So we’ve all had this happen to us before.  You’re sitting inside with your buddies playing video games and your mom makes you get up and go outside.  And that’s exactly what happens in this game.  But the outside neighborhood is filled with robots and ninjas and wizards and you must use your imagination to conjure up all sorts of silly weapons to defend yourselves.  Neighborhorde is a twin stick couch multiplayer shooter with an emphasis on teamwork.  It’s available to download on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.

So when you start the game, you pick from four characters sitting on the couch.  They include a deer, ram, bear, and rabbit.  You can unlock more later.  When you start the game, you and your friends will be outside, and bots will control the rest of the players.  Move with the left stick and aim with the right stick, and fire with the R2 button.  Your initial weapon is just punches, but if you can pick up a present, you’ll get a random weapon like frisbees, snowballs, water pistols, pillows, boxing gloves, flash cameras, and more.  You must survive waves of enemies and bosses to make it to the next wave.  At the beginning of each wave you’ll be able to select a new random weapon in the level and/or a buffer to help you out.  When all four players are close together, they’ll be inside a circle and everyone will automatically heal.  So you’ll all want to stick close together and not venture too far apart to survive.  When all four players are defeated, you’re grounded and it’s Game Over.

You can select two difficulty levels: Easy and Normal.  But even the easy setting is pretty tough.  And you can only earn tickets on the Normal setting.  Use tickets you’ve earned to buy new characters, accessories, and even new suburban setting stages.  Aside from the difficulty, the game has a few other problems.  The sound effects are rather ear-splitting, and there are already too many twin stick shooters in the indie game download only market.  Plus I wish you could just shoot by pointing the right stick, but I know they did this to help you conserve and manage your ammo.  Also, the game is only truly fun when you have four buddies over to play.  And there is no online feature either.  I imagine they did this since I think the whole point of the game is to be couch multiplayer (since the title screen even starts out with the characters on the couch), but online would’ve been nice for those of us who have a hard time getting that many people together.  But if you do have a lot of gamer friends you get to see a lot, you may want to check this one out anyway.

Kid Factor:

Neighborhorde is rated E-10 with ESRB descriptors of Fantasy Violence and Crude Humor.  You use silly weapons at equally silly enemies who just disappear when defeated.  And the simplistic visuals keep the violence from looking too graphic anyway.  Reading skill is helpful for some of the text, and younger gamers may get frustrated at the high difficulty.

Tags: Game Reviews