![]() ![]() A limited number of in-game settings allow you to change resolution, texture quality, anti-aliasing, draw distance and other image quality options, but there's no way to alter the FOV. I've had him run past me unfazed because I've got one ankle concealed in an inch of shadow and I've had him launch at me like a heat-seeking missile from 20 yards away when I was sure he was looking in the other direction.Įven on a stable PC that comfortably exceeds the recommended settings, Hello Neighbor suffers from inconsistent FPS, freezing, and crashes. ![]() ![]() Hello Neighbor doesn't clearly communicate what he can see, what he will be disturbed by, or what will trigger a search. He has no routine that you can plan around or try to disrupt. There's no real distinction to be made between the neighbor's dynamism and his inconsistency. The initial charm of the art style and premise quickly gives way to trial-and-error drudgery, and the atmosphere that Hello Neighbor tries to cultivate is quickly punctured as the game's mechanical issues are starkly exposed. Unfortunately, Hello Neighbor doesn't deliver: after months of alpha versions, the launch version of the game is buggy, inconsistent, and frustrating. And your chances of going into this as a solo experience and actually finishing without consulting outside sources are incredibly slim, unless you have a tremendous well of patience and more than a little luck.It's an ambitious idea with a lot of promise: Alien: Isolation by way of The 'Burbs and Home Alone, a kid-friendly stealth horror sandbox. But if that’s the case, anyone who hasn’t already played it has missed the boat, as the puzzles have been solved ahead of release. Its complexity and oddball internal logic suggests some kind of byzantine enigma box intended to be pecked away at by a community sharing discoveries on a forum or Discord server until someone finally reaches the end, like the notorious Mount Chiliad mystery in Grand Theft Auto V. Perhaps Hello Neighbor was always intended to be more of a “cooperative” experience among a group of people playing in parallel. And the way the neighbor learns your favorite routes through the house and sets traps and cameras to trip you up was a cool touch. ![]() The overall mood and feel - you’re in normal old suburbia but something is always just a little bit off - is well-constructed in terms of graphics and audio. The basement segments at the end of each act are effective at ratcheting up the creepiness and even presenting some outright horror. The neighbor learns your favorite routes through the house and sets traps.There are rewards for navigating this labyrinth. Weeks? Months? If I hadn’t been playing it for review, I’m certain my patience would have run out before then. I can only imagine how long it would have taken me to complete in total isolation, banging every item I could round up against every combination of appliances. This is really Hello Neighbor’s biggest failing: it does an abysmal job of teaching you what kind of interactions are possible within its world and nudging you toward progress. The arcane voodoo that underpins the world is never explained, and I frequently had to resort to community guides from the early access version to figure out what to do. Furthermore, reaching the final boss requires you to get a double jump ability that’s hidden away in a secret area you’re never encouraged to visit, and I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to access the area by other means. To give one example, I had to freeze a pool of water by putting a globe recovered from an obscure corner of the house (which was its own illogical adventure) in the neighbor’s freezer on a completely different floor, then placing it on a random pedestal. It made me say, “THAT was the solution? How would anyone have ever made those connections?” Solving a puzzle usually didn’t give me a sense of satisfaction. In fact, they’re worse in that the combination of items and actions needed to progress often don’t make any logical sense whatsoever, which turns it into pure trial and error. Solving a puzzle usually didn’t give me a sense of satisfaction.The later two acts felt better from a stealth standpoint thanks to more room to maneuver, but they featured some of the most bizarre and frustrating, “guess what I’m thinking” puzzles since the days of the ‘90s adventure game boom. ![]()
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