Hello Neighbor

Hello Neighbor is a cartoonish style first-person stealth horror game. Neighbor himself is an advanced artificial intelligence, who learns from your deeds to make your mission as difficult as possible. You are a boy from the neighborhood, who wants to know, what does he hind in his mysterious basement. Hello Neighbor download is available for Switch, PC and XBOX One, PS4 and mobile platforms.

Graphics 4/5

This game has fully comic style 3D graphics with quite a lot of details. The PC version has more advanced shader quality and light processing, but Switch image is still on a good level. Imagine Beetlejuice to have a better idea of what you are about to see. Plain single color textures and character design recall to Fortnite and Team Fortress. Style of Hello Neighbor is completely reasonable and adds much psychedelic to the gameplay.

Gameplay 4/5

As was mentioned, you play for a boy, who suspects his neighbor to have something mysterious in his house and decides to figure it out. It’s not an easy task, because the dark man is always at home and the key from the ground floor is well-hidden.

This is an honest Hello Neighbor review, so it’s important to say, that the whole game process was overhyped before the release. So, those players, who awaited it may be a bit disappointed. Some twists and mechanics were expected to work differently. There’s a strong feeling, that developers tried to tell a book story, which greatly influenced them, but their vision happened to be a bit specific.

The process of solving puzzles reminds of Lucas Arts and FMV early games. All quest may be completed in 2-3 hours with the help of manual, but to feel the sweetness of Hello Neighbor you should really spend a couple of months to understand all the possible paths of solving puzzles. Sometimes their logic is not obvious at all, but does it have to be?

Controls 4/5

Moving your character is as simple as WASD + Space + C for sneaking. The only thing, which you have to get used to is inventory. One of the most frequent moves is throwing things into windows to break them. The main item if your torch, so you have to pick it up time after time.

All quests are solved only with your intuition and memory as you have to find threads, which link doors and switches.

Replay Value 4/5

Hello Neighbor looks very friendly, but it isn’t, to be fair. Games AI is very specific. You can’t really predict, what would he decide to do each time. Some may consider it very good for the horror genre as the Neighbor can really frighten you sometimes. On the other hand, it may make you angry, if you are not accustomed to unexpected twists. To complete all quests without the help of the manual it would take about 2 month to get through. It’s difficult to imagine an ordinary player, who would try to replay it 2 or 3 times after all.

Conclusion

All in all, Hello Neighbor is, actually, a good game. It shows respect of genre traditions and requires quite a lot of patience. It’s also quite fair to say, that it’s a not a game for everyone, because thousands of modern gamers do not want to rack their brains for up to two 2 months on completing a plot, which takes less than 3 hours. Hardcore puzzle fans would definitely enjoy it.

• Graphics 4
• Gameplay 4
• Controls 4
• Replay Value 4

Pros

Very peculiar experience;
Nice comic style;
Difficult quests (consider it a minus if you like);
Tricky AI.

Cons

Switch graphics are worse, than on PC;
Developers see it in a sophisticated way, which may not suit everyone.