Hello Neighbor 2 Review – You Wouldn't Wish Neighbors Like This on Your Enemy

The long-awaited sequel to Hello Neighbor 2 came out colorful and atmospheric, but started with depressing bugs in a conditionally open world in which absolutely nothing happens, and it’s generally unclear why we need it like that. We briefly share our impressions of the new work of Friv2Online.

In my impressions of the beta version, which I shared in April of this year, we learned about the formation of the protagonist - an ideological journalist, eager to unravel the mystery of the disappearance of children at all costs. In the same place, in the beta assembly, we were shown a town abundantly populated with suspicious personalities, and a certain crow - the personal nightmare of the protagonist, who pursued him everywhere.

So, at the release, the introductory quest was replaced, and the crow was almost completely removed from the game. If in the beta the bird materialized every time, as soon as the player stepped into the territory in which he was not supposed to be, then in the release version of Hello Neighbor 2 he is limited by standard, already hackneyed methods.

The introductory video shows how the hero arrives in Crow Creeks, stopping the van in front of the house of that very neighbor, while the villain is just dragging another teenager into the dwelling. The protagonist simply watches as the neighbor drags the boy into the building, then goes outside and heads straight for the journalist.

The hero kicks the gas, fails to cope due to stress with control and rams a car shed. Getting out of the cab, we understand that the path to the street is cut off by a van that has broken through the wall. Will have to look for alternatives.

The hero is smart, solving a simple puzzle to find gears scattered around the hay in tricky places - the owner guessed to build electronic locks, but for some reason broke the mechanism that unlocks the main door. Here we get acquainted with the simple mechanics of the game, quite familiar to those who have already played Hello Neighbor before. We learn to interact with the environment and use inventory.

Tips, as in the previous part, are not provided for the players, and the player himself will quickly come to the physical properties of objects that can be thrown or broken. Having got out into the night air, the hero receives a savory blow to the head with a shovel, turns off and comes to his senses in his home - a small tower of the local media branch.

Despite the abundance of objects around, nothing interesting can be found in the tower: several monitors broadcasting images from cameras aimed at the neighbor’s house (obviously, the hero has been watching him for a long time), a map of the city, which you cannot take with you. Paper cabinets that cannot be opened, and a bunch of other rubbish that is useful only from the aesthetic side.

We get outside at dawn and almost immediately find ourselves near the house of the missing children. The neighbor himself is no longer in the house, but the place is cordoned off by the police and a law enforcement officer is on duty at the entrance. Having made our way into the house through the back door, we will find a lot of evidence and a red door leading to the basement, locked with four locks. This is our first major puzzle to be solved within the scope of the chapter through careful exploration of the house.

By the way, unlike the first original part, the policeman is not too attentive at first and his patrol is limited, so players will be able to smoothly adjust to the local stealth and puzzle mechanics if they are not too impudent and attract too much attention.

You can get one of the keys almost immediately if you manage to solve the puzzle with the safe, and to proceed further you will need additional tools that you will not find in the house during the day with fire. This way the game will kick you out to look for them, but don't be in too much of a rush to happily run to explore the town - you won't find anything but locked doors and blocked paths.

Unfortunately, most of the houses in Crow Creeks are just decoration. The light is sometimes on in their windows, you can distinguish individual details of the interior, but you will not meet the townspeople living in these places. Interesting buildings, like a sinister museum or a huge mansion in a swamp, are objectively different from the usual ones, attract the eye, but they are inhospitably locked until you get to the corresponding chapter.

Very soon, the first enthusiastic impression of the picturesque and cozy streets, illustrated with the improved graphics of Hello Neighbor 2, will be replaced by disappointment - the city is lifeless and completely empty, and the item you are looking for will be literally across the street from the neighbor's house, if you, of course, guess that the tree house - not just another decoration, and you can still get into it.

After finding everything you need, the player will return to the maniac's house and find that the policeman has moved inside the building. And here the game familiar to many with self-learning artificial intelligence will begin, which will try to remember the places where it found you, forcing the player to find new ways to deceive the enemy. Unfortunately, AI often behaves stupidly and is very predictable, so it is easy to catch them on the same scheme.

If we are discovered, we will be thrown out to the starting position, and all the puzzle elements found in the house will be taken away, and we will have to go after them again. For nothing that they will lie in the same places. It remains only to lure the opponent out of the room. In this regard, we are waiting for the most common Hello Neighbor, without any really entertaining innovations at all, but with jambs.

So, when creating a conditionally open location, the authors made gross blots. For example, they built an incredible amount of environmental objects nailed to the floor that could be (and should be) interactive at least for no reason.

In addition, the developers created impenetrable obstacles, using not only fences and enclosing structures to block the player’s routes, but flower beds, shrubs, ordinary low grass, and in some places they simply erected invisible walls, which is generally some kind of bad manners, given the development of modern industry.

One of the paid DLC offers players to get hold of a new tool - a flying drone with a camera and a hand gripper. A completely useless device that constantly gets stuck in invisible obstacles, cannot open doors and even take objects that the protagonist did not take before. He does not know how to shoot, and with his help it is impossible to fly off and even see how the mysterious house in the swamp looks close up because of the transparent walls described above. And during its use, completely ugly music that destroys the atmosphere begins to play. I really do not recommend.

After passing through the house of the missing children, the player is marked with a new location, and he will finally be able not only from the outside, but also from the inside to explore the local bakery, hiding from the aggressive owner. Then he will visit the museum several times, go to the house of a hunter who lives as a hermit, visit the mayor's house, which is located opposite an attractive public garden - it is guarded by an aggressive pet of the head of the city, and finally visit Mr. Peterson.

And if he acquires the DLC Late Fees and Back to School, he will be able to compete with the watchman and his dogs to the heap, and also try to get into the forbidden library. There are interestingly designed locations and quite fascinating puzzles, but there are problems with the optimization and performance of the AI.

Speaking of bugs and errors, Hello Neighbor 2 has a surprisingly large number of them. And it's not just about crashes and crashes. For example, at some point I was forced to put a key item on the floor from a limited inventory. It was kicked by my pursuer, and the object disappeared without a trace into the textures.

After my capture, which, as I wrote above, is followed by the selection of all the items found and placing them in their places, the puzzle element I needed did not appear, generally blocking the possibility for me to continue through the plot, since saves are made in Hello Neighbor 2 automatically and overwrite each other. Needless to say, that the desire to replay the game up to this point has disappeared completely?

Hello Neighbor 2 does have some positives though. The game was filled with new colors, many interesting locations appeared, albeit within the framework of individual chapters. I would like to praise the puzzles, most of which are really exciting, as well as the improved appearance with the corporate style of the project.

Meanwhile, the heap of scenery actually creates unnecessary visual noise, which often greatly distracts from the search for keys and tools to move forward. The game is riddled with nasty bugs (you need to wait for updates), it has problematic add-ons and a completely pointless, deceptive open world, which, for that matter, could be done without.