Pretty much how we made the fried mushrooms at the bar I cooked at that had good food. A tip for beer batter. It helps opening the beer the night before and letting it get flat, the carbonation can mess with the consistency of the batter. We always kept a jug of beer in the walk in. We'd toss them in the batter and right into the fryer where we'd use another basket to submerge them down as they can cook unevenly since they float, I noticed you kept stirring which was also a good choice (and it looks like they cooked evenly) but a working kitchen is hectic. Beer batter is better than a regular egg/flour batter for fried mushrooms IMO also for fried pickles too, you should try making them (use Claussens spears or pickles that aren't limp.) We'd also use the smaller mushrooms however the larger mushrooms we would remove the stem, stuff with either Swiss or Blue Cheese and then wrap them with bacon and fry. They were really good. I've seen
@@Birdsflight44 UA-cam will remove this post because UA-cam hates me but you can see it in your notifications. It's preference but we used Blue Moon actually so I'd say a less hoppy beer. I think a stout would also be decent.
I still cant believe that the first game was both less buggy and better designed in the beta than in the full release. This game really is an example on why you should stick to your vision rather than chase trends
Maaaan, the beta situation felt like watching a loved one with anxiety issues spiral into one of those perfectionist depression spirals. You tell them they need to stop over and over, and at a certain point, you just have to back off and let them screw themselves over
I dont think the way the first game turned out had anything to do with trends because no other mascot horror games are like that and people liked the way the betas and alphas were like better than the full game.
@@CyberLance26 I disagree, the first beta had a solid AI for the neighbour in order for him to chase you. Once they started expandir the house to fit lore and etc in order to attract theorizers they did so faster than they could add the nodes for the AI without having major bugs. Instead of taking their time they simplified it for the wallhacking thing we have today
For those who don't know; sometime in 2020, the Hello Neighbor devs posted about their animated series and they directly asked GameTheory _several_ times to analyse their show. It's become iconic due to the sheer desperation one has to feel in order to basically beg Mat Pat to give you attention.
As a filthy, broke non-patreon subscriber, I'm not gonna expect it, but covering Happy's Humble Burger Farm would be awesome. It's the only mascot horror since pre-Game Theory FNAF that I know of that understands that these kinds of games do their best when they embrace the goof.
The open alphas of Hello Neighbour promised us a stealth game with Alien Isolation tier mechanics. What was delivered to us was a Sierra adventure game where, instead of the goal being to sell guide books as a substitute for good game design, the goal was to sell merch and spinoffs as a substitute for good writing. And the puzzles are just garbage for no reason.
I really don't think people who say these kind of things actually were there for the Sierra game experience. Why do you think they were one of THE biggest game developers back in the day, able to go toe to toe with Lucas's Star Wars money? For one, adventure games were meant to act as a sort of personal ARG, to be puzzles through for weeks or months and not blown through over an evening or two. Folks didn't have too many games to pick from- they were a rare, expensive luxury, and someone you knew had to pay, even if you did Copy that Floppy. A game that didn't take weeks, and give you reason to revisit was a poor product. Second, few of the most difficult puzzles (like the Runplestiltskin backwards one) were actually required to beat the game- they were for 100% puzzle completion. You could totally figure out the majority of puzzles- they infamous ones were infamous because the Eureka moments were so hard earned. Third, the company was called "Sierra Online" for a reason. Usenet and message boards existed, so there were alternate methods to figuring things out if you HAD to ask for help. But your saying that it was guide book sales REALLY shows you don't know how things went back in the day. (There were hintbooks, yes, but they were insignificant compared to the hotlines lol) You're clearly just regurgitating the opinions of other people, and the people you're parroting have some pretty shit takes. "Classic old games were bad, Actually" is an increasingly popular ragebait genre online, but its tantamount to anti-intellectualism, as it ignores the fact that both historical context and trends of tastes in different demographics exists. People like this would also say that the original King Kong was garbage, too, if film academia hadn't done the critical thinking for them and declared it culturally significant. (Honestly, folks tend to go too far one way or the other, which is part of the problem- realizing a beloved thing isn't perfect doesn't mean "Its bad actually") I doubt you're actually going to sit down and play a classic Sierra game, but maybe pop on Twitch and see what's going on in the Adventure game scene, and see what its really like. These games were meant to be puzzled out together, so hanging out in a chat is a fairly authentic experience. King's Quest and Space Quest are the obvious examples, but I also really like Quest for Glory ("Hero Quest" was taken) and Laura Bow. I bet you'll be pretty surprised by how pleasant an experience these games can actually be- Thoughtful, clever, a bit tricky at times, but usually in a good way. The retro gaming scene is also actually really nice and welcoming, so no reason to not give it a gander
Your comment is very good!@@Birdsflight44 But I'm sorry, cannot help myself, this reads like a boomer saying "Back in MY day-", but with millenium slang instead
Poppy has it's controversy's but it's not the game itself that's the problem. Rather everything around it. The actual poppy game is pretty decent as it's mostly just a mascot horror take on portal. Banban and Hello Neighbour however are practically unplayable messes that are basically scams.
I think the difference with Hello Neighbor and Abermore is you can tell that Abermore was wanting more but due the devs going broke they couldn't see through their passion. HN1 feels like it chased a trend and tried to get out while HN2 was actual refinement. I have a feeling Tiny Build stepped in harder during this development compared to first game.
I really wish the first game had stuck to the idea it was originally pitched as, being a game where you have to sneak around an A.I. enemy that gradually adapts to your tactics and tries to counter it. You can still see part of the idea in the games, but severely watered down.
It really shows how desperate they were on the popularity of youtubers for this game, they wanted to keep mysteries and therefore interest up so much they did such weird things to the game that basically ruined it. I remember when earlier builds of Hello Neighbor were at least decent to most people, and those builds were why the game got so popular. You can really tell they were just throwing shit together hoping stuff would stick
As someone with a culinary education - It's nice to see a 'regular' person being so confident in the kitchen! Your boo is lucky to have such a culinarian man!
I think a lot of the original ripping appart of the first game was because the downfall of the games design was very well documented. The game went from promising cool alpha, to worse with each new content release.
I remember when this game was made. All pre release patches (aka Alphas), puzzles that have no logic, obscure lore etc were very deliberate. At least in russian speaking part of the internet (which I unfortunately was part of at the time) they used various UA-camrs to hype up the game with tons of game lore theories, deciphering external content, TONS of playthroughs of the Alphas. Almost every Alpha was a future level of the "finished" game with no story attached. Considering each alpha was different people thought that devs just worked out the mechanics and ignored the jank. Then the game releases, it appears to be just glued up alphas in one package with minimum improvements and some additional cut scenes in select places. To put it mildly, people felt scammed like devs used the hype to just make money with little proper effort but unlike No Man's Sky it didn't have redemption arc (8 years of support & tons of new content) and they made the second game you have to buy for the same price. Anyhow, I'm sorry for you having to play through this.
Yeesh, you know a game's bad when it makes you not want to play ANY games. It's a good thing the devs managed to pull themselves together for the second game.
If by “pull themselves together” you mean “make something that’s actually half-playable instead of pure masochistic CBT”, then probably. Still not a good game though, even if it was better in some ways.
Hello neighbour was an interesting one. It started off so good, a mystery game with a amazing smart AI concept. you vs the dynamic AI that learns from what you do. then they somehow made it worse then from the first glances the public see. they killed it and then doubled down on the worse aspects of the game, made it a platformer puzzle game
Commenting for the algorithm, to add onto that. Seeing the hello neighbor series get an honest and thorough review is quite nice. Also thx for the recipes
yknow i was in prague about 2mo after poopy playtime blew up, and like most big cities there were those kiosks with bootleg merch (more common in countries where the copyrighted property isnt from). the stands were COVERED w bootleg poppy playtime plushies. fastest ive ever seen that happen, and i was in the fnaf fandom from the launch of the first game
@@CharlatanWonderlike the corpos above they go for money alone. But get away with it because it's a plush and likely publishers ain't or the devs having a bit of say aint intrested in merch.
I would’ve followed “I know what the fans of Hello Neighbour are going to say..” with “but I don’t want to hear it until they finish primary school.” 😂
Hey Charl - Dunno if you'll see this, but the Abermore mention made me realize I never actually got to follow up with you on the interview I asked your discord about! To summarize: Dan Pearce went through a bunch of shit after the game came out. We had multiple back and forths, including assurances that he did want to answer the questions, but he never actually did. No ill will here - it was a seriously rough process for him/his team (as you could discern from the game). Just wanted to let you know that we unfortunately may never get too much more insight on the game's history.
Fun fact: Hello neighbor 2 has DLC. A school map and a library map yet to my knowledge they were the buggiest parts of the game. This is more then likely because both for some reason were made by Steel Wool Studios, the people who lovingly brought us Fnaf Security Breach
I think it's important to note that every spinoff was made by different teams. It wasn't EGS trying to cash out, it was more tinyBuild trying to cash out. Nikita (the games creator) had a vision, tB wasn't really a big enough studio to fund that vision into something good, it succeeded anyways (somewhat), they made the sequel, but the CEO of tB has talked many times about how when you have a successful game you need to make more of it. Not to mention every spinoff started as good ideas and turned into mush. diaries turned from a content expansion of the first game into a mobile cash grab, hello engineer turned from an island survival game into a vehicle building puzzle game, secret neighbor wasn't even hello neighbor originally, it was a game jam game Doesn't excuse the poor quality of the franchise, but it does explain it a little.
As russian, i can say that "Hello Neighbor" isn't really popular here. Most popular mascot horror in Russia are FNaF (of course) and Poppy playtime (you can find Huggy Wuggy plushie literally everywhere).
That one bootleg temu-looking things that we have at our malls? I swear I have never seen an authentic Huggy Wuggy anywhere. I have seen legit merch at a craft store and at a place called Spencer's Gifts, which is like Hot topic but worse in every way.
We don't care if all your cooking vids aren't as good as the ones you release. We don't watch your videos for what you do man, we watch your videos to see YOU doing it. You could do just about anything and I'd still watch ❤
As a Pole, you can easily find Hello Neighbour books on the shelves in the largest bookstore chains and while I'm not exactly sure how or why, they do, or at least did, sell fairly well.
I've never played a Hello Neighbor game before, but if I had to guess: A big part of its failure to make its mark on pop culture is probably due to the "mascot" part of the "mascot horror" genre. Its main villain kind of looks like he's just some dude. It's not very toyetic, if you will. It's also not immediately obvious where the horror comes from. Art style is a bit surreal but not especially off-putting by itself. By contrast, let's look at the genre codifier: FNAF. FNAF's animatronics are even mascots in-universe, which makes them naturally toyetic. Indeed, there's a certain degree of thematic synergy between their in-universe role and their out-of-universe marketability. They also do a good job of setting the Comedy-Horror tone that the game's going for. They take the unintentional creepiness of Chuck E. Cheese animatronics and then ramp it up to make them outright scary. They're legitimately scary, but the fact that you're ultimately scared of Chuck E. Cheese animatronics is kind of hilarious. With Hello Neighbor, I don't really see anything like that going on. No subversion of wholesomeness that's immediately clear to me.
The sad thing is that how the first alpha dropped (yes i was there to see it happen) the game had a less GMod nexbot AI for the Neighbor and the house actually looked MORE intimidating when it wasn't as stylized. The colors were desaturated with the filter and lighting engine (there's issues with the first build on modern computers I SWEAR it actually had lighting and shadows instead of looking like fullbright hack unity. But more importantly the neighbor used to be more reactive, and it was supposed to be a stealth puzzle. There wasn't really supposed to be comedy in there. The sell was that the neighbor would see you break in and start setting up traps, like a reverse Home Alone, but deadly (who puts bear traps where they've seen the neighbor's kid sneak in?). The horror was in the neighbor wearing gloves and burying things in his backyard and locking the basement door like there's something sinister in there, and in the neighbor's AI reacting to your actions and starting to anticipate what each player's favorite B&E tactic is and laying traps in advance. The more you wanted to get in the harder the game would get, and it was meant to be the replayability of it. Then the devs added a cartoony second floor, made the neighbor stop reacting to your paths in and just start chasing after you all the time, and put a shark on the second floor. You could have heard the collective hopes CRASH DOWN. This is why it failed: it killed the very traction it had by pivoting to catering to the plot theorists, pushing away what got horror gamers' interest in the Amnesia era. (honestly that's what it attracted more than the FNAF fans-- fans of Amnesia and ImScared and Slender, and that sort of 3D exploration-horror experience) Spoilers: it had no plot. It was a horror stealth/puzzle tech demo, essentially, the plot was "neighbor is sus, you're a kid basically stalking him because he sus, and there's something in his basement he keeps locked in, also why is this guy putting down bear traps, wearing gloves 24/7, and carrying a shovel each time he's outside WHAT IS HE BURYING".
It has indeed been a minute. I had the worst night and day of my life this passed 24 hours. I'm really happy to be able to just...sit and eat dinner, and watch one of your videos. I genuinely missed you. I hope you're doing well friend ❤
I discovered Charl through his Kenshi video and since then not only am I invested in watching his videos but I also cheer on that his wife have a great and long career and the both of them have a long loving relationship
i found you from the california fallout video, and im making my way through your videos. i love the cooking segments so much, and i appreciate your reminders about "content"
@@CharlatanWonder All the best UA-camrs drop from the face of the Earth from time to time. I have no problem with it if it means my favorite creators and artists can be somewhat comfortable without slaving away for an algorithm/low paying job.
No i don't believe Neighbor is more popular in Russia, i honestly only heard about the series from the western youtubers and never saw any merch around. I assume peak popularity was in Alpha-stages, kinda died down to the release, wich did not revitalize the hype if even letsplayers were quitting. Only Mascot horror i played was My Friendly Neighborhood. It's a decent 1st person survivor horror, i'm not like a giant fan, maybe would enjoy it more if it didn't lock difficulties behind first playthouth, but i still had some fun.
It's such a shame that they strayed so far from the promising demo. Back when they actually wanted to make a good game, and not pathetically trying to bait MatPat with increasingly desperate lore dumps.
I remember buying Hello Neighbor for 10 bucks and it being outright broken, the physics not working, and then, no refund. It is literally as you say, it turned me off of gaming for a few months, I was that pissed. Because I couldve bought plenty other, better stuff with those 10 bucks. It's total garbage and I can't believe they got the money to make a sequel.
Glad to see you’re back! Nice choice in topic. WickedWiz here on UA-cam did a big deep dive into this series which was really interesting as he digs into what was going on behind the scenes. I liked seeing it from another’s perspective as I have no plans seeing it from my own!
@@CharlatanWonder I experienced it through MandaloreGaming streams. Having a mental breakdown with the streamer was pretty epic. That scene with the octopus on the beach was cool though
This Halloween in July is going to be special. The “make art not content” UA-camr is going to cover one of the most heavily content farmed genres. I am curious to hear what your opinions will be.
Man, just listening to your story about the button across the grate. The combined mix of incredibly obtuse progression requirements and prerequisites, paired with broken implementation. Damn shame, this game has the opportunity to create a very open and sandbox gameplay environment, where players could find so many ways to get through a given problem. But i guess the devs are more interested in making a point-and-click-adventure style game, but in full 3D. Edit: Good on them to be able to pick up the pieces and make something better from their previous work.
I first played hello neighbor 2 when it launched through gamepass and while better than 1, it was dissapointing to see that they cut a lot of the stuff the advertised, like the learning AI. That's on me for having any faith towards them after Hello Neighbor 1 though.
I'm trying to remember if there was ever a good game that had always-on object physics and where you are expected to stack objects and climb them. I remember in Half-Life 2 I sometimes tricked myself into thinking that I had to stack barrels to progress (I don't think that was ever the intended solution) and it was always the most miserable time. There is a reason in GMod you always weld things together whenever possible, loose props cause chaos. I think if the player is expected to climb, you should bypass physics asap. If a box rests on the ground, make it static. If two boxes are stacked, merge their collusion so physics sees it as a single (ideally immovable) object. Otherwise you get Hello Neighbor...
I believe @CharlatanWonder is going to enjoy this 👀 I think @CharlatanWonder will enjoy dissecting this frame by frame 👀 Yes @CharlatanWonder you should totally reply to our DM
The second game may be an improvement but that doesn't mean they are anywhere near a good dev. They ignored issues and intentionally misled players in the first game, people hated it, and they never owned up to that not once. They were sorry they got hated on. Not sorry they pulled a total 100000% dick move.
The making of this game is an absolute mess. It started out pretty cool, but then they kept adding more, and more, and more, and it felt like they were just throwing shit at the wall at some point. The concept is very interesting so it's a shame it's such a bad game.
Honestly, I actually kind of enjoyed Hello Neighbor 2. It was a good game to play in the background while I was doing something else. I do wish they kept the open-world feature they were planning on adding.
99.999% of H.O.A. are like the Karen Mafia, so anybody who stands up against them has at a minimum a few more brownie points from me, even if they are an awful person. HOAs will mow your garden flat and tell veterans they can't fly the American flag on their own property.
Nah, something like that's gotta happen on its own. On that note, I've seen more people going anti-content completely out of my sphere of association. I don't really own the idea of saying "screw content" and there might be others who started saying before even I did.
I thinj the reason Hello Neighbor dpesn't have as much merch appeal is because a) they came out in the second age of mascot horror after the highs of FNAF so they differentiate themselves a lot from typical mascot horror in gameplay and tropes b) their 'mascot' isn't a cartoony creature like the others (a plsuh of a random guy with tiny limbs isn't as cute as Elmo Who Bites) and ") Hello Neighbor 2 obviously tried to address this by advertising its own Crow Creature thing as merch.
I think I might know why it never launched as well here in the states...So when it comes to mascot horror and how well it will do popularity wise there are multiple factors obviously but the two major ones are If markiplier (or jacksepticeye) play it and the videos are entertaining. Or if Game theory does a vid on it...yes there are other theory channels and gamers out there but lets face it those two are the be all end all and will push the game passed indie gamer sphere to bootlegs at the mall. And Markiplier has been open how he doesn't like Hello Neighbor, did an interview asking what his least fave game was and instantly said hello neighbor. As for the Game Theory vids...Now I never saw this first hand I was relayed this by someone, the creator of OG hello neighbor at least, kinda got harassy to MatPat, begging him to make a vid about his game...let's be honest if Gametheory makes a video about your game its the best advertisement, even if the theory is massively wrong. and I think! because the creator kept pushing buttons, making jokes on twitter on "Can't wait for matt patt to see this" and stuff of that nature, with that and knowing via markiplier how bad the game was, never really mad a video...or at least not one that did well. And I will be straight up, after the fireball that is og hello neighbor, (not to the level you did, but I stopped playing indie horror games for a while) I didn't touch hello neighbor anything. I think you are right, if 2 was the game that came out first, and 1 was like an alpha demo build, maybe we be singing a different tune. I also think the lack of plushies is...the mascot is just a guy, a normal dude, nothing really mascotty if that makes since, yes it has a style to it but like...eh? But that is a theory I came up while writing this comment and staring at the mascot. Sorry for the long comment but that's my thoughts
To answer your question about HN popularity in Russia... No, not really... I regularly see HN books in bookstores, but they sit there for months untouched... No bootleg plushies, no nothing... As part of my job, I regularly talk to kids about their interests, a lot of them answer with mascot horror titles... Not a single one ever mentioned Hello Neighbour...
As someone in the mascot horeor community to an extent hello neighbour had the biggest fall fromngrace, the alphas were so promising then the betas came out an dgot so so bad and then the game came out and ive seen nothing but hate by the mascot horror community for it.
Pretty much how we made the fried mushrooms at the bar I cooked at that had good food.
A tip for beer batter. It helps opening the beer the night before and letting it get flat, the carbonation can mess with the consistency of the batter. We always kept a jug of beer in the walk in. We'd toss them in the batter and right into the fryer where we'd use another basket to submerge them down as they can cook unevenly since they float, I noticed you kept stirring which was also a good choice (and it looks like they cooked evenly) but a working kitchen is hectic. Beer batter is better than a regular egg/flour batter for fried mushrooms IMO also for fried pickles too, you should try making them (use Claussens spears or pickles that aren't limp.)
We'd also use the smaller mushrooms however the larger mushrooms we would remove the stem, stuff with either Swiss or Blue Cheese and then wrap them with bacon and fry. They were really good.
I've seen
Legitimately good information. Pinning this.
Im not big on most beers, does it need to be Hoppy, or would a sour or gose suffice?
ooh, thanks for this!
@@Birdsflight44 UA-cam will remove this post because UA-cam hates me but you can see it in your notifications. It's preference but we used Blue Moon actually so I'd say a less hoppy beer. I think a stout would also be decent.
@@YTKeepsDeletingAllMyComments "pickles that aren't limp" is craaaazy
Hello Neighbor is so weird because it's advertised as a stealth puzzle horror game, but it's actually a really bad physics platformer.
lol this right here.
"An experience so bad it turns you off of gaming for a while" is not a glowing endorsement
Wait till he tries polish CityInteracive games, he will quit gaming altogether
@@LFFL381 pretty big yike
@@sharkenjoyer Polish WW2 FEAR is peak gaming
@@suspiciousaction4063 the martyr (mortyr) series sucks tho
Reminds me of ET for the Atari
I still cant believe that the first game was both less buggy and better designed in the beta than in the full release. This game really is an example on why you should stick to your vision rather than chase trends
Maaaan, the beta situation felt like watching a loved one with anxiety issues spiral into one of those perfectionist depression spirals.
You tell them they need to stop over and over, and at a certain point, you just have to back off and let them screw themselves over
I dont think the way the first game turned out had anything to do with trends because no other mascot horror games are like that and people liked the way the betas and alphas were like better than the full game.
@@CyberLance26 I disagree, the first beta had a solid AI for the neighbour in order for him to chase you. Once they started expandir the house to fit lore and etc in order to attract theorizers they did so faster than they could add the nodes for the AI without having major bugs. Instead of taking their time they simplified it for the wallhacking thing we have today
I think matpat will enjoy dissecting this frame by frame👀
MatPat retired.
@@cannibalisticrequiem
Good riddance. Never liked Game Theory
For those who don't know; sometime in 2020, the Hello Neighbor devs posted about their animated series and they directly asked GameTheory _several_ times to analyse their show. It's become iconic due to the sheer desperation one has to feel in order to basically beg Mat Pat to give you attention.
@@ieuanhunt552 wah wah waaaaaah
@@ieuanhunt552uh good for you?
As a filthy, broke non-patreon subscriber, I'm not gonna expect it, but covering Happy's Humble Burger Farm would be awesome.
It's the only mascot horror since pre-Game Theory FNAF that I know of that understands that these kinds of games do their best when they embrace the goof.
The open alphas of Hello Neighbour promised us a stealth game with Alien Isolation tier mechanics. What was delivered to us was a Sierra adventure game where, instead of the goal being to sell guide books as a substitute for good game design, the goal was to sell merch and spinoffs as a substitute for good writing. And the puzzles are just garbage for no reason.
I really don't think people who say these kind of things actually were there for the Sierra game experience.
Why do you think they were one of THE biggest game developers back in the day, able to go toe to toe with Lucas's Star Wars money?
For one, adventure games were meant to act as a sort of personal ARG, to be puzzles through for weeks or months and not blown through over an evening or two.
Folks didn't have too many games to pick from- they were a rare, expensive luxury, and someone you knew had to pay, even if you did Copy that Floppy. A game that didn't take weeks, and give you reason to revisit was a poor product.
Second, few of the most difficult puzzles (like the Runplestiltskin backwards one) were actually required to beat the game- they were for 100% puzzle completion. You could totally figure out the majority of puzzles- they infamous ones were infamous because the Eureka moments were so hard earned.
Third, the company was called "Sierra Online" for a reason. Usenet and message boards existed, so there were alternate methods to figuring things out if you HAD to ask for help.
But your saying that it was guide book sales REALLY shows you don't know how things went back in the day. (There were hintbooks, yes, but they were insignificant compared to the hotlines lol)
You're clearly just regurgitating the opinions of other people, and the people you're parroting have some pretty shit takes. "Classic old games were bad, Actually" is an increasingly popular ragebait genre online, but its tantamount to anti-intellectualism, as it ignores the fact that both historical context and trends of tastes in different demographics exists.
People like this would also say that the original King Kong was garbage, too, if film academia hadn't done the critical thinking for them and declared it culturally significant.
(Honestly, folks tend to go too far one way or the other, which is part of the problem- realizing a beloved thing isn't perfect doesn't mean "Its bad actually")
I doubt you're actually going to sit down and play a classic Sierra game, but maybe pop on Twitch and see what's going on in the Adventure game scene, and see what its really like. These games were meant to be puzzled out together, so hanging out in a chat is a fairly authentic experience.
King's Quest and Space Quest are the obvious examples, but I also really like Quest for Glory ("Hero Quest" was taken) and Laura Bow.
I bet you'll be pretty surprised by how pleasant an experience these games can actually be- Thoughtful, clever, a bit tricky at times, but usually in a good way. The retro gaming scene is also actually really nice and welcoming, so no reason to not give it a gander
Your comment is very good!@@Birdsflight44
But I'm sorry, cannot help myself, this reads like a boomer saying "Back in MY day-", but with millenium slang instead
Hello neighbor was once seen as the worst of mascot horror, then poppy playtime released, then garten of banban relesesed.
Despite poppy playtime being extremely popular and is constantly advertised every single day since it released.
Oh no. Poppy Playtime and Banban are masterpieces compared to this awful game...
At least the sequel did it _some_ justice.
Mascot Horror is just.. a mistake
Poppy Playtime is actually better than Hello Neighbor's late alphas and full release
Poppy has it's controversy's but it's not the game itself that's the problem. Rather everything around it. The actual poppy game is pretty decent as it's mostly just a mascot horror take on portal. Banban and Hello Neighbour however are practically unplayable messes that are basically scams.
I think the difference with Hello Neighbor and Abermore is you can tell that Abermore was wanting more but due the devs going broke they couldn't see through their passion. HN1 feels like it chased a trend and tried to get out while HN2 was actual refinement. I have a feeling Tiny Build stepped in harder during this development compared to first game.
I really wish the first game had stuck to the idea it was originally pitched as, being a game where you have to sneak around an A.I. enemy that gradually adapts to your tactics and tries to counter it. You can still see part of the idea in the games, but severely watered down.
remember when tinybuild kept harassing mattpat to make a video about this game on Twitter?
that basically says all you need to know about this game.
Wanna know something funny? The Tinybuild employee who was running the Twitter account at that time got fired for that, supposedly.
@@TooMuchSaschaI hope that’s true. Because that kind of harassment shouldn’t be encouraged.
It really shows how desperate they were on the popularity of youtubers for this game, they wanted to keep mysteries and therefore interest up so much they did such weird things to the game that basically ruined it. I remember when earlier builds of Hello Neighbor were at least decent to most people, and those builds were why the game got so popular.
You can really tell they were just throwing shit together hoping stuff would stick
Yeah it’s like they were expecting people to write the story for them and to steal the best sounding theory out there and say ‘yep you are right!!’
It was for the show pilot actually, but it's not a really big difference at the end of the day
As someone with a culinary education -
It's nice to see a 'regular' person being so confident in the kitchen! Your boo is lucky to have such a culinarian man!
I think a lot of the original ripping appart of the first game was because the downfall of the games design was very well documented. The game went from promising cool alpha, to worse with each new content release.
Sophisticated enemy algorithms for stealth games are really hard to develope. So tinybuild pushed for bullshit platforming and obtuse puzzles.
I remember when this game was made. All pre release patches (aka Alphas), puzzles that have no logic, obscure lore etc were very deliberate. At least in russian speaking part of the internet (which I unfortunately was part of at the time) they used various UA-camrs to hype up the game with tons of game lore theories, deciphering external content, TONS of playthroughs of the Alphas. Almost every Alpha was a future level of the "finished" game with no story attached. Considering each alpha was different people thought that devs just worked out the mechanics and ignored the jank. Then the game releases, it appears to be just glued up alphas in one package with minimum improvements and some additional cut scenes in select places. To put it mildly, people felt scammed like devs used the hype to just make money with little proper effort but unlike No Man's Sky it didn't have redemption arc (8 years of support & tons of new content) and they made the second game you have to buy for the same price.
Anyhow, I'm sorry for you having to play through this.
Frisk looked done with life when you said 'mascot horror.' Please give him some salami.
23:53 As someone who works at Half Price Books, I can assure you we get PLENTY of Hello Neighbor books coming through our store. 😅
Is that the one full of cats? I'd love to visit that again.
@@QuickQuips I mean cats and dogs are allowed in the store, but we don’t have any of our own there. 😅
"I know what fans of the series are going to say..."
I refuse to believe this series has fans.
Im one of them.
Yeesh, you know a game's bad when it makes you not want to play ANY games. It's a good thing the devs managed to pull themselves together for the second game.
no tf they didnt lmao
godzilla had a stroke trying to read this and fucking died
@@Bastartime C'mon man this ain't even that bad grammar wise.
Tf you mean pulled themself togeather no they didn't lmao
If by “pull themselves together” you mean “make something that’s actually half-playable instead of pure masochistic CBT”, then probably. Still not a good game though, even if it was better in some ways.
Hello neighbour was an interesting one. It started off so good, a mystery game with a amazing smart AI concept. you vs the dynamic AI that learns from what you do. then they somehow made it worse then from the first glances the public see. they killed it and then doubled down on the worse aspects of the game, made it a platformer puzzle game
I was so confused at the extreme caution of the oil fried shrooms until I remembered Americans use gas stoves that have open flames
Commenting for the algorithm, to add onto that. Seeing the hello neighbor series get an honest and thorough review is quite nice. Also thx for the recipes
yknow i was in prague about 2mo after poopy playtime blew up, and like most big cities there were those kiosks with bootleg merch (more common in countries where the copyrighted property isnt from). the stands were COVERED w bootleg poppy playtime plushies.
fastest ive ever seen that happen, and i was in the fnaf fandom from the launch of the first game
Oh, those bootlegs are all over the US too. Mall kiosk salespeople care not for intellectual property rights.
@@CharlatanWonderlike the corpos above they go for money alone. But get away with it because it's a plush and likely publishers ain't or the devs having a bit of say aint intrested in merch.
Ive seen those so many times here in finland when there is a big market place up
9:30 "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence."
I would’ve followed “I know what the fans of Hello Neighbour are going to say..” with “but I don’t want to hear it until they finish primary school.” 😂
Hey Charl - Dunno if you'll see this, but the Abermore mention made me realize I never actually got to follow up with you on the interview I asked your discord about!
To summarize: Dan Pearce went through a bunch of shit after the game came out. We had multiple back and forths, including assurances that he did want to answer the questions, but he never actually did. No ill will here - it was a seriously rough process for him/his team (as you could discern from the game). Just wanted to let you know that we unfortunately may never get too much more insight on the game's history.
Interesting. I can understand if he and his team want to move on with their lives, but Abermore will always have a special place in my heart.
Fun fact: Hello neighbor 2 has DLC. A school map and a library map yet to my knowledge they were the buggiest parts of the game. This is more then likely because both for some reason were made by Steel Wool Studios, the people who lovingly brought us Fnaf Security Breach
It seems they were made to rush and crunch it to completion, which is never good for any project (especially a game)
you know someone's finally made it as a youtuber when they're in a permanent state of moving
It’s so sad Mr Neighbor “Hello” 2 did what he did at that pizzeria.
What?
@michimatsch5862 the bit of 87 😮
@@michimatsch5862The Night of Lady Kevin.
I think it's important to note that every spinoff was made by different teams. It wasn't EGS trying to cash out, it was more tinyBuild trying to cash out. Nikita (the games creator) had a vision, tB wasn't really a big enough studio to fund that vision into something good, it succeeded anyways (somewhat), they made the sequel, but the CEO of tB has talked many times about how when you have a successful game you need to make more of it.
Not to mention every spinoff started as good ideas and turned into mush. diaries turned from a content expansion of the first game into a mobile cash grab, hello engineer turned from an island survival game into a vehicle building puzzle game, secret neighbor wasn't even hello neighbor originally, it was a game jam game
Doesn't excuse the poor quality of the franchise, but it does explain it a little.
As russian, i can say that "Hello Neighbor" isn't really popular here. Most popular mascot horror in Russia are FNaF (of course) and Poppy playtime (you can find Huggy Wuggy plushie literally everywhere).
That one bootleg temu-looking things that we have at our malls? I swear I have never seen an authentic Huggy Wuggy anywhere. I have seen legit merch at a craft store and at a place called Spencer's Gifts, which is like Hot topic but worse in every way.
@@CharlatanWonder Yes, bootleg ones. In all possible colours and, sometimes, with extra eyes.
Congratulations to you and Mrs. Charl!
Also, Halloween in July let's gooo
We don't care if all your cooking vids aren't as good as the ones you release. We don't watch your videos for what you do man, we watch your videos to see YOU doing it. You could do just about anything and I'd still watch ❤
HN alpha 2 and HN 2 alpha 1.5 is peak hello neighbor. What makes it all worse is that they knew how to make a good hello neighbor but decided not to.
As a Pole, you can easily find Hello Neighbour books on the shelves in the largest bookstore chains and while I'm not exactly sure how or why, they do, or at least did, sell fairly well.
My parents never taught me how to cook so thank you for stepping up to that plate 😂
Listen, if you’re shipping out those aprons, they need to have a touch of cat hair for the extra uniqueness
I've never played a Hello Neighbor game before, but if I had to guess: A big part of its failure to make its mark on pop culture is probably due to the "mascot" part of the "mascot horror" genre. Its main villain kind of looks like he's just some dude. It's not very toyetic, if you will.
It's also not immediately obvious where the horror comes from. Art style is a bit surreal but not especially off-putting by itself.
By contrast, let's look at the genre codifier: FNAF. FNAF's animatronics are even mascots in-universe, which makes them naturally toyetic. Indeed, there's a certain degree of thematic synergy between their in-universe role and their out-of-universe marketability.
They also do a good job of setting the Comedy-Horror tone that the game's going for. They take the unintentional creepiness of Chuck E. Cheese animatronics and then ramp it up to make them outright scary. They're legitimately scary, but the fact that you're ultimately scared of Chuck E. Cheese animatronics is kind of hilarious.
With Hello Neighbor, I don't really see anything like that going on. No subversion of wholesomeness that's immediately clear to me.
The sad thing is that how the first alpha dropped (yes i was there to see it happen) the game had a less GMod nexbot AI for the Neighbor and the house actually looked MORE intimidating when it wasn't as stylized.
The colors were desaturated with the filter and lighting engine (there's issues with the first build on modern computers I SWEAR it actually had lighting and shadows instead of looking like fullbright hack unity.
But more importantly the neighbor used to be more reactive, and it was supposed to be a stealth puzzle. There wasn't really supposed to be comedy in there. The sell was that the neighbor would see you break in and start setting up traps, like a reverse Home Alone, but deadly (who puts bear traps where they've seen the neighbor's kid sneak in?).
The horror was in the neighbor wearing gloves and burying things in his backyard and locking the basement door like there's something sinister in there, and in the neighbor's AI reacting to your actions and starting to anticipate what each player's favorite B&E tactic is and laying traps in advance. The more you wanted to get in the harder the game would get, and it was meant to be the replayability of it.
Then the devs added a cartoony second floor, made the neighbor stop reacting to your paths in and just start chasing after you all the time, and put a shark on the second floor.
You could have heard the collective hopes CRASH DOWN. This is why it failed: it killed the very traction it had by pivoting to catering to the plot theorists, pushing away what got horror gamers' interest in the Amnesia era. (honestly that's what it attracted more than the FNAF fans-- fans of Amnesia and ImScared and Slender, and that sort of 3D exploration-horror experience)
Spoilers: it had no plot. It was a horror stealth/puzzle tech demo, essentially, the plot was "neighbor is sus, you're a kid basically stalking him because he sus, and there's something in his basement he keeps locked in, also why is this guy putting down bear traps, wearing gloves 24/7, and carrying a shovel each time he's outside WHAT IS HE BURYING".
It has indeed been a minute. I had the worst night and day of my life this passed 24 hours. I'm really happy to be able to just...sit and eat dinner, and watch one of your videos. I genuinely missed you. I hope you're doing well friend ❤
At least now you have nice haunted soviet submarine sim to play with.
Good to have you back bro :)
I discovered Charl through his Kenshi video and since then not only am I invested in watching his videos but I also cheer on that his wife have a great and long career and the both of them have a long loving relationship
i found you from the california fallout video, and im making my way through your videos. i love the cooking segments so much, and i appreciate your reminders about "content"
Forgot this channel existed which idk how i love your videos
Well I did fall off the face of UA-cam for almost 3 months, it happens.
@@CharlatanWonder All the best UA-camrs drop from the face of the Earth from time to time. I have no problem with it if it means my favorite creators and artists can be somewhat comfortable without slaving away for an algorithm/low paying job.
This entire game series is like the first cycle of guilt in E.Y.E. but it literally never stops
No i don't believe Neighbor is more popular in Russia, i honestly only heard about the series from the western youtubers and never saw any merch around. I assume peak popularity was in Alpha-stages, kinda died down to the release, wich did not revitalize the hype if even letsplayers were quitting.
Only Mascot horror i played was My Friendly Neighborhood. It's a decent 1st person survivor horror, i'm not like a giant fan, maybe would enjoy it more if it didn't lock difficulties behind first playthouth, but i still had some fun.
It's such a shame that they strayed so far from the promising demo. Back when they actually wanted to make a good game, and not pathetically trying to bait MatPat with increasingly desperate lore dumps.
I remember buying Hello Neighbor for 10 bucks and it being outright broken, the physics not working, and then, no refund.
It is literally as you say, it turned me off of gaming for a few months, I was that pissed.
Because I couldve bought plenty other, better stuff with those 10 bucks.
It's total garbage and I can't believe they got the money to make a sequel.
Glad to see you’re back! Nice choice in topic.
WickedWiz here on UA-cam did a big deep dive into this series which was really interesting as he digs into what was going on behind the scenes.
I liked seeing it from another’s perspective as I have no plans seeing it from my own!
Can't wait for the Banban video.
Lmao I nearly experienced ego death making it.
@@CharlatanWonder I experienced it through MandaloreGaming streams. Having a mental breakdown with the streamer was pretty epic. That scene with the octopus on the beach was cool though
I approve of measuring a game's price/value in Abermores.
This Halloween in July is going to be special.
The “make art not content” UA-camr is going to cover one of the most heavily content farmed genres.
I am curious to hear what your opinions will be.
This is the first time I have seen your channel, and I am so into this cooking intermission
Cats are experienced at being inconvenient whenever you want to be productive
So, yeah, the Hello Neighbor games are NOT immersive sims.
Sorry but adult juice?DAMN, you got me good.
Good to see you back lets start the july show !
Man, just listening to your story about the button across the grate.
The combined mix of incredibly obtuse progression requirements and prerequisites, paired with broken implementation.
Damn shame, this game has the opportunity to create a very open and sandbox gameplay environment, where players could find so many ways to get through a given problem. But i guess the devs are more interested in making a point-and-click-adventure style game, but in full 3D.
Edit: Good on them to be able to pick up the pieces and make something better from their previous work.
One of my favorite holidays have returned!
Let's be real:
If anyone would make a mascot game using Sonichu as the mascot, it would be the most traumatizing horror game ever
I first played hello neighbor 2 when it launched through gamepass and while better than 1, it was dissapointing to see that they cut a lot of the stuff the advertised, like the learning AI. That's on me for having any faith towards them after Hello Neighbor 1 though.
15:33 why has my funny mascot horror video turned into a cooking tutorial… I all for it
I'm trying to remember if there was ever a good game that had always-on object physics and where you are expected to stack objects and climb them. I remember in Half-Life 2 I sometimes tricked myself into thinking that I had to stack barrels to progress (I don't think that was ever the intended solution) and it was always the most miserable time. There is a reason in GMod you always weld things together whenever possible, loose props cause chaos. I think if the player is expected to climb, you should bypass physics asap. If a box rests on the ground, make it static. If two boxes are stacked, merge their collusion so physics sees it as a single (ideally immovable) object. Otherwise you get Hello Neighbor...
Hello Neighbour had such potential and interesting ideas originally. I wonder what happened
I believe @CharlatanWonder is going to enjoy this 👀
I think @CharlatanWonder will enjoy dissecting this frame by frame 👀
Yes @CharlatanWonder you should totally reply to our DM
This "meme" was never funny
This meme is dead
^ They don’t get it
From other autopsies of this game that I've seen, somehow this game actually got WORSE with each update.
I was chanting chonkeleus' name the entire intro.
yo, broth-battered fried food sounds absolutely divine. i gotta try that.
I preordered HN2, that's 60 quid down the drain, I am so unbelievably pissed off at tinybuild
A comedic game called Neighbors from Hell was way more fun.
Hey my favorite cooking show is back!
Thank you so much for another fantastic vid man. I was overjoyed to watch another cooking segment too. You're awesome 🙏😃
Oh that is an angy boy. They are his aprons now!
The second game may be an improvement but that doesn't mean they are anywhere near a good dev. They ignored issues and intentionally misled players in the first game, people hated it, and they never owned up to that not once. They were sorry they got hated on. Not sorry they pulled a total 100000% dick move.
WOO! Nice, we got started a few days before my birthday!
Am russian, never heard anything said about the games by anyone, only know of their existance cuz of steam "recommended cuz popular" lists.
Will you make a "Unused cooking compilation" video?
Dear god... as an imSim enthusiast, Hello 1 must be your personal, railroading hell.
The making of this game is an absolute mess. It started out pretty cool, but then they kept adding more, and more, and more, and it felt like they were just throwing shit at the wall at some point. The concept is very interesting so it's a shame it's such a bad game.
Honestly, I actually kind of enjoyed Hello Neighbor 2. It was a good game to play in the background while I was doing something else. I do wish they kept the open-world feature they were planning on adding.
Yeah, now that you mention it, that architecture really violates all H.O.A. sensibilities. Was the neighbor... the real hero all along?!
99.999% of H.O.A. are like the Karen Mafia, so anybody who stands up against them has at a minimum a few more brownie points from me, even if they are an awful person. HOAs will mow your garden flat and tell veterans they can't fly the American flag on their own property.
Do you think about talking to other creators about anti-content stuff and maybe starting a movement?
Nah, something like that's gotta happen on its own. On that note, I've seen more people going anti-content completely out of my sphere of association. I don't really own the idea of saying "screw content" and there might be others who started saying before even I did.
they really took the Skyrim physics engine and said "yeah, let's make a horror game out of this"
I thinj the reason Hello Neighbor dpesn't have as much merch appeal is because a) they came out in the second age of mascot horror after the highs of FNAF so they differentiate themselves a lot from typical mascot horror in gameplay and tropes b) their 'mascot' isn't a cartoony creature like the others (a plsuh of a random guy with tiny limbs isn't as cute as Elmo Who Bites) and ") Hello Neighbor 2 obviously tried to address this by advertising its own Crow Creature thing as merch.
Very funny that the former lead game designer of Hello Neighbor 2 went on to ruin Helldivers 2 as well
Awe dude. Best wishes on the move. Moving sucks lmao
Something to actually look forward to in July now.
I think I might know why it never launched as well here in the states...So when it comes to mascot horror and how well it will do popularity wise there are multiple factors obviously but the two major ones are If markiplier (or jacksepticeye) play it and the videos are entertaining. Or if Game theory does a vid on it...yes there are other theory channels and gamers out there but lets face it those two are the be all end all and will push the game passed indie gamer sphere to bootlegs at the mall.
And Markiplier has been open how he doesn't like Hello Neighbor, did an interview asking what his least fave game was and instantly said hello neighbor.
As for the Game Theory vids...Now I never saw this first hand I was relayed this by someone, the creator of OG hello neighbor at least, kinda got harassy to MatPat, begging him to make a vid about his game...let's be honest if Gametheory makes a video about your game its the best advertisement, even if the theory is massively wrong. and I think! because the creator kept pushing buttons, making jokes on twitter on "Can't wait for matt patt to see this" and stuff of that nature, with that and knowing via markiplier how bad the game was, never really mad a video...or at least not one that did well.
And I will be straight up, after the fireball that is og hello neighbor, (not to the level you did, but I stopped playing indie horror games for a while) I didn't touch hello neighbor anything. I think you are right, if 2 was the game that came out first, and 1 was like an alpha demo build, maybe we be singing a different tune.
I also think the lack of plushies is...the mascot is just a guy, a normal dude, nothing really mascotty if that makes since, yes it has a style to it but like...eh? But that is a theory I came up while writing this comment and staring at the mascot.
Sorry for the long comment but that's my thoughts
God I am absolutely in LOVE with adorable Frisk 😭😍
Excellent video and theme
Gamers, we are so back......but at what cost?
To answer your question about HN popularity in Russia... No, not really... I regularly see HN books in bookstores, but they sit there for months untouched... No bootleg plushies, no nothing... As part of my job, I regularly talk to kids about their interests, a lot of them answer with mascot horror titles... Not a single one ever mentioned Hello Neighbour...
8:50 this is hilarious, because the game was better in early stages of developement.
As someone in the mascot horeor community to an extent hello neighbour had the biggest fall fromngrace, the alphas were so promising then the betas came out an dgot so so bad and then the game came out and ive seen nothing but hate by the mascot horror community for it.
I wonder if you are covering Shipwrecked 64. That shit is fucking amazing.
God damn. Completely forgot Google Stadia was even a thing.
about those graphics in the first game; iirc the graphics were best in the first few either alpha or beta versions
If im not mistaken there is a way to get the USPS to pick up packages at your house if youre shipping in bulk
You're a beacon of positive masculinity
I like the theme of horror for kids more then the theme of mascot horror for this month.
I missed u baby charlatan ❤️
how can I not sub to the patreon when such a cute cat is looking at me while its being advertised.