Hello Neighborisn’t a game that everyone remembers fondly, but returning fans are sure to compare the sequel with the original. Surprisingly enough, years of experience and development didn’t translate into a direct improvement. Rather,this sequel is as inspired bythe original as it finds ways todifferentiate itself.
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BothHello NeighborandHello Neighbor 2are about infiltrating one or more houses with the objective of discovering why people are disappearing in this neighborhood. While players are snooping around a building, the residing neighbor goes on with their life, apparently only mildly interested in catching this intruder. Both games are aimed at an all-age group, something of a rarity in thestealth-horror genre.
6More Tools
In many ways,Hello Neighbor 2feels empty when compared to the original. One major exception appears clear when comparing thearsenal of toolsavailable to players in the two games. WhileHello Neighbor 1has more total items than its sequel, most of them are iterations on the idea of “throwable weapon” and “distractions”.
Hello Neighbor 2has a more streamlined approach to tools, planting distractions like alarm clocks firmly on the ground and outside the player’s inventory. It also reduces the number of “usable” tools to just the shovel, the scissors, the crowbar, and the fire extinguisher. Even then, just by introducing the security cameras,Hello Neighbor 2makes the tools feel like a much more important part of the game than they perhaps really are.
5Less Story
The story of the Hello Neighborseries is weird and confusing, sprawling over 10 games (counting alphas as individual releases) and many books. The games almost got their own TV series, of which the pilot can be seen inHello Neighbor 2as an Easter Egg. It might be surprising, then, to learn that the original game is a self-contained story with a satisfying ending.
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Unlike its predecessor,Hello Neighbor 2doesn’t have a clear finale, ending on a cliffhanger of dubious importance, failing to pose questions as much as to answer them.The plot looks like a filler episode, with no clear stakes or objective other than to investigate the antagonist of the first game for the same kidnappings that were already cleared up in the original game.
4More Houses, More Neighbors
The whole game ofHello Neighborhad just one neighbor, as the name implies, with one house that would massively change between levels. Infiltrating that one house was the main objective of the entirety of the game, except the last hour or so of gameplay.
Hello Neighbor 2has an entire village worth of houses, although only a handful are inhabited and can be explored. Still,sneaking through multiple buildings, each with a unique theme and design, makes the repetitive gameplay much easier to digest. Even then, the neighbors seem to all have the same AI and similar routines, the only real difference being their appearance.
3Better Puzzles
It’s hard to call the puzzles inHello Neighbor 2good, but they are a far cry from the inscrutable contraptions that plagued the original game. WhileHello Neighbor 1had complex, incomplete machines that the player had to activate, the sequel threats puzzles like simple activities that are only made hard when hiding from the neighbor.
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Inthe best puzzle games, getting stuck for a few minutes now and then is part of the intended experience. In a way, the originalHello Neighborwas more of a puzzle game than its sequel, but with surprisingly worst puzzles. Complex mysteries might be fun to unravel, but only as long as the puzzle is the only real task in the player’s hands.
2Different Presentation
The originalHello Neighborstarted as a small project. As a result, most of the art looked charming as a still picture while bordering on grotesque when put into motion. The lighting also never looked very good, as the whole world was baked in a weird yellowy light of unclear origin.
Art and animation seem to have received lots of attention inHello Neighbor 2. The result isa game that is still cartoonybut more grounded than the original, making for more readable levels that still look pleasant. Visuals and animations are where the series saw the biggest improvements, but music and sound effects are also more varied and unique.
1The Open World
The open-world structure is perhaps the biggest change going fromHello Neighbor 1to its sequel. Even if both games are about infiltrating a neighbor’s house,Hello Neighbor 2places all its buildings in the same town, letting the player walk from one objective to the next.
The open world might seem like a major difference, but it quickly reveals itself to be of little importance, since players will only ever be tasked to explore one house at any time. Still, even if it is underused, the open world makes the events of the game feel like an investigation instead of a string of random occurrences.
Hello Neighbor 2is now available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
