Before I continue with the review I want to clarify something: after reviewing a game I give a rating which instead of stars it’s controllers, so 3 dark controllers and 2 grey controllers is 3 out of 5 stars (for example).
Buy the game here Before I start my review, I want to give a little bit of context to the release of this game. So, Hello Neighbor has been publicly releasing Betas and Alphas from their Kickstarter campaign for nearly two years now, and it’s been in the works for probably even longer. The game got a lot of hype and attention because it was and is completely different to all popular games today. Here's the very basic outline of the story without spoiling anything: Hello Neighbor is based on you, a teenager/adult, investigating your creepy neighbor who has questionable behavior. You try to find his secrets by breaking into all the rooms of his weird house. It can get quite scary at times when the neighbor grabs you when you least expect it. It's a pretty neat idea, and it definitely separates itself from the pack of 2017 indie games. So at the end of all the Betas and Alphas, people were left unsatisfied, they still had no idea who the person they played as were, how they ended up next to this neighbor and what he did exactly. Sometimes, when you got into a new room or discovered something, the game would give you these random hallucination-like cut scenes, or scenarios. These scenarios and cut scenes made absolutely zero sense and don’t give any solid evidence to some game theories (these cut scenes/scenarios are still present in the finished game). People dismissed it as the developers not wanting to give too much away and you ending up not buying the full game when it released. So the game released 9 days ago, on the 8th of December. People were extremely impatient for this release, hoping to have some clarification on the Betas and Alphas. Oh, and I forgot to add; each version of the Alphas and Betas were nearly always extremely different and almost irrelevant to one another. So anyway, when the game released people emptied their Steam wallets so they could play it as soon as possible, hoping to satisfy their frustration left over from the Alphas. So the game consists of 3 acts, all of which are different to each other. Here’s a breakdown of the Acts without spoiling anything: Act 1: This is not exceptional but not bad either, and kind of short. Act 2: Okay, this is definitely the peak point so far. Act 3: This feels rushed and definitely copied and pasted from some of the Alphas/Betas. The game ends When the game ends, it feels entirely wrong. You’re left with this one singular thought that everyone has when it’s over: “That’s it?” Yup, not a drop more of backstory or context from what the Betas and Alphas gave us. Honestly, I’m disappointed with tinyBuild. I would go as far to say that the pre-Alpha version of the game was better than the ‘final’ version of the game. Here’s the complete list of why I think this: -Bugs. FRICKING BUGS EVERYWHERE. Example: being caught without having the neighbor close to you (keep in mind that this happened to me more than once). -Unsatisfying context and ending (I’ve already told you all about this). -Only 3 hours total of gameplay. -The developers brag that the game has Advanced AI, in reality though, the AI is buggy as hell; he gets caught in walls and badly made game barriers ALL THE TIME. Which gives you an unfair advantage to explore the house without worry. -Bad controls. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that this game is unfinished. It consistently forgets what its bases and backstory is and eventually kind of floats away from what it was at the beginning. What I think happened to the game is that either it was put on pause, and rushed in the few last months before its release, or the developers tried multiple versions but it all felt wrong, and when the due date came around the corner, they tried to quickly brush off one of the messed up versions as the complete versions and put it on the market. So in conclusion, the big question everyone is asking: is it worth 30 bucks? I’d personally say that no, it’s super overpriced for the content and quality, and they should’ve just apologized to the community explaining that the game wasn’t finished yet and stretch the due date further. I’d say it’d be maybe worth your money if it was 10 bucks or under, but it isn’t, so, taking everything into consideration, I give the game:
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