Parents' Guide to Hello Neighbor 2

There's probably a fun little game somewhere here, but it's hard to find under the clutter of bugs. Hello Neighbor 2's distinctive visual design gives it the feel of an interactive CGI cartoon, complete with stylized characters with physical attributes that help define their personalities. This graphical flare extends to the environment, which is filled with interesting objects and details that will catch your attention -- handy, since it helps players discover key items integral to solving puzzles. And the puzzles, while generally pretty simple, are nonetheless fun to figure out, mostly because the solutions tend to involve both observing stuff around you and logically working out how that stuff might be manipulated to your advantage.

It's when the neighbors show up that things start to go sideways. Their movements aren't just hard to predict, they're often downright nonsensical. They unrealistically linger where no one would, get into strange looping behaviors, and generally don't seem to act like real people. Indeed, players could be forgiven for thinking that the real root of the game's mystery is that everyone in this neighborhood is an alien or a robot. Making matters worse, you can expect to encounter a variety of more familiar bugs, from glitchy gamepad controls to getting trapped in a room and being forced to reload from your most recent autosave. Hello Neighbor 2 could have been moderately entertaining had it spent a little more time in the oven, but it needs some hefty patching in order to earn a proper recommendation.