Hello Neighbor 2 is not a hard game, but it is hard to get into. Players will have to learn most of the game mechanics by themselves as the tutorial barely covers the basics, taking place in a completely isolated location and saying nothing about the gameplay cycle or even how stealth works.
Thankfully, Hello Neighbor 2 doesn’t have too much to hide from the player. The game follows a simple cycle of exploring a house to completion before being forced to tackle a new one, and the stealth mechanics are fairly intuitive. Still, there are some tricks to this game that can make the experience much more enjoyable, but that players might not find until the very end.
7 Crouch-Walking Everywhere
Knowing when to crouch is a vital skill in Hello Neighbor 2. Crouching helps the player hide from the neighbors when in the dark or from a certain distance. Unlike what happens in many classic stealth games, crouching isn’t a one-stop button for sneaking.
Sneaking successfully in this game doesn’t require the player to stay crouched or move slowly. In fact, noise doesn’t have anything to do with movement. What makes noise are specific actions, like opening and closing doors, and interacting with noisy surfaces, like squeaky toys or broken planks of wood. Jumping can also alert the neighbors, though that might depend on how distant they are.
6 Trying To Enter Every House
Most houses in Hello Neighbor 2 start as closed and inaccessible and stay like that for the whole game. Though it is advertised as an open-world game, the explorable buildings might as well be different levels. Players would do well to find which house is active during which act and explore it to completion before moving to the outside world.
Players might worry that they are missing out on some items or clues by sticking to one building in the whole city. Thankfully, the game makes sure to leave a few hints every time the player needs to direct their attention outside the current house.
5 Attacking The Neighbors
The neighbors are invincible in this game, and players would be better off just accepting this fact. Unlike other entries in the series, even throwing a heavy object at the enemy won’t stop them from giving chase, no matter how deadly that 9 kilos kettlebell looks.
Not being able to attack the neighbors is only a problem until the player realizes just how fast the protagonist can run. Not only can Quentin easily outrun his pursuers, but they will stop chasing him the instant he is outside the walls of the house.
4 Not Placing Key Items Immediately
The punishment for getting caught in Hello Neighbor 2 is almost non-existent. When a neighbor catches the player, they will find themselves thrown outside the house with all their regular items intact, ready to get back in again. The problems start when the player gets caught with some puzzle items in their hand.
The one dangerous thing that the neighbor can do is steal puzzle pieces from players to put them back where they belong. They won’t reset any puzzles, so retrieving them is easy. Still, players should try and place any puzzle pieces immediately after getting them to avoid repeating some sections of gameplay.
3 Not Using Cameras
The cameras in Hello Neighbor 2 can be hard to use properly, but they are one of the best non-essential tools available to the player. On top of keeping an eye on the neighbor, those security cameras can be placed in front of a clue to help solve a puzzle without having to go back and forth through the house.
A second kind of camera, the Hello-Copter, is only available to players who bought the DLC of the same name or to those who preordered the deluxe edition of the game. This camera can be freely moved from a distance and can’t be taken away by the neighbor. It even has a hookshot, though abusing this power can trivialize many of the game’s puzzles.
2 Not Running Once You Know Where To Go
Hello Neighbor 2 is the kind of stealth game where sneaking is secondary to not being caught. Players won’t get extra points from completing an act without getting caught, they have no reason to sneak everywhere, and they risk nothing by getting caught while running around the house.
The less intuitive, most effective tactic in the whole game is slowly exploring the house to get a feeling of where things are, then running from an objective to the next to the puzzles. As long as the player only gets caught after delivering a puzzle item to its location, this method is much faster than trying to hide from the neighbor at all costs.
1 Only Hiding Inside The Wardrobes
For a game focused on stealth, Hello Neighbor 2 doesn’t have many places for players to hide in, or at least that’s what it looks like. The game has just one explicit hiding location, wardrobes, but while those are safer than most other locations, they aren’t the only place where players can hide.
Below a table, inside an air duct, on top of the wardrobe: those are all perfectly good hiding spots. In a way, those places are even better than a wardrobe, since hiding in there makes the player unable to use items, meaning no checking the camera monitors to see where the enemy is.