Like the deranged youngsters’s programming offered by the Five Nights at Freddy’s and Chucky collection earlier than it, My Friendly Neighborhood takes everybody’s favourite childhood reminiscences and converts them right into a ugly situation the place you’re combating in your life. The outcome, no less than based mostly on my journey up to now, is a extremely entertaining pseudo-horror sport stuffed with face-slapping goofball murderers and extremely disturbing musical numbers. While it definitely leans rather more closely into silliness than it does horror, I’m fairly having fun with the abundantly disturbing journey up to now.
My Friendly Neighborhood solutions the hilarious and fully pointless query: “What if Resident Evil occurred on Sesame Street?”, and that Raccoon City inspiration is evident in every little thing from the shambling muppets to the grid-based briefcases used for stock administration. I even had a restricted variety of sport saves and was pressured to spend treasured sport tokens scavenged from ranges to save lots of my progress, or threat dropping all of it when a dopey-faced fuzz buddy hugged me to dying.
Playing as a handyman named Gordon who was referred to as to the scene of an deserted broadcasting station that was as soon as dwelling to an iconic youngsters’s present, I all of the sudden discovered myself trapped by a bunch of insane, sentient puppets that appeared very desperate to homicide me on sight. That extraordinarily sturdy premise paved the way in which for loads of cartoonish shenanigans and references to the Sesame Street-watching days of my youth, and that made for an immensely entertaining handful of hours.
But the place Resident Evil is understood for its darkish tone and terrifying moments, My Friendly Neighborhood principally makes mild of the style with brightly coloured environments and a few extraordinarily foolish antagonists. In one part, I needed to keep away from the eye of a large Big Bird-like abomination that wished to devour me as I collected letter tiles to cross a spelling check, whereas in one other I discovered myself in sewers that served because the area to an especially Grouch-y tenant who hoped to bonk me over the top with a wrench.
“Even although the sections I performed by no means hit the horror spot I hoped they might, the excessive variety of memorable laughs alongside the way in which largely made up for that absence.”
Although I obtained a kick out of most of what I noticed, one nagging annoyance is that, whereas sneaking round to finish puzzles, I needed to relisten to a number of the identical voice strains from the puppets as they flailed round relentlessly. It appears they solely say new issues if you transfer on to new areas and ranges, so when it took me a bit to get by means of one part or if I died a few times, I needed to take heed to a number of the identical nonsense a number of instances. That did make a number of the novelty run skinny within the restricted time I spent with it.
Just about every little thing about this so-called horror sport doesn’t take itself significantly. My weapons used rolodexes of the alphabet to shoot big metallic letters at my puppet pursuers, defeated enemies can be despatched ragdolling throughout the room with a yelp, and your complete forged of characters repeatedly monologued demented youngsters’s programming at me that together with issues like educating me a technique of studying the right way to depend that concerned consuming my very own palms. As somebody who enjoys a very good snort, all of that largely labored for me. Even although the sections I performed by no means hit the horror spot I hoped they might, the excessive variety of memorable laughs alongside the way in which largely made up for that absence.
But the dearth of actual moments of horror is definitely noticeable, making for a really totally different expertise from friends like Five Nights at Freddy’s, the place there are many shriek-inducing scenes regardless of the kid-friendly subject material. Even after I was murdered by maniac muppets, there weren’t any soar scares or genuinely terrifying moments to be discovered (no less than within the early sections I performed), and that was admittedly a little bit of a bummer.
Even so, as somebody who fairly enjoys goofy, irreverent video games, I’m excited to see extra of My Friendly Neighborhood and its unlovable forged of characters when it makes its debut later this month.
