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Neighbours from Hell is a popular PC game released by JoWood.
It's about a guy named
Woody who has to play all kinds of pranks on his neighbour, Mr.
Rottweiler.
To do this, Woody infiltrates his neighbour's house along with a
TV crew and uses various objects he comes across to set up traps ranging from classic (the whoopee cushion, banana peels and marbles on the floor) to the most devious, such as superglue in aftershave, laxatives in beer and red wine in the washing machine, just to name a few. In each episode, the goal is to reach a certain rating before you can advance to the next one. Ideally, you want the rating to be
100%.
Whenever the neighbour falls into a trap you've set, your rating will go up by a certain value. When this happens, Rottweiler's anger meter in the bottom left will go up all the way and then slowly deplete. If he walks into another trap before the meter goes down completely, you get a combo bonus, which will add 3% extra to the rating. There is a maximum number of tricks you can perform in each episode, indicated in the bottom right, in yellow
. If the rating has reached the minimum value required to beat the level, you can leave the house without pulling off every trick and the level will still count as completed. If you fail to reach the minimum rating, you have to play the episode again. Another way to fail an episode is obviously getting caught by the neighbour : if Woody and Rottweiler end up in the same room, the level's over, regardless of what rating you have. To stand in the same room as the neighbour, Woody must be hidden in the wardrobe, or under the bed. Of course, if Woody gets out from these hiding spots while Rottweiler is in the room, it's game over. Another thing to watch out for is the neighbour's parrot or dog, which will show up in seasons 2 and 3 respectively : if you step into the room like you normally would, the pet will wake up and alert the neighbour, who will rush to check what's going on, regardless of where he is in the house.
If you manage to leave the room before the neighbour comes in, no problem : the neighbour will walk in, realize there's nobody in the room, scold the pet for the false alarm, and carry on with his routine. It's not always good to wake the animal, as it may lure the neighbour away from a trap he's just about to walk in, which could ruin your combo. The parrot and dog will never show up both in the same episode - it's either one or the other, although the room they are in will vary from episode to episode. To avoid waking the pet altogether, when giving Woody a command in that room, use the right mouse button instead of the left : this will make Woody sneak instead of walk, which won't wake up the pet. The early episodes will only include a part of the neighbour's house, but as the game progresses, more rooms will be revealed, which means more ground to explore and more traps to set. Some rooms have 2 or even 3 doorways, which makes avoiding the neighbour easy, but others, like the bathroom or basement, have only one exit, so you could find yourself stuck in dead end as the neighbour comes in and beats your ass. To get a rating of 100%, the tricks have to be played in a specific way, so that you get as many anger-combos as possible. Some levels are linear, meaning you can set the traps in the order in which the neighbour will perform his routine, but in later levels, the neighbour will wander around the house a lot, so a lot of planning ahead has to be done to know exactly when is the best time to set a trap. Aside from getting caught by the neighbour, another way of failing is if the time limit runs out. This will be shorter or longer deepening on the number of tricks and complexity of the episode. Fortunately, you have the option of turning off the time limit if you can't seem to beat it. The timer definitely adds challenge to the game, as you have to analyse the neighbour's routine and rig up the traps at the same time, which is not easy, especially if you haven't played before.
Once you know where and when to set up the traps, you can pretty much get 100% each time you play it, because there's no difficulty setting and Rottweiler's routine never changes. With that being said, the game is really awesome and addicting as hell, but unfortunately a bit too short for my taste. Understandably, the space is limited to the neighbour's house, so there were only so many situations they could place the 2 characters in. The good news is that there's a sequel : Neighbours from Hell 2, which takes place all around the world, rather than just in Rottweiler's house, which definitely offers more possibilities.
Bottom line is that the game is great and damn-fun to play !
Try it out - you'll be hooked for sure !
- published: 09 Feb 2014
- views: 4692