What would it be like
to have a bad neighbor who always tries to ruin your life? That
is the subject of this neat little game from
Jowood.
Neighbors From Hell is not a pure adventure game but more of a
simulation with a touch of adventure game style
here and there that would appeal to adventure gamers.

You play the role of
Woody in a reality television series called Neighbors From
Hell.
Woody needs to garner high ratings for his television
show so he can win the coveted Golden Neighbor trophy. The goal
is to set traps using anything available in the adjoining apartments
in order to drive his neighbor crazy. Your progress is measured
by
a madness bar that measures the level of the neighbor’s anger
and the angrier the neighbor, the more time Woody will have allotted
to set up his next series of tricks and traps. Of course, part of
the fun is that Woody has to be careful to not be caught in the act
by either his neighbor or his pets or the episode prematurely ends.

This game is divided
into three seasons with season one containing six episodes and
seasons two and three each featuring four episodes.
There is also an introductory season that is a training level
to learn how to manipulate objects within this game. This is a
neat
feature that helps to shorten the learning curve. Sounds easy?
Not so fast; for each episode you need to eclipse the minimum
ratings to be able to continue to the next episode. An ‘Outstanding’
rating
is achieved if you maintain your performance with a Golden Trophy
for all three seasons – a less than perfect score will earn
a bronze or silver trophy. The timing and the order of your actions
are very critical to be able to score high in ratings. You need to
be able to coordinate your tricks (most of the time) so that they
concurrently happen simultaneously before your neighbor’s madness
level stabilizes. This will give you some extra points for your tricks.
Actually, this is where all the game fun begins.

It is quite easy to pass
with just the minimum rating, but believe me it is a challenge
to be able to score 100% for each episode.
But just scoring 97% in each episode is enough to win the Golden
Trophy.
Unfortunately, except for personal satisfaction, there is no
special reward if you could score all perfect scores of 100%.
After all
the time spent perfecting an episode, it is a little bit annoying
to
not receive some kind of reward for all your hard work. Everybody
surely likes to have a bonus for a job well done.

The game graphics are
nothing but outstanding. Neighbors From Hell has some of the smoothest,
colorful and surely most gorgeous
cartoon
style graphics I have ever seen in a computer game. Unfortunately,
there are only eight rooms available for gameplay and that
is not enough to add variety to the game which is why repetition
occurs
way too often. A garage, backyard, game room, and several
additional rooms should have been incorporated to make the game
more interesting.
Let’s hope a sequel is much more varied.

The biggest downside
of the game is its length. It is a very short game. Each episode
only lasts between 5 to 10 minutes
and all of
the episodes can be completed in around three hours, though
it can take 4-6 hours to get all 100% ratings for each
season. Even
with
this shortfall, the game is highly addictive especially
once you try to achieve a 100% rating for each episode. As I am
a purist
adventurer at heart, I thought I would play the game for
about 30 minutes at
most before I got bored. Guess what? An hour later I was
still playing just to perfect my scores.

The tricks range from
easy to difficult. If you leave on the time limit feature (it is
on by the default), the game
difficulties
are increased by several levels. Not to worry though
because all
of the
tricks make sense, your primary goal is to figure out
exactly how different objects can be used to set traps. There is
no ‘use
the paper and balloon over an egg to make an explosive’ nonsensical
type of puzzles.

The other interesting
extra feature is that you can set-up the camera so that every time
the neighbor triggers a
trap, you can
watch the
ensuing outcome. This neat feature can also be very
annoying since you loose your focus whenever the camera is shifted
to the neighbor
and it can mess up your timing when setting-up the
tricks.
But it is still recommended that you at least once
watch how the
tricks are performed. You can always restart the episode
after watching
all of the tricks. I mean what’s the use of playing this game
if you could not even see the hilarious result of your actions?!

Neighbors From Hell is a nice, addictive little game. It is not
for everyone but surely it was worth every second of my time. It
supplied lots of laughs and was an enjoyable experience. Its only
shortcoming is a lack of variety in the rooms that could have allowed
for more tricks and less repetition.

Final Grade: B

System Requirements:

• Pentium®-compatible MMX processor of at least 166 MHz. (Pentium® II-compatible
  processors or higher all feature MMX.)
• At least 64 Megabytes
  of RAM.
• Windows 95®, Windows 98®, Windows ME®, Windows 2000® or
  Windows XP®.
• DirectX® 8-compatible graphics card of at least 16 Megabyte
  Video RAM.
• DirectX® 8-compatible sound card.
• Windows-compatible
  mouse, keyboard and CD-ROM drive.
• At least 130 Megabyte
  (MB) free space on your hard disk.