Dread Neighbor Recension (PC)

Dread Neighbor tickles your nerves in an attempt to make you wax questions that stretch beyond your wildest doubts. The homely comforts that you once thought were there to instill happiness? Gone. The pulsating walls and the prying eyes that linger when you’re not looking? There, but never truly visible. It seems that, between these fleeting moments you have no control over the world or the outcome. The room flutters and wanes in tandem with an ominous force, but at no point will you ever truly begin to understand it. Things fall apart, but you, being the paranoiac with a lack of self awareness, can never really do anything about it. You simply embrace the nightmare, and you string yourself along in the hopes that tomorrow will bring a brighter light. Spoiler alert: it never comes.

With an unrelenting sense of horror at the heart of its not-so-neighborly cortex, Dread Neighbor steps into the corridor as a disturbing reminder that even the quietest apartments host dismal secrets and dreadful apparitions that even the most nocturnal of people often fail to recognize. And it’s here, at the heart of a Chinese episodic saga, where you take control over a number of different ordinary citizens, not as heroes, but as regular folk who understand that cheap rent often equals a hidden clause in the lease agreement. You aren’t a warrior, and you aren’t the type to wax fear with combat. Simply put, you’re a regular person who knows that there is something wrong, yet have no power to stop it.

Over the course of several episodes, Dread Neighbor invites you to plunge deeper into a haunting complex with questionably cheap lease offers. As one of several not-so-courageous protagonists, you find yourself with the daunting task of venturing into the decrepit underbelly of a warped society and threading clues to establish the bigger picture. But, herein lies the main clause in the agreement: nothing is as it seems, and even the faintest detail is often marred with a certain underlying reality. It’s your job, in short, to slither through the dark and piece it all together. That’s much easier said than done, mind you. But hey — welcome to the world of psychological horror. You don’t need to be courageous to live here, but it certainly helps if you are.

If Dread Neighbor does anything at all, it forces you to gaze over your shoulder. True to a traditional cult psychological horror experience, it doesn’t task you with battling your enemies, but accepting that they exist, and then learning to cope as the world gradually works to manipulate your subconscious. In most cases here, you’ll discover that there’s little for you to do other than embrace whatever it is that lurks on the other side of the corridor. The world shifts and alters its interior, but it never quite grants you the chance to restore stability. Instead, it asks you to waltz through the nightmare and endure whatever it throws at you.

Dread Neighbor is about as on-rails as it gets, with a textbook A to B guideline for you to follow, and the occasional logical puzzle to solve, like searching for a set of bolt cutters to unlock a door, naturally. But other than that, what you see here is what you get: a ninety-minute scare fest that relies on your ability to navigate corridors at a snail-like pace, and to interpret the situation in a manner that fuels your imagination. A mindless killer stalks the halls, as do apparitions of folk who fell victim to a wave of violence in the past. But for you, none of this really matters. You have an apartment building, a series of hallways and doors, and the occasional puzzle to solve. Again, it doesn’t get any more textbook than this. Yet, we digress.

To point out the obvious, Dread Neighbor isn’t like your typical survival horror experience; it doesn’t feature needs to fulfill, nor does it mince combat with the frequent boss battle. Instead, it puts you on a rail, and it scoots you along till you’re just about ready to unveil the ending and part ways with the furniture. To some, this might sound a little boring. But to those who enjoy the tension, the atmosphere, and the fear of being followed from the shadows, it can also feel like the longest ninety minutes of your life.

Of course, Dread Neighbor merrily comes into its own when the world begins to unsheathe its abnormalities and peculiar design choices. With a hollow ambiance and an eerie, albeit grainy visual style, the general act of slogging through the corridors can begin to feel awfully unnerving. And I’ll admit, Dread Neighbor does a fantastic job of cementing over its minor flaws and lack of depth with the aid of its atmosphere. True to the point of the game, it finds comfort in the tender segments—the peek-a-boo jump scares and the thrills that tie in with the occasional chase sequence. And you know, it does it well. Frankly, I wouldn’t turn a blind eye to a little extra meat on the bones (or a new puzzle to work through), but I can give credit where it’s due. It might not be perfect, but it is horrifying. Mission accomplished, I guess.

Verdict

Dread Neighbor taps into your inner paranoiac to exhume your deepest, darkest fears with an unnerving world that forces you to question everything that the eye can dare to comprehend. Although rather short and without the depth of a multi-purpose horror, its frequent peek-a-boo encounters and chase sequences evidently provide a substantial amount of goodies for the casual thrill seeker. Could it do with a little extra variety in its gameplay department? Sure. Are you still likely to play it for the ambience and the frequent bone-shuddering moment? Most definitely.

Let it be said that, if you did happen to enjoy Dread Flats, the developer’s previous entry in the Chinese horror saga, then it’s highly likely that you’ll enjoy the sequel just as much. Again, you shouldn’t expect more than a fairly generic A-to-B on-rails experience here. Still, if you’re all for the idea of tiptoeing through the decrepit corridors of an eerie apartment block during the dead of night, then you might just find a neighbor to loan a cup of sugar to here. Well, probably.