Have you ever wondered what it might be like to be an investigative Journalist? With Hello Neighbour 2 you might get to put your thinking cap on and let the sleuthing begin. I remember seeing the original game advertised back in 2017 but never having the chance to play it. Then when I saw the second instalment in the series on the PlayStation 5 with all the DLC I decided to take the plunge and give it a try. When I read the game’s synopsis it sounded like it would be something that I would enjoy playing as I love stealth/horror games (when they are done right) as they can make for some memorable gameplay experiences. So, without any more delay let’s uncover what is truly going down in Raven Brooks.
Play as an investigative journalist against AI-driven characters you will try and solve the mystery surrounding a missing kid. Everyone in Raven Brooks seems to be hiding something and it’s up to you to uncover all these dark secrets. Play as Quentin who after witnessing suspicious behaviour from his neighbour Mr Peterson decided to dive deeper into the mystery surrounding this man and to shed some light on the goings on in Raven Brooks.
Hello Neighbour 2 is an open-world sandbox where you get to use your wits to solve various puzzles and obtain clues to help the story unfold. At first, you will investigate a house where you saw Mr Peterson take a kid into it before approaching you with a spade and knocking you unconscious. When you come to your find that the house is now being protected by an AI policeman. You must infiltrate with caution to try and find clues that will point you in the right direction. These clues can be anything from collecting dolls that need to be assembled on a doll house in a certain ordered to opening a safe to collect keys to open locks. There is a nice array of puzzles to help make the game flow and not feel too similar. After a while, you kind of get the hang of what you are looking out for as you don’t really get spoon feed anything in Hello Neighbour 2, it literally puts your investigation abilities to the test. While you progress through the game you will get to go to other locations in Raven Brooks like the Mayor’s house, the Hunter’s house and the Bakery to uncover what secrets they are trying to cover up. It does feel like the further into the story you go the harder the puzzles get. Not going to lie at times I did have to try and look online for some pointers as certain puzzles were just difficult. One of these is the boar’s heads in the Hunter’s house. You must locate four boar heads to open a microwave to get a piece of a map to give you a code and location for a safe, but they are on a timer. So if you don’t activate them all within a certain time you have to start the puzzle again. Once you find the boar heads it’s not that hard but trying to find them was a nightmare, even more so when you had the annoying AI hunter patrolling his house.
You will come across various resources that you can use to aid in your investigations, these being scissors, crowbars, and a few other items that can help solves puzzle or access areas that seem impossible to get through. Utilizing all these help with the success of going into AI-protected locations. I liked the idea of the security camera because if you managed to set it up in the right location it gave you a vantage point on the AI so you knew where they were. Using a crowbar to access areas that were blocked off really helps to traverse some of the houses because it give you an escape route or an alternative entrance. It is so satisficing when you can put your brain to the test and successfully solve a puzzle. It was one of the most enjoyable things I took away from Hello Neighbour 2.
The game says that it is a stealth horror thriller game but personally I felt let down by this. At no point did I feel scared of the AI or the situation I was in. I was more frustrated and annoyed with the AI as they would bug out, patrol annoying paths and basically just make the gameplay a bore more than challenging. One of the puzzles I just ran in the house did it and ran out as trying to do it stealthy just seemed impossible when the AI wouldn’t give you a big enough opening to do anything. The policeman for me in the first house bugged out massively and just go stuck going in and out the same door over and over which ruined the experience for me massively as I could just work around it with no fear of him coming upstairs or having to hide from him. I am a huge fan of AI being a massive scare factor in games like the Alien in Alien Isolation but these AI just felt like lacklustre NPCs that were a nuisance rather than a challenge that I had to overcome.
Graphically I like the cartoon style they have gone for, Raven Brooks does look colourful at times and if it wasn’t for the creepy neighbours maybe I would consider moving here. The game doesn’t really create a creepy feeling like I was expecting when I saw that it was advertised as a stealth horror. Compared to other stealth horror games this one feels like something straight out of a scooby doo episode rather than a life-or-death situation. If you got caught in one of the houses you just get kicked out of it, there isn’t a real punishment if you got caught being somewhere you shouldn’t be. The audio in the game again feels relaxing more than tense unless you alert one of the AI characters then the tempo steps up. Though it didn’t do a good job personally at creating a horror scenario or scare factor.
There isn’t much replay value with Hello Neighbour as once you have done the puzzles and completed the story the first time, playing it again isn’t as fun as you know how all the puzzles work. Unless you wanted to go in and get all the trophies one play-through is enough for me when it comes to Hello Neighbour 2. Though it did come with the bonus of DLC, which meant I got to play through the two extra story elements which were similar in gameplay to the main story but had their own mysteries for me to unfold. The packs that came with it were Late Fees, Back to School, and Hello-copter DLC. The Hello-copter spy cam was an interesting security camera that was able to fly around allowing you to survey Raven Brooks from a new angle. Though it did bug out on me a few times, and the only way I could fix it was to reload a previous save to get it working again.
Conclusion
There were shimmers of hope with Hello Neighbour 2 but the more I played the more I just got turned off. The world design is great, and it has some complex puzzles that I truly enjoyed overcoming and completing, but when you pair it with the AI, bugs, and frame rate drops it makes this stealth horror a lacklustre experience and one that I will sadly remember for the wrong reasons. I thought the mechanics and fundamentals were there to make a fantastic stealth horror, but I feel like it was just executed poorly and for me was a huge disappointment. It might be worth checking out if you loved the first one or if the game goes on sale but as it stands, I wouldn’t be recommending it. For those reasons, I’m giving Hello Neighbour 2 a 5 out of 10.
Choose your format here https://www.helloneighbor2.com/
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows, Xbox Cloud Gaming
Developers: tinyBuild, Dynamic Pixels, Eerie Guest Studios
Publishers: tinyBuild, Gearbox Publishing
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