My Friendly Neighborhood Review (PS5)

Resident Puppets

When the trailer for My Friendly Neighborhood first dropped, I was immediately interested. Horror game with Sesame Street inspired puppets? Sign me up! Though I got pretty sad when I saw it was only releasing on PC and I hoped it would someday release on console. Eventually, I ended up forgetting about the game…that is until I got an email. One announcing that My Friendly Neighborhood was getting released on all consoles in two days. You best believe I raced to get it. I was so excited. So, what did I think about My Friendly Neighborhood now that I was finally able to play it?

My Friendly Neighborhood has you jump into the shoes of Gordon O’Brian, who learn is a handyman that’s on probation due to being sullen and impolite to his clients. We jump right into things as Gordon receives the last job for the day; one which turns out to be way more involved than he was expecting and one that he may never forget. You see, the night the game takes place an old abandoned studio randomly started broadcasting again. It probably wouldn’t have been such a big deal if it wasn’t overlapping with another show that’s airing, making it so both shows are playing at the same time as neither of them have priority. All Gordon has to do is disable the antenna.

When Gordon arrives, nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. Well, aside from the power being on, but it’s not that weird considering the broadcast tower was turned on too. That is, until he goes to the main lobby of the hotel where he sees that the elevator doors are strangely stuck together by some kind of purple substance. And then, when Gordon rings the front desk bell, a hand sock puppet named Ricky pops up to talk to him. Ricky is pretty against the idea of Gordon disconnecting the antenna and does try to dissuade him, but Ricky does end up giving Gordon the means to access to the first building you’ll be going through, a hint on an enemy, and does send Gordon in the right direction.

You soon learn that this abandoned studio was home to a children’s puppet show known as My Friendly Neighborhood (which explains why it’s MFN Studios) which used to be very popular before it was cancelled. So popular that it seems like the studio also doubled as a place for viewers to visit. And, well, throughout the whole game you’ll be traversing through the various buildings from ones that were used to produce the show to ones where it seemed people could come visit and play at. Though, it’s not going to be easy as the puppets that were the stars of the show are walking around and waiting for you to get in their line of sight.

I’d say the story is pretty light in My Friendly Neighborhood, but what we do get through cutscenes and lore documents was pretty good and interesting. The reason why Gordan is there and why he’s going through the whole studio makes sense. It was also interesting learning about the children’s show My Friendly Neighborhood, the people that worked at the studio during the time that it was still being produced, and why it was shut down in the first place. Not to mention what you can gleam about the puppets themselves based on what they say or do. While Gordon doesn’t get much here, I do think it was pretty interesting seeing that he isn’t as gruff as he seems. It was also interesting learning that there was a war sometime before the events of the game and reading/seeing the effects it had. Effects that are still happening and, if you play your cards right, you can help start the healing process. The only thing is that I don’t totally believe that no lighthearted or children’s shows are being made, though. I did also wish we got some lore documents that went into how the puppets were made as it is weird why Gordon doesn’t question anything about the puppets being alive until you learn that it follows the Muppets rule where they’re treated like they’re real people.

My Friendly Neighborhood is also subversion done right. It takes what you expect for mascot horror and ends up flipping it. I think the main reason it works is because the hints were always there. If you paid attention or observed the puppets, you’ll see the hints. They were also just steeped in creepiness and the issues that they developed due to being shut in the studio for years. Plus how Ricky is. It wasn’t something that gets sprung on you at the eleventh hour, but it’s what the whole game builds to and it hides it in plain sight really well.

Now onto the gameplay! With this being a survival horror game, you’ll be exploring this abandoned studio while also either avoiding or fighting against the enemies that are roaming around. With the parking area serving as a hub for all the locations, you’ll be spending most of your time in the various buildings exploring, dealing with enemies, and figuring out how to progress. If you’ve ever played Resident Evil, or a Resident Evil inspired game, you’ll definitely notice that My Friendly Neighborhood is also a game heavily inspired by Resident Evil.

Anyway, with the usual survival horror fashion, you won’t be able to go into any building or open every door. You get access to the first building, Studio 4, and from there you have to figure out how to gain access to the others and, eventually, find a way to take care of that mysterious substance on the hotel elevator doors. This involves you exploring the location you’re in and keeping an eagle eye out for any items laying around. You’ll mainly find the items that help you, like health items, energy bars (which increase your speed for a couple rooms), tokens, duct tape, and ammo; but you’ll also be able to find documents, maps, keys (or key-like items that unlocks a blocked door) and other important story items that are for the various puzzles here. Yep, there are puzzles and they’re also used to block the next area until you figure it out. Since I’m already on the subject, I will say that the puzzles here are simple but clever. When you first happen upon a piece of it, you’ll probably be confused, but it clicks together once you have all the information and pieces. I found all the puzzles pretty easy to understand what it wants. I only looked up one puzzle solution and that’s because I didn’t want to go back and get the information. I also highly recommend you read the documents you find because some of the lore ones have hints towards that area’s puzzle.

However, you’re not alone as you have your friendly neighborhood puppets roaming around! You’re slowly introduced to them in a very creepy way as you’re going through the beginning of Studio 4 and they soon become a lot more common once you get into the building proper. You’ll definitely know when you’re out of the tutorial area. You have a couple different enemy types here: the main puppets, the cute small puppets, and the big puppets that act as a stalker enemy. All of these were puppets that were on the show (or copies considering how many duplicates there are). All the puppets have areas that they patrol or watch over and luckily most don’t roam around. However, if you go into their line of sight they will go straight for you. Luckily, they all talk or make some kind of sound so you know that they’re there, which helps for the puppets that you won’t be in your line of sight and helps you determine how many are in the room you’re in (or in an adjacent room). You can sneak around or try to dodge them, but sometimes you won’t be able to as the room may be too small or they’re right smack dab where you need to go or pass by. Luckily, you do have ways to defend yourself.

Early on you gain a wrench so you can whack the puppets until they topple over. However, while this does give you a way to attack without using up ammo, it does require you to get up close. Which is definitely dangerous as they won’t hesitate to grab you and push you down, taking off the few health points you have (which I believe is determined based on your selected difficulty). Well, you also get a gun early on before you head to the main area of Studio 4. It’s not your run-of-the-mill gun though as come on, this is a child-and-puppet friendly studio. Called the Stenographer, it’s this game’s version of a pistol except instead of bullets you send out letters. Literally. Ammo is literally a rolodex of the alphabet and it’s honestly so cool. The capacity is the amount of letters in the alphabet, which also lets it correspond with the letter you see on the loaded up rolodex (as it’s literally right there in the corner of your eye) and the letter that gets sent out corresponds with what letter you were on. It was definitely a nice touch considering it probably would have been easier to make the letters random rather than correspond with where you’d be at in the alphabet according to how much ammo you have left loaded in.

As you progress, you’ll also find other weapons that are this game’s version of that weapon type. They all fit the theming that the Stenographer sets up and their names fit with the weapon type that they correspond with; which was so cool.

Okay going back around to the enemies, I do want to talk some more about them. There are four different main puppets and while it does seem it’s only cosmetic and lore since they all do attack the same, they actually have different health. As you’re playing you might notice that sometimes they’ll take more or less attacks and, if you’re paying attention, you’ll be able to correlate that with a specific puppet. So, for example, if a Norman is sitting in an area that you go through a lot (or you think you will go through a lot) you might want to tape him up. Plus, it does help you decide whether you want to use the more heavy duty weapons. The small hand puppets are so cute, but man get too close and they’ll jump at you. Luckily, they are super weak and I did find it easy to swing the wrench at the right time. Then finally, each location has puppets that act as a stalker-type enemy. All of them have some differences like how they attack and how they stalk you, but they all do have similarities like only activating after you do something specific, being able to avoid being hit whether it’s dodging them or stunning them, and a way to deactivate them which is its own little puzzle that you can figure out by observing them or reading documents. Most of them do stick to the location they star in, which is also where they starred in in the show, but there is one that spawns in every area (granted, you can deactivate them pretty quickly). The stalker enemies definitely add tension to the game and I really love the ways that you deactivate them and how it plays into the themes of the game.

Remember how I mentioned that this takes inspiration from Resident Evil? Well, it specifically takes inspiration from the classic Resident Evil games. The first being that you have limited storage, both on you and save room storage. Gordon’s inventory is a suitcase made up of a grid. Each item you pick up takes a certain amount of grid squares and while some items do stack, the majority of it doesn’t. So you have to decide what you want to keep on you and anticipate what you might need. As well as leaving some room so you can still pick up items or story items. There will be some points where you can reorganize your inventory to squeeze something in, but I found most of the time you won’t be able to. The save room storage, themed as being a tool box, is a little bit bigger than Gordon’s suitcase, but still limited. The tool box is luckily universal to all save rooms, but you don’t get another one until the late game. Depending on your difficulty level and how much you use certain weapons, you might want to not pick up everything you come across. Talking about save rooms, this has save rooms too which also has that classic Resident Evil save room music. In addition to no enemies spawning in them (not even for a scare) and storage, you also have save stations as this also only has manual saves (unless you’re on Friendly difficulty) and health stations. These are limited, however, as they cost a token. Definitely make sure you save as the horror of losing a lot of progress is definitely here. Also be careful as you can easily use a station when you don’t mean to.

I do also feel like the layout of the various locations also take a page out of Resident Evil as they all are unique but have some tricky spots here and there that can get a bit confusing. Your health indicator is also like Resident Evil’s, but without the ECG and a way to tell which Caution you’re on. The doors also have that classic Resident Evil door animation. Then, there are the enemies. The main puppets do respawn (or get back up to be more accurate) when you leave the room. Their location does change up, which helps you not get ambushed immediately for puppets that sit right in front of a door, but them getting back up does hurt since ammo is limited. You do have a way to keep them down though in the form of duct tape. They still talk, but they won’t get back up. Which is definitely helpful in making an area you pass by often safe. You’ll also be graded with a rank at the end of the game based on how well you played.

There are optional things that you can find along your journey throughout the various MFN buildings. There are documents that you can find around the place and while some are used to help guide you on how to solve a puzzle, most of them are lore documents that you can read up on to get a better sense of what happened in the past. You can also find secret tapes hidden all around which actually unlocks cheats that you can activate once you complete the game once. Other than that, there’s some optional, hidden stuff that you can find and do. Like optional puzzles, hidden rooms, meta puzzles that play into a mascot horror game trope, and even a secret weapon. Also, definitely check out a video that shows all the out of bounds secrets.

After you finish the game, you will also unlock some extra things, like the aforementioned cheat menu, game modes for the main game based on what difficulty you completed, and a timed endless horde mode called Neighborhorde. You can also try playing the game on harder difficulties (which the higher the difficulty, the higher enemy health is, the less resources scattered around, and the less health you have), try to aim for S rank, and get the other achievements if you want to.

I have to be honest, I did not have a good start with the game. It certainly didn’t help that I had different expectations based on the trailers I saw, but I actually was at a point where I was thinking about dropping this game. The first time was when I lost a lot of progress and the second time was when I was running out of storage space. Though, as you can see, I ended up finishing the game. I did admittedly go down to Friendly difficulty as I just wasn’t in the mood for only having limited manual saves, but I did have a lot more fun when I realized that you can discard story items. I didn’t notice this until I looked, but once you use up a story item everywhere you can, you get the option to discard it. If you still need it, you won’t get that option. I think I just thought it was always there and I didn’t want to softlock myself so I kept the keys until I noticed the key card you get in the beginning of the game could be discarded but not a key I recently got. Which leads me to how I love how keys are handled here. Keys are only used at the location you get it at and possible in a previous location. No future location will use that key. Weird thing to love, but I do.

Once I figured that out, I did start enjoying the game more and I’m glad I stuck it out. Despite my criticisms, I did enjoy the gameplay here. I loved exploring MFN Studios and how everything was themed as this once being host to a children’s puppet show. The various locations were unique and really played well into it. I loved that you could walk through the actual set where they filmed the show, the behind the scenes areas, areas where visitors would have been able to visit, and then the actual offices that the people working on the show worked in. I also really think that they nailed it with the layout of every location as it plays well in these locations realistically being used while also giving some maze-like quality to it (it certainly helps when you add in the shortcut doors that you can unlock once you make it to the other side). I liked the puzzles here as well. They’re simple, but them being clever makes up for it and some of the puzzles are pretty creative. Actually this game has some really creative moments and they were honestly the best parts. Honestly, I much rather have that than having obtuse puzzles that I have no idea how you were supposed to figure out even after looking it up. I also think the game does a good job with guiding you on what you need to do or go without directly telling you (like through Ricky) most of the time. There were times where I was a bit lost on where I had to go, but when I looked it up it just turned out I overlooked a locked door that I now had the key for. As for backtracking, I will say there is a decent amount. You do have required backtracking for story items you need and some added backtracking if you left any items in rooms and either want to have a map that’s all green (signaling that you grabbed everything) or need it. The fact that enemies get back up does make backtracking annoying, but I honestly didn’t really mind it and it was quite satisfying when I got a whole location cleaned out.

I also really liked the puppets. Sure they are a bit annoying and don’t really fit in a horror game, but I loved them. They are so colorful, they do have that look that you can see kids loving them, and I loved how all of them have their own characterization. I loved how they have totally innocent ramblings that end up being totally unhinged and I found that so funny. I couldn’t help but stop and try to listen to what they were saying. While they all do seem to share one or two ramblings, they do have unique ones where you can gleam their personality from. Oh, and these do follow the theming as they seemed like innocent lessons they would have taught kids when they were still airing before quickly going down the crazy route. I also did like all the designs of all the puppets and the main puppets did remind me of those wavy tube guys since they wave their hands in the air and how they swing around their body. Talking about the theming, I loved the nice touch of the weapons falling in line with it too and the “bullets”.

I didn’t find My Friendly Neighborhood all that scary, mainly because of the puppets, but there were parts that did lean into being scary in the beginning and tail end of the game and there were moments that it did scare me (intentionally or not) and it does raise the tension at some moments too. I’m also pretty sure there was only one jumpscare, which is great. The puppets surprisingly can sneak up on you if you don’t notice that they noticed you and the couple times it happened to me, it scared me. I guess the puppets talk so much, you just zone them out and that’s when they getcha. I do wish it leaned a tad more into being scary, but I loved how it is anyway. There are even moments where you come across a “dead” puppet when you first walk through an area only to find it alive when you visit again after doing something. Which can play into the spooky vibe or scare you as you expect the room to be safe. I will also say that My Friendly Neighborhood does nail that unsettling feeling that you get when you visit a place that you’re used to seeing populated at night when no one is there.

I do have a couple negatives for My Friendly Neighborhood. While I do like the inclusion of Friendly difficulty for those that want autosaves, I do wish we got a custom difficulty option too. So those that want the safety of autosaves can still technically play on a harder difficulty. On that note, I wished that the save rooms were marked in the overworld (matching the game’s theming of course). They are technically marked on the map, but you still need to find the map and you can easily overlook it when exploring since they look like regular plain doors. And while I’m on the map, I didn’t like how your icon faded in and out. It just made it hard for me to find where I was on the map. I also had a hard time telling when I was far enough away from the puppets so they wouldn’t grab me and close enough to be able to hit them. To be fair, they do have long arms, but it still felt unfair to me as it does feel there’s a narrow distance where you’re at the perfect spot where you’re too far away to be grabbed but close enough to land hits with the wrench. I honestly don’t know why I had a hard time considering I don’t have that problem usually, but maybe it’s the long arms. As much as I love the puppets talking, it does get annoying if there’s a lot of them in a room (and it’s extra annoying if you’re just annoyed at the game). I did also find the main puppets reacting to being a bit inconsistent as sometimes they’ll flinch and sometimes they won’t. And even then, the flinch doesn’t feel long enough to be able to slide past them. I also lowkey wished the puppets whined if they’re taped up. I thought they did at first as after I taped up either Junebug or Lilliana (I don’t remember which one it was) sounded like she was whining about being taped up and I thought that was funny. I was a bit disappointed that it wasn’t the case.

There is a point of no return that I don’t believe the game tells you about. I guess it could be implied since you’ve been working towards disabling the signal the whole game, but I was expecting to be able to go back to a finished save file before the point of no return. Probably my fault for expecting that so make sure you do everything before going to disable the broadcast signal. Oh and a part of me wished that the last two areas were a bit longer, mainly because I loved them and wanted more, but a part of me also thinks that it’s good the way it is. I did also find the bosses a bit sudden and out of place, but that’s just me.

I did also play a round of Neighborhorde and it went to a black screen when the round was over instead of going to a results screen.

For the most part, the performance on the PS5 is great. There were just two moments where it very noticeably lagged for a couple seconds, but that’s all.

To tie everything up, the visuals, music, and voice acting was great here. Like I mentioned a lot, I loved how this was themed around an abandoned children’s puppet show studio. It runs with that idea and it worked out for sure. I loved all the various locations that you’ll be exploring and they all looked unique, interesting, and even creepy. There’s even some nice visual storytelling here and there. I loved the look of the various items that you’ll be finding all throughout and especially how the long ranged weapons looked. The weapons here, while falling in line with the usual weapon types, were still unique with the way they were designed with the game’s visual theme in mind. It helped you stay immersed and it does make sense that the puppets would get up; where using regular guns probably wouldn’t have fit with this family friendly feel to everything. And finally, I loved the puppet designs. They designed them really well and you can definitely see kids loving them; while at the same time giving you moments where they are pretty creepy (even though it barely happens). The only thing that looks weird in the game are just Gordan’s arms. They’re so weird and gangly and hairy and sausage-like (*shiver*). Oh man, I almost forgot to mention the artwork that you’ll see while exploring. Doesn’t seem like it’s worth mentioning, but they’re all based on classic famous paintings, but with the puppets being the subjects instead. I loved the paintings and it was such a delight finding a new one.

You mostly hear the ambience and the puppets chattering away, but the times the music does kick in, it’s pretty good. Directional audio was also done pretty well here as I did find it easy telling when a puppet was around the corner, in an adjacent room, or on a floor above me. The voice acting here was also amazing and everyone did a great job. Sure the puppets are annoying after a while, but you can’t deny that they all did a good job. They do well in both being voices that you can see being puppet voices for a kids show while also leaning into those unhinged moments of their ramblings. Gordon’s voice actor does a good job too as he does sell the gruff, but deep down soft, character that Gordon is.

Verdict

Despite the rough start I had, I ended up enjoying My Friendly Neighborhood by the end. I absolutely loved this taking place in an abandoned kids puppet show studio and how everything played into that theme. I really liked exploring the various locations, learning about the My Friendly Neighborhood show, seeing all the locations and puppet designs, and the bits of characterization that we get for the puppets. I also really appreciate the direction this went, which definitely sets it apart from other mascot horror games. It also does blend the Sesame Street and Resident Evil inspirations really well. It’s really obvious where the developers got their inspirations from, but they managed to still make it really unique. Not to mention that I found this game to be the perfect length, despite wishing the late game areas were a bit longer.

My Friendly Neighborhood is a great Resident Evil inspired mascot horror game that I do recommend. Just with the caveat that you need to like the design decisions that come with the classic Resident Evil inspiration. It may not be scary most of the time, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.

P.S. My favorite puppet was Lilliana.