Hello Neighbor 2 Review: From the Perspective of a Chicken

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Hello Neighbor 2 Review: From the Perspective of a Chicken

Over here at The Single Player Experience, we always want you, the listeners, to get the most bang for your buck when trying out new games. Often we love to check out the latest indie games.

In today’s episode, our host Sebastion Mauldin, will be reviewing the indie game of the week, Hello Neighbor 2.

Tune in to hear a breakdown of each component of this game to get a better idea of whether this game is worth adding to your backlog list.

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Sebastion Mauldin

Transcript
Sebastion:

what's up, and welcome to the single player experience. As always, I'm your host, Sebastian Malden, and often the best surprises in life come outta nowhere. You could be given a surprise gift. Maybe you get extra pieces of chicken in your two piece and a biscuit combo, or maybe someone threw your surprise party. You might have found some money on the ground. Life is full of surprises in the gaming industry. We don't often get the pleasant surprise that is video games being shadow dropped, at least not. One of the most recent examples of this though is Tangle Works. Newest Game HiFi Rush. As soon as I saw the trailer, I just knew, I knew my ass had to chicken out. After playing it to completion, I knew that I had to do an episode about it. It's a game that blew me away and became an early contender for Game of the Year 2023. So what is this game and who is this game for? I'm gonna answer that question and more right after the intro. DJ start the intro. Let me be real with you for a sec. I never played the first Hello Neighbor game, and it wasn't that I didn't think it looked good. It was just that I was a chicken. I am a chicken. It was pure cowardice on my part. People, I couldn't draw up enough courage to actually want to check the game out. I say this to preface that I have no insight. Into the story or lure of the world going into playing this game. That said, despite my apprehension to all things spooky, I enjoyed the suspenseful ride. That is Hello Neighbor two, even though the game is full of very frustrating aspects, so let's dive into it. Let's start with the narrative and Hello Neighbor two. You play as a Dyslectic investigator who's on a mission to find evidence against a suspected serial kidnapper. The serial kidnapper is the poster boy of the franchise. The more the meets to I, Mr. Peterson, a k a, the neighbor you creep around his house and others in the neighborhood to find the damning evidence to expose the neighbor all the while, while he tries to hunt you down. Let me be real with you. This is an interesting premise that you don't, well, at least I don't see that often in video games. It's a shame though, that such a cool concept has become undone a bit by the game's lack of consequences. For example, if you get caught in this game sneaking around the neighbor's house, you think you become another victim of the neighbor instead of. Reasonable outcome. You're simply thrown out of his house free to do it all over again. I get that. It's a game and leaps of logic have to be taken into part and into consideration when making a game. However, this unravels the whole entire narrative. Instead of seeming diabolical and menacing, the neighbor's aura just becomes non-threatening when he just throws you off his property. Low key. The neighbor kind of got a point in this situation. You own his property. Let's segue into the gameplay. You're gonna be disappointed if you're expecting an action game where you get to fight off Mr. Peterson every time he hunts you down. This game is essentially a point and click suspense puzzle game. You go from area to area and saw various puzzles while you trying to stay out of Mr. Peterson's hands. Speaking of the puzzles, they're a bit different than what you would normally expect instead of the obvious in your face puzzles that we typically get in video games. Hello neighbor, challenges, your sense of observation. For example, you might walk into a room and see a photo frame where some of the pieces of a photo are missing, or you might walk into a different room completely and see that a toy robot is missing his arm. You set both of those right, and the game gives you some way to progress further. It might be a tool that you can use to solve another puzzle, or it might be the key to open up a completely new area or room. The game also gives you the ability to hide in things like closets and cupboards to avoid your hunters. This is a mixed bag. While it's a cool gameplay mechanic, it does halt the pacing of the game quite a bit. There were times in which I'd rather just be caught so I can hurry up and get back to what I was doing previously, like solving a puzzle. That said, it kind of slows everything down because you're stuck in a closet instead of solving a puzzle, and let's be real here, a lot of the times the neighbor will find you in the closet, so you're almost hiding for no reason. Let's talk about some general pros of this game. For example, the game's art style. The art style is something that really makes this game stand out. It has this really unique Jimmy Neutron meets a Dreamworks movie vibe going on that I really dig. The art style really helped me take some of the edge off of what could have been and maybe should have been a more terrifying experience. I'm a chicken, so it really didn't bother me that it kind of mellows everything out a little bit. But for people who really like horror games, this kind of would probably bug. Now let's talk about the flaws. The puzzles are absolutely creative. Some really good puzzles are in this game. However, if you aren't observant, are good at puzzles, then this game isn't going to be for you at all. Another aspect that I really didn't like about the game is that it's easy to get lost in, and I don't mean that as far as like the ambiance, as far as like it's easy to get lost in what's going on in the game. That's true too. What I meant by that is it's really easy to get lost while trying to figure out what to do next because the game doesn't hold your hand until you where to go next. As a result, it's really easy to find yourself just lost in trying to figure out what to do or where to go next. So if you want a more streamlined game where you kind of have a point A to point B kind of mission structure, this game game ain't gonna be for you. Everything about this game comes down to its narrative. It's really easy to poke holes into the story, and when that happens, it becomes a hard game to take seriously. As I mentioned before, the games Tom and Jerry hide and seek, like Chase also loses his fear factor due to the game's lack of consequences and stakes. So all that said though, should you play Hello Neighbor two. If you're a fan of Point and click puzzle games or like horror games, then the answer is a yes. If you don't take the narrative too seriously and you're patient when it comes to puzzle games, then this game is a short game that's easy to re. If you're a gamer who's not a fan of puzzle games or light horror games, then this game isn't going to change your mind about that, and you should definitely skip this one. In this show, we practice the 10 games backlog rule. In this practice, you log down 10 games, those games are gonna be your video game backlog. To be as productive as you possibly can be, we recommend that you only play three games at one time. One single player narrative game, one game that's gonna be your chill and relaxed game. And another game that's going to be your palate cleanser game, which is a game that you play when you're not in the mood for your other narrative. When you complete or get tired of one game, it leaves the backlog list. Then you decide which new game is added to the list, and which game on the list advances to your active three games. So that is the game recommendation of the week that you should consider adding to your backlog. If you want me or my community of gamers to give you feedback on your backlog list, then join us in the single Player Experience Discord server. Once you're in, feel free to share your video game backlog list our talk about good single player game experiences that you've had lately. The link to join the free single player experience Discord server is in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode, and I hope to catch you in the next one. Peace.

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