You lose no items or progress when he finds you, and I would often purposely seek him out if I wanted to quickly return to the starting area. The unique element, that the computer-controlled Neighbor learns your patterns and attempts to thwart your specific style of playing, is a neat trick, but his presence ends up eliciting more annoyance than fear in that the repercussions of him catching you are so minor. It is possible that much of the time that you spend figuring out where to go and what to do will be interrupted by the evil Neighbor, who upon catching you sends you back to where you began each act. The game is divided into three acts and a brief finale, and runs 5-10 hours in length, but mostly because of its obtuseness and lack of direction. Moments after regaining “control” of your character, you are likely to be fighting the unchangeable controller setup, which moves the most frequently used actions to the two R and two L buttons, which isn’t horrible on the Pro Controller, but can certainly be uncomfortable in handheld mode. Unfortunately, that’s much easier said than done. The objective is made as clear as it is ever going to be at this point: Investigate what is happening in this house. Your ball has stopped in front of a large house where you can hear glass breaking and see the titular Neighbor at the tail end of doing something sinister. There are no cars or people in sight, and “Simming” signs, a play on “Missing,” hang from the trees you see as you meander, or sprint, down the street. Walking down the street after the ball, the colors and brightness of the environment give a false sense of security.

The main character, a young boy, kicks his ball down the street, and this is where the player takes control. Hello Neighbor is a first-person horror game with puzzles and stealth elements.

Hello neighbor rating