky to pick up. Like I say, a minor issue but still a slight concern.
The game world of Hello Neighbor 2 is an eye catching one with bright, bold colours and strong visual design. The world evokes an aesthetic not unlike a Pixar (or similar) animated movie. This does bring me to another question mark over what the game is trying to achieve. HN2 bills itself as a horror stealth game and at the same time “family friendly horror”. This bright, colourful world strikes me as at odds with a horror game. Family friendly? Yes, absolutely but horror…? I’m not convinced the development team themselves really know what balance they are trying to achieve here.
Some of the subject material is undeniably grim – child abduction for one – but it is delivered in an incongruously bright and attractive visual fashion. I would also observe that this kind of stylised environment can quite be a “Marmite” approach and I for one am not a fan of Marmite.
The premise of the game is at first an interesting one – you play as an investigative reporter trying to delve into the secrets of the titular neighbourhood. This ultimately boils down into solving point and click esque puzzles in order to infiltrate various buildings in the vicinity. I’ve heard it described as an “anti escape room” and that is a fairly accurate way to think of it.
The puzzles are for the large part fairly intriguing. Other than the mentioned tutorial area the game doesn’t hold your hand much and it’s up to you to figure them out but this shouldn’t present too much of a challenge.
What does complicate matters though is the presence of various NPCs around the different buildings who are out to prevent your progress. Again, in theory this game mechanic seems engaging – otherwise it would be pretty easy sailing. However, in practice it can be quite frustrating. Oftentimes I have been in an area of a house, attempting to figure out the next step of a puzzle, when I have been rudely interrupted by the neighbour I had not heard approaching me.
There are some features in the game that go towards a more meaningful stealth game style – such as a camera system that you can set and then monitor from a handheld device. I managed to miss this on my playthrough unfortunately! You can also hide in cupboards in buildings if you do detect the incoming presence of a hostile NPC.
But, at the end of the day if you are caught in whatever act by the neighbour, all that happens is you are turfed out on your ear to the outside of whatever building you were in. What this means in effect then is that you rush into the different buildings to attempt to solve the next puzzle as quickly as you can before you are rumbled.
And, this is probably my biggest issue with what HN2 is trying to achieve – the NPC AI is very questionable. At one point the cop who was supposedly tracking me down got stuck in a loop coming in and out of the back door of the house. This did mean I could go upstairs and finish off all the puzzles in the house completely unmolested which was admittedly a nice break from random captures. However, it kind of defeated the point of what the game is supposedly all about.
There have been a couple of updates to the game since it was released but I’ve been unable to find patch notes to confirm if the AI is one feature that has been enhanced. Even if it hasn’t yet there have been a lot of complaints about it so I would like to think that Eerie Guest will work on it sooner or later.
I reviewed this game on the PS4 Pro and as far as I could make out there are no enhancements over the base PS4 version so that was effectively what I was playing. There were definite performance issues in the game – mostly notably the frame rate, it was noticeably rather poor. I was prepared to let that pass without comment given I was playing on a previous generation platform but I’ve been reliably informed that the issue is also present on the way more powerful Xbox Series X. Not a deal breaker but another minor irk.
Speaking of Xbox, HN2 is available on Game Pass. As a lightweight few hours available as part of your subscription service I would say give it a go. I would be less willing to recommend the game as an outright purchase on other platforms. It’s not terrible by any means but its flaws do detract from what is potentially a fun experience. The franchise appears to be a popular one on YouTube so there will quite possibly be a Hello Neighbor 3. Maybe that will hone the experience to be a bit more engaging and enjoyable.
-Calum