My Friendly Neighborhood Spiel
I believe I’ve heard about My Friendly Neighborhood as a mascot horror and a survival horror back in 2023, when the the subgenre was getting all the attentions from the fans of horrors. The reason why I started now, in 2025, is due to its console release. Though, there is something to be said about releasing a game without much changes after 2 years without considerations for controllers.
My Friendly Neighborhood has a unique combat mechanic that is taping. All the enemies respawn if they are not tied with a piece of duct tape. Don’t ask me why a studio filled with cardboard cutouts don’t have enough duct tapes, but sure enough, limited supply of duct tapes mean you have to make strategic choices of which enemy will be put down indefinitely. Personally, I thought it was hilarious twist on the respawning, until the game decided it will throw curved balls: spawning enemies in the already explored room, enemies that chase past the doors, and enemies that can’t be put down. It throws the strategic planning out the window and have Gordon, the main protagonist, goes gun blazing like a Hollywood hero.
It may be a matter of personal preference, but I could not fall in love with any of the guns in the game. Survival horror, especially when My Friendly Neighborhood is so reminiscent of Resident Evil and Bioshock franchise, usually have a great opportunity to fashion a non-traditional weapon system — think of plasma cutter from Dead Space. However, the alphabet shooting guns in the game, though they fit the theme nicely, don’t make any sense; guns all have bizarrely big spread with no reticle* or aiming to speak of. Same goes with the melee weapon: the wrench. There are only handful variation of enemies in the game, and all it takes to melee is timing it. Due to its delayed animation, I made sure to hit them later than I would see it to land the hit. Besides, when the game generously offers ammunitions, I don’t see why anyone would want to stick with the wrench.
* It’s off by default, but can be turned on in the setting.
The overall UI could use some handiwork too. The game uses L1 and R1 to scroll through the weapons, and that is one too many button for weapon wheels all the other games are already using. It is eccentric for not the best of the reasons. There is no way of telling what the next weapon will be on the roster. The lack of flashlight in dark corners or highlighting around the items that can be picked up made it annoying to clear a room. It doesn’t help the fact that there are parts of the game that are simply unoptimized and prone to graphical glitches.
It is the theme and world building My Friendly Neighborhood really tries to sell, but I can’t quite draw the line between what is surreal mascot horror and what it isn’t. The studio is overrun by undying mascots, but we clearly don’t see any actors in them. The guns shoot alphabet pieces from letter cards as ammunitions. And Gordon, who is supposed to be the only level-headed one, doesn’t find any of this unnatural. It’s as if it’s perfectly normal for bears to appear in the middle of downtown, and nobody thought to carry a bear spray.
Conclusions: Odd Execution of Interesting Concepts
As an indie survival horror, I dig the world My Friendly Neighborhood is in. It’s like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; anything is possible with enough power and passion in singular subject. But the show can’t go on without some level of plausibility. At least in Resident Evil, we get big bad pharmaceutical companies developing bioweapons behind the closed doors as the reason for the most unusual and impractical zombies possible. We don’t get the plausible continuation, when Gordon, our protagonist, is clearly from outside of the studio, the normal world. Much like how the show itself was canceled in-game, I must attest there is a mismatch what the game provides and what players without much interest into the fictional world itself would expect.