Hello Neighbor review: An all-around bad time in surreal suburbia - Sensationalist Headlines

[url]https://arstechnica.com/?p=1237637[/url]

But hey it sure makes a great game for Youtubers to pretend to be scared in for views. [editline]28th December 2017[/editline] Good thing they put out shitty merchandise before making the game actually playable. [img]https://i.ytimg.com/vi/C-a1H4i_foA/maxresdefault.jpg[/img]

I've never seen an Early Access game get so aggressively worse than it's original concept so quickly.

I remember seeing the concept and being so intrigued and excited about its potential. Now it's released, and it's just as polished as it was before. There's more "stuff," but no more polish. Reminds me of We Happy Few. Looked [I]really[/I] interesting, then fell flat.

This is less of a video game and nore of a franchise built off a concept trailer. All those toys and knock off apps exist because the trailer was bangin, the art style and idea was interesting, and the neighbor is a really good character design. Unfortunately the actual concrete game has little to do with its success cause its GARBAGE. I would like to see the rights sold to a movie company to make an animated film out of this or something that doesn't suck. Laika could do it.

Hello Neighbor is what happens when a newbie developer has a cool idea, then immediately gets caught in by feature creep - but they already did all the "viral marketing" and need to release a product to capitalize on it. It's made worse by the early-access title in which developers rush to release a "1.0" to prove they actually "finished" the game to all early-purchasers, so the game is never properly realized... or good, for that matter. Take the money and run!

[QUOTE=Mister Sandman;53010459]I would like to see the rights sold to a movie company to make an animated film out of this or something that doesn't suck. Laika could do it.[/QUOTE] Do they really need the rights? Someone could just change the design a tiny bit to make it their own, add a cowboy hat and release it as "Howdy Neighbour".

I liked the original release, it wasn't that bad, but I expected way more.

The initial concept and first demo was really interesting and brought something interesting to the horror genre where for once it wasn't some spooky alien or supernatural being, it was just [I]your neighbor.[/I] There was a layer of storytelling underneath done without spoken words that was intriguing and sparked the players curiosity to find out what the Neighbor was hiding in his basement. You kinda knew what was going on, but you wanted to know more. The final product is a buggy, narratively broken mess. If you stand on a physical object wrong you get launched into space and fall to your death, the neighbor can clip through walls and spots you at what seems like complete random, optimization is nowhere to be found, any "weapon" to keep him at bay is ultimately useless since any escape you try to make will be rendered futile by the horribly confusing level designs, and the art-style is all over the place and insanely inconsistent. Story-wise the game went from something simple to keep the player engaged to having a ton of unexplained story events thrown at you that don't have any pay-off, and the game wraps up with a boring [sp]"haha it was all a dream" cop-out[/sp] while somehow, after all the shit it's thrown at you, still leaving a ton of stuff unexplained. By the time the game hit Alpha 4 I knew something was off because by then they had changed the formula of the whole thing through every iteration and it made it seem like the devs had absolutely no clue what they were doing and were just throwing random bits of code & design at the wall to see what sticks. That's the point where I refunded, because the game was getting too complex for its own good. I've only kept up with it via playthroughs.

Feels like they had a fun concept and once it started to hook on they felt like they should instantly turn this into something much bigger then it needs to be. The Alpha felt more polished then the final version since it feels like they forced the pointless story right into it.

shit like this is why i never get hyped for games anymore. watch dogs 1 was the last game i could say i was "hyped" for. never again

[QUOTE=LZTYBRN;53010803]shit like this is why i never get hyped for games anymore. watch dogs 1 was the last game i could say i was "hyped" for. never again[/QUOTE] The only time i get hyped for something is after it's release, when word-of-mouth gets around about how good or interesting something is.

[QUOTE=Te Great Skeeve;53010526]Hello Neighbor is what happens when a newbie developer has a cool idea, then immediately gets caught in by feature creep - but they already did all the "viral marketing" and need to release a product to capitalize on it. It's made worse by the early-access title in which developers rush to release a "1.0" to prove they actually "finished" the game to all early-purchasers, so the game is never properly realized... or good, for that matter. Take the money and run![/QUOTE] I didn't actaully watch many videos of this but the initial trailer and idea seemed very interesting, it was the sort of thing that seemed like there would be a proper mystery with all sorts of hints and the gameplay tying in to that. It looked like there were all sorts of different versions of the map based on some of the video thumbnails i saw, why did they seem to keep changing the game/map entirely all the time?

[QUOTE=nightlord;53011050]I didn't actaully watch many videos of this but the initial trailer and idea seemed very interesting, it was the sort of thing that seemed like there would be a proper mystery with all sorts of hints and the gameplay tying in to that. It looked like there were all sorts of different versions of the map based on some of the video thumbnails i saw, why did they seem to keep changing the game/map entirely all the time?[/QUOTE] I think they literally didn't know what they wanted the game to be gameplay wise. Like sometimes the house was a fuckhuge megatropolis (I think they settled on that), sometimes it was just a normal house, just a lot of back and forth between different ideas before ultimately prematurely ejaculating whatever trash they had accumulated by the deadline out on everyone's plates. I guess they must have thought a fuckhuge house with loads of houses built on top and trains and all that was visually more interesting? But that completely negates the purpose of the neighbor because in that large a house what are the chances you'll even see the motherfucker.

I have a bad impression of this game simply because of the sheer amount of botting for it on tumblr.