Hello Neighbor 2, the tried and tested version of the beta

They say the neighbor’s grass is always greener. Usually there is always a grain of truth in the proverbs, but what if the neighbor is a crazy psychopath wanted by the local police? Hello Neighbor 2 reminds everyone how good it is to stay away from the grass and disreputable people. Moreover, we already understood this with the first Hello Neighbor, a game that was talked about a lot at the time, slowly building a small fanbase, also thanks to the release of paper spin-offs (novels, All above).

The success of the first part of what has now become a full-fledged franchise has prompted the developers. Dynamic Pixels and Spooky Guest Studios, to create a second partition, powered by perhaps the best known publisher TinyBuild. Hello Neighbor 2 today seems to want to reaffirm its most successful aspects, which were already appreciated in 2017, but in a more ambitious operation in terms of content. Will it be successful? Or will a second way of saying “more is good” justify?

Thinking about it, in the meantime, we can suggest: Tested beta version of Hello Neighbor 2It was recently provided to us by the developers.

Subject: The mystery of Raven Brooks

There complo Hello Neighbor 2 is coming soon: You take on the role of Quentin, a journalist who has just arrived in the troubled town of Raven Brooks to investigate a series of mysterious disappearances. All the local kids seem to have disappeared: billboards with faces scattered all over the place prove it. The few human figures Quentin encounters upon his arrival, among other things, stare at him with malicious suspicion. Something is wrong, of course, but there are two other interesting facts here: Among the missing persons is also the Neighbor – dear old Theodore Masters Peterson – and then Nicky Roth. The latter, as you may recall, was the hero of the first Hello Neighbor.

The beta we were able to try only allowed us to explore a few environments. raven brooks: specifically, we went to the neighbor’s now deserted house (unfortunately familiar setting) and a never-before-seen Victorian villa belonging to an unpublished character. All existing characters seem somehow connected to the mystery of the general disappearances; The obviously cryptic narrative will be reconstructed within the bounds of possible fragments until the discovery of the children, Roth, and the same Vicino.

Acting as the main hub, but this is an intuition that needs to be duly confirmed in the future, it will likely be Quentin headquarters, a dilapidated building on the hill adjacent to the town.

One annoying aspect of the beta is definitelycrow man, thanks to its use: in fact, this shadowy figure appears every time the player tries to access an area that is currently unexplorable. The problem is that from a disturbing character with more “fear” shades, the crow-man goes into an obsessive and habitual existence. However, most likely, this problem will disappear with the final version of the game, when the entire macro area of ​​​​the city should be immediately available.

Same game, bigger size

Hello Neighbor 2, side gameplay, targeting the same mechanics as always, expanding the content and dimensions of the offer. This is evident from the very first moments of the beta: Apart from the short training useful for regaining your confidence in commands, you are immediately thrown into Raven Brooks. Freedom of movement is important because it is up to the player to choose which house to start their research from; actually, at the moment, the choice is pretty limited, but it will probably be possible to really start from any medium in the future. In individual houses, then we will find a certain enemy waiting for us. For example, the neighbor’s abandoned mansion is guarded in real time by a very unsocial policeman.

Each house hides a useful secret for the overall progress of the plot, but this is objects Those located in a single place will only be used on site. For example, a donut found in Theodore’s former home can be taken and used to distract the guard dog in defense of the aforementioned Victorian mansion. This is a minimal example, but it shows that progress is much less intuitive than it was in the past, thereby increasing the overall sense of freedom.

Freedom This too can turn into disappointment, remember. In fact, it’s not always clear what needs to be done at a particular moment to continue the story: it just seems to lack really useful objects in all the rooms in a particular place. Elsewhere, it is not directly clear how to enter it, and no suggestions from the developers come to our aid.

In all this, technical sector necessarily needs to be revised, because we literally managed to “break” one of the first levels, hanging midway between the ceiling and the rooms on the ground floor. We could see practically everything that was going on in the house without being noticed by the police. It doesn’t bode well, especially for a game that wants to offer a more intuitive AI than the first Hello Neighbor, which can learn the usual behavior of the protagonist.