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A family friendly stealth horror? | Hello Neighbor 2 - Review

13K View2022-12-08

When I played the original Hello Neighbor back in 2018, It was an intriguing family friendly puzzle stealth horror that was as frustrating as it exhilarating. Hello Neighbor 2 largely maintains the same formula, improving many mechanics from the first game but at the same time never really getting rid of the frustration factor.

Hello Neighbor 2 takes us back to Raven Brooks in a sort of standalone story while still being a follow up to the original game story wise. You are a journalist who wants to investigate Mr. Peterson — poster boy for the whole game series and the original game’s villain — as a suspect in the disappearance of various children. Apart from him, the whole neighborhood is as suspicious too, warranting investigation as well.

Right off the bat we’re given an unguided mini puzzle tutorial of sorts, setting the mood of the game. Across the whole 5-10 hour experience (depending on how fast you can solve the puzzles), You solve puzzles by primarily interacting with the environment in a first person view: Pushing buttons, pulling levers. Finding the missing key or figuring out the combination code for locked doors or containers.

Most of the time, you are using keen environmental observation or just pure trial and error to figure out stuff. The platforming and wonky physics aspect of the first game are toned down as well, with more focus on actual interactable objects instead. You can now also easily vault over ledges and obstacles instead of just plain trying to jump over stuff.

The first few puzzles I encountered started off relatively easy and straightforward, very far from the vague and illogical puzzle solving of the first game. However, soon enough things get weird and vague once again and we’re back to the same frustrations we had with the first game. There is often not enough information given to the player on how to advance the game and as mentioned earlier it becomes a game of trial and error instead of something that rewards critical thinking.

The entirety of Hello Neighbor 2 takes place in the whole neighborhood instead of just Mr. Peterson’s house in the first game, requiring unsanctioned visits to other houses and places in the neighborhood — A huge up in scale from the last game. You now play hide and seek with different characters in the neighborhood, powered by a supposedly self learning AI that will adapt to your playstyle, for example by changing its routines to surprise you and your usual entry points or hiding spots. It also claims to use a neural network and algorithms to carve out a complex and dynamic experience for all players as they play and more information is gathered.

Unfortunately, I never really noticed any cutting-edge in the AI and in my experience they are just your straight up conventional stealth game AI. One that you can easily cheese your way out into success. For example by just constantly abusing the closet or under-the-table hiding spots when they are about to spot you to break detection. Sometimes they even just stand around in one spot and bug out. It doesn’t help that the entire stealth mechanic itself, when your character is caught, isn't that punishing anyway: It just respawns you just outside the house and you can easily go back inside right away. The tension is gone and it again boils down to trial and error brute force gameplay.

The narrative of Hello Neighbor 2 isn’t exactly great and can be pretentious at times. It tries too hard to be too complex and deep. In the end it just all felt meaningless and fell flat on its face. The Art Design on the other hand is Pixar-esque impressive and is a nice fit for the family friendly horror game that it wants to be. A theme largely kept intact across the game series.

In my review for the first game, I talked about the missed opportunity of multiplayer, and hoped the sequel would have it. They finally made a multiplayer spin-off game with Secret Neighbor, in which unfortunately the sequel still didn’t have. Still, props to the developers for sticking to the single player formula with their mainline games.

Hello Neighbor 2 is still a family friendly puzzle stealth horror, with many gameplay improvements from the first game as expected for a sequel. If you loved the first game, good news is that it is largely the same, just improved upon. Regrettably — as with the first game — weak puzzle design, frustration woes, as well as the underachieving advanced AI stops it from being a great game overall.

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