Neighbors From Hell
It’s Spy vs. Spy in the local neighborhood. Is it any good, or should you consider moving?
Tags: Neighbors From Hell Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Ludwig on Dec 2nd, 2003
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Neighbors From Hell (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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Neighbors. There’s no escaping them. Continuously whining about the excessive noise levels reached by your surround sound system, lamenting your lovable pooch’s lack of gardening technique and occasionally setting destructive terrorist plots in motion (for residents of Arlington Road), they’re the bothersome bunch that share the street with you. When dealing with these people in ways that don’t involve homicide, one is faced with two distinct options. The first is to convert your humble abode into an invincible fortress that conveniently sinks beneath the ground whenever neighbors and the G.I. Joe team are around. The other, less expensive avenue to take is that of politely waving at them on Sunday mornings, content with the imagery of physical abuse conjured up in your mind.
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Appealing to those seated in the latter category, Neighbors From Hell allows you to enter your unsuspecting neighbor’s home and exact revenge by setting up a myriad of torturous traps and painful pranks. It’s certainly a good concept, but this point-and-click game of cat and mouse is not a very good implementation of it. Like the ubiquitous reality TV shows it sets out to parody, it’s a barely entertaining diversion that requires very little thought and very little time to grow tired of.
The comic mishaps that befall your neighbor could have been the highlight here, but the majority of slapstick jokes would be considered shameful in a second-rate sitcom. Being startled by a deflating whoopee cushion? Slipping on marbles? Exploding an egg in the microwave? Come. On.
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Presented from a 2D perspective, the game places you in the role of Woody, the sneaky star of a sadistic reality TV show. In each episode, you’ll have to collect objects littered about the house, use them to construct traps and constantly avoid being caught in the clutches of the vile neighbor. An on-screen indicator informs you of the neighbor’s next destination, providing you with ample opportunity to figure out his pattern and quickly conceal yourself. Causing the simple-minded man much grief and frustration will evoke applause from the audience and a raise in television ranking. Stringing together a set of pranks will improve the response and reward you with a better score at the end of the episode, as well as the sight of an extremely infuriated neighbor.
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It’s a sight you’ll quickly get used to, as the game’s difficulty poses a challenge only to the most feeble of single-cell organisms (or half the contestants on Survivor). The process of setting up a prank barely qualifies as a puzzle, as it’s only a matter of walking around, raiding cupboards and then using the obtained objects in the correct spot as soon as the neighbor has left the room. Woody provides hints with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the head – he might as well hop out the screen and play the game for you. As the show carries on, the game will throw more rooms and inventory items at you, but you’ll still be doing exactly the same thing. The addition of pesky pets in certain rooms is equally pointless, since using a right-click instead of a left-click makes Woody sneak and consequently avoid the animals going berserk and alerting the burly bad guy.
With a simple point-and-click interface, moving around and manipulating items couldn’t be easier. A single tap of the mouse button is all that’s required to pick up objects, open cupboards, activate appliances or move to a desired destination. It’s the same system that’s been used by adventure games for years, and it’s not something that should be changed anytime soon.
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Another trait that is shared with that now niche genre is the game’s graphics. Locked at a resolution of 640 x 480, the visuals don’t need much in terms of hardware. If your PC can’t run this, you shouldn’t be surprised to witness Indiana Jones bursting in and taking your beige box to the nearest museum. The pre-rendered backgrounds are quite colorful and look decent, though they’re lacking in detail and style. Then again, it’s the inside of a generic house we’re talking about here. With their caricatured faces and strange movements, the CG sprite characters are vaguely reminiscent of claymation rejects, very much in line with Donkey Kong Country meets The Neverhood. Animation is pretty average and is re-used far too often, though it rarely becomes as annoying as the single in-game tune.
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There are so many potholes on the road of a game’s good concept to its completion, and Neighbors From Hell hits nearly all of them, rolls down an embankment, crashes into a tree and promptly explodes. It sounds harsh, but picking up an object and putting it down in a different room is a bad substitute for a puzzle and is not fun. Had the game shown some vague glimmer of genuine comedy, the super simple gameplay and offensively easy difficulty would have been far less obvious. You could breeze through it in an afternoon and still have time to wallow in despair about the 2 hours that you’ve wasted of your life.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
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+ Simple interface + Low system requirements |
5.4 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Extremely short - The gags are not even remotely funny - Gameplay is trivial at best - Painfully easy |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| The game's many glaring faults are like a lighthouse beacon flashing in your eyes. The best thing you could do is to look away. | |
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Tags: Neighbors From Hell
Posted by Ludwig on Dec 2nd, 2003 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
