Neighbours from Hell 2: On Vacation review

There’s too much diplomacy in the world nowadays. People actually attempt to resolve their differences in an ‘adult’ way – “let’s talk it over”, “let’s compromise”. Who cares about compromise? If we’re affronted by our neighbour’s overly loud hi-fi, we’re going to let them know about it. More than likely in a juvenile and crude fashion.

We do, then, agree with the methods utilised by a certain ‘Woody’ figure from Neighbours from Hell 2. When a neighbour parks his car so it overlaps yours he urges an elephant to hit him with a cricket bat. When a neighbour sunbathes in his garden he places an uncomfortable object on his towel. Well, in the game this isn’t quite accurate. There are no real reasons for your actions. You’ve followed your neighbour onto a cruise liner and with considerable determination begin to disrupt his holiday wherever possible.

But, like its televisual near-namesake, the endless string of petty grievances you inflict on your neighbour can become just a little bit repetitive. To be fair, it never claims to be anything more than this, but can its other merits provide us with a decent gaming experience?

Lights, camera, um…

Neighbours from Hell 2, like the previous game in the series, centres around the principal that Woody, the key protagonist within it, is appearing on a television programme following his antics. To progress through the various locations and scenarios, high ratings need to be gained. This can be achieved through the playing of pranks on your victim, the more you successfully carry out, the higher the ratings.

Controls are simple. It’s very much a point ’n’ click affair and, in the early levels, you’ll soon discover that it’s only a matter of picking up a few objects, choosing that object from the inventory running across the bottom of your screen and combining it with a certain ‘fixed’ object (you’ll have guessed how to do it) to produce an accident waiting to happen for your neighbour.

Each area is split into approximately six different sections, what would have been rooms in the original Neighbours from Hell. Your unfortunate neighbour will follow a looped routine of fairly pointless tasks across these areas. As your character, Woody, will also be free to roam these spaces, you’ll need to keep him away from the soon-to-be-irate neighbour. While some people might be happy to see someone add petrol to the water you use to cool your feet down with after walking on hot coals, we’re under the impression that your bald adversary isn’t. Our suspicions were confirmed by the repeated beatings we received from him after attempting similarly amusing stunts. Of course, on each such occasion we lost a life, seemingly denoting the chances given to the show by the viewers before switching off.

Dressed for success

It’s not often that you see a retail game that requires, at the very least, a 266Mhz processor and 8-megabyte graphics card in these days of X800s and 6800s. The fact that with, what are, pretty polished visuals, these are the requirements is to be commended and shows that there have been at least some efforts to optimise the game.

In style, the graphics are ‘cartoony’ in execution they are reminiscent of the dirty postcards you’ll find around the seaside but a little more 21st century. Your neighbour, and his accompanying mother, are suitably grotesque.

Style over substance

Well, it’s not actually that stylish a game it doesn’t claim to boast a variety of gameplay styles, a complex physics engine or visuals that’ll squeeze the last polygon out of that £300 graphics card. What is does try to be, however, is good, clean, if slightly repetitive fun. Variation is achieved mainly through the changing of locales and differing pranks. Apart from that it’s all very samey.

But does this all become a tad too much. Despite the fact you’ll have been expecting this, will you want to continue playing to the end? The truth is, that in short bursts it is rather good fun. A sustained session of neighbouring from hell will not leave you far short of the game’s completion so perhaps that’s the way it was designed to be played.

Your new neighbour?

As far as replay value is concerned, we can see it at close to nil. Once you’ve carried out a prank the once or even managed the fairly difficult, initially at least, task of failing a level things begin to get a little dull. We played the demo of Neighbours from Hell 2 before embarking on the real thing. This was a few weeks before laying our hands on the completed code and still, to start by playing a level we’d already experienced was far from an exciting and enthralling experience.

Things did improve significantly as we progressed through the later levels to the point that we did actually find some genuinely challenging levels in there – almost a little too challenging perhaps, as you find that your, ‘combine this object with that one to create an accident’, no longer works.

So then, to throw a spectacular piece of allegorical goodness into the fray, be careful who you move in with, or next to, with regard to Neighbours from Hell 2. If its rough ‘n’ ready, point ‘n’ clicky charms appeal to you, go for it. Just do make sure you consider how much entertainment you’ll be likely to get for your money before shacking up with your new chum.