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.