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Neighbours from Hell 2: On Vacation

Score: 85%
ESRB: Teen
Publisher: Cinemaware Marquee
Developer: JoWooD Productions
Media: CD/1
Players: 1
Genre: Puzzle/ Action

Graphics & Sound:

Woody and his neighbor are at it again in Neighbours from Hell 2: On Vacation. Back in the spotlight, for your viewing pleasure, Woody is once again tormenting his neighbor while on vacation. And this time, Mommy and Olga are even along for the ride. You knew your neighbor wasn't going to leave them home alone. There is an added bonus, as the original game Neighbours from Hell is included in the box. So now you can catch up on all of his adventures.

This is a great looking game, even for its age. Neighbours from Hell 2: On Vacation was originally released in Europe in 2004. The character details are still beautiful, and the animations will have you laughing out loud. You get a very Wallace and Gromit-esque feeling from the look and animation, which is very clean and great to look at.

The soundtrack and laugh track really pull you into the feeling of a show being taped. The witty music and well-placed sound effects only add to the immersion of you trying to cause the collapse and subsequent heart attack of your neighbor, live for the audiences' viewing pleasure.


Gameplay:

For those of you who are new to the game, you play the star on a show produced by JoeWood Vienna TV. Each level is another episode in the show. Your whole mission in life is to make your neighbor as miserable as possible. Don't feel bad. He deserves every minute of it. You accomplish your task by collecting things around you and then applying them to dubious traps and contraptions to make your neighbor's life miserable. What may look like a harmless crab on the beach one second can become more than a handful the next when you place him in the cooler. Water and electricity don't go too well together, unless you use some wire to light up your neighbor's life when he heads the wrong direction.

Your neighbor has a routine. He will stay on that routine until you do something to get him out of it. The trick of the game is to make him as mad as possible as quickly as possibly while completing all of the traps, or tricks if you will, in the level. The more of these tricks you can string together in succession, the faster he will flip out. If he or his mother catch you in the area trying to pull a fast one, then they will beat the snot out of you. But, if you can get Jr. on Mommy or Olga's bad side, they will be more than glad to give him the what for.

For every completed trick, you will receive a coin letting you know how many of the tricks remain in that episode. If you are able to string them all together and his anger meter gets up to its highest level, you will be awarded the coveted "Golden Neighbor". This statue, the highest honor from Jowood Vienna T.V., comes in gold, silver, and bronze. Can you bring down you neighbor season after season?


Difficulty:

For as simple a game as Neighbours from Hell 2: On Vacation seems, it is surprisingly challenging and will keep you coming back time and again to see if you can beat a level a little faster or get the tricks set up in better succession. As you get on in the episodes, you will find you only have one or two shots at pulling off a few of these tricks. You will need to activate some tricks just to have the time to set up others.

Game Mechanics:

The mechanics for Neighbours from Hell 2: On Vacation are as easy as point and click. From there, however, what you do is not that simple. Some tricks require you to have successfully completed one full set up in order to go back and set it up again a different way to achieve success. The game does an excellent job of hinting what items you find might be used for.

This is a great game. And, given that it is a little bit older, it will run on just about any machine out there. I will continue to spend far too much time playing it long after this review. It may look like a kid's cartoon, but it plays like a fascinating action-puzzle game. Even though this is an older title, slow in making it to the states, you will enjoy Woody's highjinx for some time to come.


-WUMPUSJAGGER, GameVortex Communications
AKA Bryon Lloyd

Minimum System Requirements:



Pentium-compatible MMX processor with at least 233 MHz, 128 MB of RAM, Windows 95 with Internet Explorer 5.5, Windows 98 SE, Windows Me, Windows 2000 or Windows XP, DirectX 8-compatible video card with at least 8 MB of video RAM, 310 MB free hard drive space
 

Test System:



Windows XP Pro, 3.2 GHz P4HT CPU, 2 GHz Ram, 256 PCIE 16 ATI X300

Windows American History Lux Macintosh American History Lux

 
Game Vortex :: PSIllustrated