Games worth discovering

The Sesame Street murders - My Friendly Neighborhood Quick Review

2K View2023-07-18

My Friendly Neighborhood

7.8

Lore-RichSurvivalFPSActionFirst-PersonRealisticHorrorAdventure

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PLAY IT OR SKIP IT?

Play it if the combination of the Children’s Television Workshop and Resident Evil sounds like it might be a fun time. My Friendly Neighborhood is a classic survival horror game that takes place on the set of a Sesame Street-esque kids show. On a job to shut down a TV broadcast antenna that’s gone rogue, a lone electrician has to make his way through the studio, where Jim Henson-style puppets have suddenly been possessed with an insatiable bloodlust. Goofy as it is, My Friendly Neighborhood is a perfect pick if you’re not a big fan of gore but still want some decent spooks and a haunted house full of puzzles to solve. The only drawbacks I’ve found so far are the frustrating melee combat and the ancient save system.

TIME PLAYED

I’ve played about two hours of My Friendly Neighborhood, which has been split between an initial attempt on the more challenging “survival” difficulty and the default normal difficulty. I began by exploring the front office before heading back outside and making my way through the studio itself, finally reaching the main stage that contains the full neighborhood set. There’s still lots to do: My Friendly Neighborhood is mainly about finding keys and items that unlock new paths forward, all the while avoiding or fighting the off-brand Muppet characters from the TV show.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• Outstanding premise. Jim Henson’s iconic Muppets have, over the decades, occasionally been known to explore their weirder and scarier sides, so My Friendly Neighborhood is tapping into a current that’s already there. The puppet characters all evoke the felt citizens of Sesame Street, complete with their over-the-top, cutesy vocal performances. As I explored the neighborhood, though, I overheard several of them talking to themselves, and these little speeches got increasingly deranged. “When I’m happy, I eat watermelon!” one exclaimed just outside a window I was creeping by. He went on: “When I’m sad, I eat leftovers. When I’m confused, I eat roadkill! When I’m angry, I feast on the tears of my enemies.” Hearing this in the upbeat, always-chipper register of a kids TV puppet was funny and unsettling at the same time.

• Authentic, detailed environments. The children’s TV show central to My Friendly Neighborhood is produced on a sizable campus: There’s a reception building with some high-level offices and a glitzy lobby, an aviary, an entrance to a sewer area, and the big soundstage that contains the huge neighborhood set.

I spent most of my time with My Friendly Neighborhood finding my way to the soundstage, and it’s great: a whole miniature city neighborhood with a pizza shop, a laundromat, and apartment buildings, connected by a network of backstage passageways and rooftop catwalks. The production areas have sections for prop construction, dressing rooms, and camera storage and repair. It all feels authentic, even if the look is a bit simple and cartoony.

• Classic survival horror. My Friendly Neighborhood is heavily inspired by the Resident Evil series and pays homage to the series with its attaché case organization, the door animations that serve as transitions between areas, and the symbol-coded keys required to open new areas.

WHAT SUCKS

• Melee combat. While it didn’t take me long to find my first ranged weapon (a pistol that fires Rolodex cards marked with the letters of the alphabet), the wrench I picked up first forced me into close proximity with the puppet monsters. This is one of the weakest parts of My Friendly Neighborhood, because it’s impossible to get a sense of the range of the puppets’ grab. They would spin around and grab me when I hit them, and there wasn’t really an animation to show what was happening—they suddenly just had me by the shoulders and would knock me down, doing damage. Making sure combat feels dangerous and like it ought to be avoided when possible is a good idea, but this system just sucks.

• Stingy save system. True to classic Resident Evil form, My Friendly Neighborhood only allowed me to save in certain locations, and I had to spend a token any time I wanted to do that or heal at the nearby med station. I get that it’s a mechanic from the classic horror game, but my experience was not enhanced by losing progress and having to repeat steps I’d already taken after getting grabbed by an evil puppet backstage.

• Creaky controls. Each time I wanted to look at something or pick up an item, I had to first press E to examine the area it was in, then click on the item I wanted to examine or collect. Hitting E again wouldn’t pull me out of this view; instead, I had to right-click. A lot of My Friendly Neighborhood feels old-fashioned, and even if it’s perhaps deliberate, that dated feel often wound up being more unpleasant than nostalgic.

💬 Will you be making a visit to My Friendly Neighborhood, or are you going to stick with The Count for your Sesame Street horror stories? Let me know what you think in the comments.