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Game: Neighbours from Hell.
Platform: PC.
Year: 2003.
Developer: JoWooD Vienna
Genre: Puzzle
Game: Neighbours from Hell 2: On Vacation.
Platform: PC.
Year: 2004.
Developer: JoWooD Vienna
Genre: Puzzle
Videogames have been often criticised for their representation of bad behaviours, usually through the actions the characters often partake in. Ill manners are very frequent to seem even in the most simple of games. However, very few games dangle the line between satire and dickishness like the Neighbours from Hell series. The original Neighbours from Hell was initially released in 2003, and a year later, it got a sequel, Neighbours from Hell 2: On Vacation. Both games are extremely similar, so this review will analyse both of them, even if there are some aspects unique to each instalment.
First, the plot. In a random neighbour of Vienna, our protagonist, Woody, is your average Joe, enjoying his life as much as he can. However, he is constantly bullied and irritated by his horrid neighbour, Mr. Rottweiler. He throws garbage to his house, he lets his dog do its thing in Woody’s garden, he makes a lot of noise with his vehicle, he never listens to the rest of the neighbours complains (to the point where his name appears in the newspapers)... Finally sick of his neighbour’s behaviour, Woody gets in contact with a TV program, and they both decide to create a plan to enact revenge upon Mr. Rottweiler: Woody will enter in his neighbour’s house and set prank after prank after him, and the TV guy will record everything to show it to the masses as some sort of reality show. And that’s the game. It is basically a series of point and click scenarios designed to create traps and tricks to annoy Mr. Rottweiler to the point of breaking. The first game is set in Mr. Rottweiler’s house, whereas the second one follows him travelling around the world during holidays. You will try to go finding objects and items to manipulate and combine to set traps to the neighbour, while making sure he doesn’t see you. The more pranks you make, the better the ratings will be, and thus, the better your score is. You can combine a series of pranks to get extra points, while the neighbour acts like he’s having a mental breakdown or a heart attack. Pranks vary from the stupid, to the juvenile to the downright dangerous. There are some that will make you think Woody is trying to outright murder him, all while the laugh track of the show enjoys it. Though to be fair, you never feel too sad for the characters, and if the neighbour finds you out, he will beat you up and the game will be over. In some levels, you will have to deal with his pets too, his parrot and his dog, that will alert him of your presence if you make too much noise. The second game changes things a bit. Instead of an instant game over, you now have three lives, but the game compensates this by adding Rottweiler’s mother to the levels, and she will attack you if she sees you too. Other than that, they are more or less identical.
These two games are not particularly long. The first game has 18 levels including the tutorials, and the second one has 14, also with tutorials. In the first game, the more levels you beat, the more areas you have to wreak havoc, while in the second one you have multiple settings themed like different countries. The game is not particularly difficult once you get into the rhythm of it. Beating the game with the minimum level needed is extremely simple, and it’s also easy to reach 90% of audience. Reaching the 100% on a level, though, requires playing the same level a lot of times, knowing the timing and location of everything, without wasting a single second. That could be a fun challenge, but there isn’t a big incentive to do so.
The game feels like a cartoon, something like Tom and Jerry, or the Roadrunner, but much, much more mean-spirited. First off, this is one of the few games I’ve ever played where every character involved is an absolute asshole, from beginning to end. To start with, Rottweiler is portrayed as irredeemable in the games. He’s rude, he spies on women in both games, he damages public and private property, steals from charities, he’s a jerk to children and at one point in the game he kills his pet parrot and hangs his head in the wall like a trophy. The protagonist, Woody, is a resentful prick that breaks into his neighbour’s house to torment him even when he’s not doing anything wrong, the guy in charge of the TV program is breaking I don’t know how many laws by streaming the neighbour being tortured on TV, to the viewing pleasure of thousands, if not millions of people (considering we can reach ratings of 100% at best). Rottweiler’s mother is a beast of a woman that is the spitting image of her son, with everything that can be said about the neighbour being applicable to her as well. The only main characters that are somewhat redeemable are Olga and her son, who appear only in the second game as the romantic interest of Rottweiler. And even then, Olga is just there to beat up the neighbour once he falls into one of Woody’s plans.
Graphics are fine. They decided to go for a style somewhat similar to Wallace & Gromit, but not go all in on the Claymation. The graphics are fine, and the environment is pretty detailed. There are some things that feel weird, like the neighbour has some sort of pornographic tabloid in both his study and the bathroom (I wonder how they managed to hid THAT from the rating boards), but the resolution of the images is lowered considerably to keep kids from seeing them for what they are. The second game has much better visuals, although that comes from a better variety of things displayed, due to the premise allowing them more freedom in that regard. The music can get repetitive fast, there aren’t that many tracks in either of the titles, but it’s not too bad.
There’s a bit of a feedback problem with the PC versions of this games. They don’t have an intro explaining the plot, they just throw you right into it, if you want some sort of explanation of why Woody does what it does, or why is there a TV program revolving around torturing the neighbour, you’ll have to go to the GameCube or the Xbox version (I’m shocked this game didn’t have a PS2 release, when it was primarily released in Europe). Also, a bit of trivia here, for some reason the ESRB rated this game Teen, but the PEGI board rated it 3+, which is a decent difference.
Overall, I find the difficulty of the games and the fact they are so short the only problems for otherwise perfectly serviceable games. But then again, these two things aren’t so much nit-picks as actual problems to the game. I guess someone that has not played them before could enjoy them fine, but they’d better get them in a bundle, otherwise they will feel the short length of the games. They are good puzzle games, though, and they will be enjoyable for a while.
Score: 6.5/10
