Hello Neighbor Review

Introduction 
Welcome to this new review of hello neighbor, come and embrace the hell that this game is and lose your sanity. Hello, Neighbor is a horror stealth game where you need to escape the neighbor.
The game is very colorful and bright, the concept is great but the execution is so poor that you want to cry. The game is riddled with bugs, vague storytelling, illogical puzzles, and many more problems.
You will even find puzzles where you need to throw items through a wall, good luck with figuring that out. You will encounter many bugs, interactions that are broken or items that go missing that will end up in restarting a complete act.
Your goal is to not get caught by the neighbor but this is impossible, the A.I always knows where you are and the chance that he will catch you is too high. Every act has a different goal but you will not get an objective or any clear idea on what to do in hello neighbor. There are many things to do hello neighbor in one act and you will have no clue what to do. This game was horrible and I am glad it is over, I had to push through and it was almost impossible to manage my feelings to rage quit this game. I had to restart acts over to many times and figure out what to do in this game.

What did I think of Hello Neighbor before playing?
When I looked at this game it seemed very fun, I do like horror games a lot and the idea of a colorful horror world seemed fun.
I was already thinking of putting this game in the poll when it suddenly came in the humble choice of August 2020.
I learned more of the game by looking at the steam page, It looked great and fun to explore.
Many people were wondering the same since the game won the poll of the week.
Boy, was everyone wrong about this game if you value your sanity don’t play this game!

Story
The game features the neighbor who captures you and locks you in a room but it is uncertain if you are the only outside kid he kidnapped but I think you are the only one. Why does the neighbor kidnap you? This is my theory based on what happened in the game.

The neighbor is a normal person that is living a happy life with a happy wife, the neighbor crashes the car while his wife is a passenger and he survives but she dies. He is slowly losing his mind as he tries to take care of his two kids.
His fear, anxiety, and paranoia are manifesting in a shadow form. For some reason, his girl is pushed out of a window. I think the boy has something to do with this. I think they were playing and the neighbor was not paying attention as the loss of his wife was haunting him.  The boy pushes her out of the window and the neighbor is clueless on what to do! He locks the boy up in the basement and buries the girl in his yard. To cover these acts, he hangs up missing posters of his children.
What once was a happy man is now haunted by regret and painful memories, he sits on the porch a lot and cries there. You play in act one and two as a little boy who gets sucked in this whirlwind of sorrow. You start by investigating the knocking that you hear from the basement but the neighbor catches you and locks you up to. An unknown amount of time passes and you manage to escape the basement and the house, you almost get caught again by the neighbor but for some reason, he stops chasing you. He could have caught you but for a few seconds, he fights his fears and shadows to let you escape. You escape and go to the police and the neighbor gets picked up and his boy freed but it is unknown what happens to him. What happened to the neighbor is also unknown but I guess he is locked tight in a jail cell.

In act 3 and 4 you are an adult and your fears and anxiety from being locked in a basement. For some reason you head back to your old neighborhood, this is most likely due to eviction from your apartment. You see that the neighborhood has fallen into disarray and the house where you once were locked up is destroyed. You take a nap on your couch, as you fall asleep you are being haunted by old memories. In your dream, you fight your anxiety and fears and learn that neighbor was also haunted by the same shadow. He did terrible things but he will never get free of his shadow and what happened to the boy?

Many loose ends and very vague but this is my interpretation of the story.

Gameplay
The goal in this game is to solve puzzles to clear the acts, if you know what you need to do you could solve this game in an hour. If you don’t know what you are doing you are going to lose your sanity.
While solving the puzzles the neighbor will catch and you will get teleported to your house, you can use some objects to solve puzzles. When the neighbor notices you, it is time to hide but this will usually fail.
There is no time limit or lives so you can get caught many times. The neighbor is very fast and will also plant traps, bear traps or cameras are not uncommon. He will also throw goo at you and tomatoes.
Some of the puzzles are extremely far fetched and impossible to actually understand how someone could make this. Add many bugs to this game that will make you reset acts or bugs that are game-breaking and you have a horrendous experience. There is not much more to the gameplay of Hello Neighbor.

Sound and Graphics
The graphics and sound are the only reasonable things in this game but there many clipping errors or interactions with objects that are impossible.
The sound did scare me once due to just starting out of nowhere. The sound is important to let you know when the neighbor is close.
I did like the colorful graphics but the errors made it bad for me.

What did I think of Hello Neighbor
This game really made my head hurt, I bumped into so many bugs it was insane. The puzzles were hard and weird. I did not think of solving a puzzle by throwing a shoe through an enclosed grate when they present the opening switch next to it. There where even basketballs that you needed to throw against the switch but when I hit the switch nothing happened. I also disliked the way that the neighbor always knew exactly where I was or where I was going. I also encountered many bugs that made me restart the game. I even quit the game for a few days because I just refused to play this horrible game anymore but of course, I continued for an honest review and finished it anyway. This came at the cost of my sanity that I am now trying to find again.  This game is one big clunky and buggy mess that should never have passed beta testing.

My personal rating for this game is 1
Yes, I really gave it a 1! Do not play this game, I beg of you!

Pros and Cons

Pros
– The concept of this game is good.

Cons
– There are many bugs in this game, these can break the game and you will need to restart the whole act to resolve the bug.
– There is not a single objective to guide you, not even a simple line like, escape the house or find a key.
– There are many clipping errors in the walls.
– You can throw items through walls, wait, this is needed to solve puzzles.
– The A.I always knows where you are even when you are hiding., when you are hiding he will wait in front of your hiding spot until you come out.
– There are too many items that you can interact with for solving puzzles, with no clue which one you will need for the main story.
– You can actually solve act 2 in a few minutes if you know what to do, the same goes for act 3.
– It is almost impossible to complete this game, after rage quitting I decided to use a full walkthrough and I still was unable to complete the game.*
– There are too many ways to interpret the story.

* My wife also tried to help with the game and puzzles but she could not solve the puzzles either. It took many hours to get through this game.

I don’t recommend this game, I beg of you run away while you have your sanity intact. Leave me and don’t look behind, save yourself from this horrible game.
I give this game a…drumroll…

2.6

Leave your thoughts in the comments.
I hope you liked reading this review, I hope to see you in the next review.