The Forest: Full Game Review For PC

creativity101 (57)in #gaming • 9 years ago (edited)

A couple of years ago, you couldn't look through the early access catalog on steam without stumbling across some kind of first-person early access survival game.
Most of them often involving little more than just chopping down the same looking tree over and over, eating and drinking to stay nourished in between building campfires and huts to live in. The forest is one of those games or at least it was. I can remember first playing the forest when it was first in early access and they said game was underwhelming, but that was an understatement.

Here we are now in 2017 and the forest has managed to actually turn itself into a pretty damn good game and one that offers of a surprisingly original experience for the most part. Developed by Endnight Games Ltd, it feels like it's been in development forever which it kind of has. It's actually worth checking out.

THE STORY

The story goes that your planes crashed on a mysterious island and you're the sole survivor unless of course you're playing in co-op mode. During the intro cinematic, your son is kidnapped by a guy covered in red body paint and shortly after exploring the island for supplies you discover the whole place is swarming with creepy looking cannibals. The more you explore the island and venture into the more dangerous areas you start to encounter more horrific creatures some of which aren't even human and eventually you'll uncover a really bizarre but interesting Plot that divulge what's really going on.

The forest still does have a few survival elements you can chop down trees, kill animals for food, craft all kinds of structures and spend as long as you want creating a somewhat safe haven from the cannibals. The amount of things you can craft is actually kind of staggering, you can make armor from lizard skins, craft bags to carry more sticks and bones and later in the game you can make sticky bombs from coins, wristwatches, circuit boards and bottles of booze because I guess that makes sense.

Then in terms of the base building, you can make everything from log cabins and campfires through to various traps to keep out unwanted guests it's incredibly deep and what you'd really expect for a survival game but the inclusion of an actual campaign now kind of makes still a bit of a moot point.

The main objective is to rescue your son aptly named Timmy I mean the names that hit the cutting room floor here were names like Billy, Joey and Johnny. To do this, you need to get to a very specific area of the island and to do this you need to acquire a very specific set of items. Most importantly a climbing axe and a breathing apparatus for swimming long distances underwater. Seeing the layout of the island is always going to be the same in fact the placement of items is also going to be the same for every single playthrough.

Once you've got your bearings and know where these items are it's easy enough to just run right up to them and power on to the end of the game. Spending time collecting logs, sticks stones and all that kind of shit seems almost like a redundant game mechanic. Outside of eating and drinking something which is hardly ever urgent and always easier to manage there just doesn't seem to be much of a point to everything else. You can cross Spears, axes and clubs and find eight pieces to make a flintlock pistol but you can also just hack cannibals to death with a katana that's effective for the entire game.

Ultimately, it's kind of funny how giving the game appurtenant gold and something to actually achieve is kind of diminish the original survival aspect of the game. Not that it really matters because the core of the forest is just so solid that it's still a fascinating game experience. Collecting the items you need to finish the game involves as I said exploring a bunch of different caves across the island and whilst the items in each cave is always going to differ the one thing that these caves have in common is that they're all absolutely terrifying.

The caves in this game are a spelunker’s worst nightmare, you descend down these long ropes into practically pitch blackness and initially have nothing but a cigarette lighter as your light source. Often, the roof of the caves might be covered in glow worms, the ground is wet and shiny and the sound of running water can be heard nearby as water refractions cascade across every surface. To say these moments are atmospheric is an understatement, their pants shitting the tents like I shat my pants during them.

Just as you start to wonder why you put yourself into this predicament, you finally come to the end of the cave and find yourself rewarded with sticks of dynamite medical, pills, energy drinks and other crucial items. Then you make the long trek back to the surface, find the next cave and do the whole thing over again. The forest is a game that really excels at co-op play in terms of the building aspect, it essentially means you only have to get half the amount of resources needed to craft something but in terms of exploration and combat, it can often be life-saving to have someone watching your back and keeping an eye out for marauding cannibals.

Other than that it's just funny to play with someone and get a good laugh from them screaming like a little bitch every time you're ambushed by something. I actually love the dead vibe from the forest 2 I mean they're both games that start with the plane crashing on an island in the middle of the ocean. They both have a similar inventory system where everything has a preset position and they both involve zombie type enemies. The enemies in the forest are cannibals but their behavior is very much like zombies and aren't zombies cannibals anyway?

Also, without spoiling anything for the forest, they both have similar endings with the player having to rescue someone and escape the island. They will say that the ending in the forest is way more fucked up, the last half hour or so the game just keeps getting more and more intense and some of the things you see and have to do are so out of left-field. Let’s just not suck the game’s dick without pointing out what's wrong with it.

Obviously, the game still has a lot of bugs and little glitches I mean one of the more common ones I experienced was the physics engine launching me into the god damn sky when I tried to pick logs up. There's still not any kind of hotbar for items and weapons either so every time you want to equip a weapon or heal yourself you have to go to the actual inventory screen. On the subject of combat, it's still really janky all you can really do is just whack enemies with your weapon over and over hopefully stun locking them to prevent damage until they're dead.

This is fine and dandy against a single opponent but against multiple enemies it becomes a bit of a mess. I’d say too that there's often so many cannibals about that base building can be an incredibly slow procedure. Even during the daytime there's assholes attack you constantly and just being able to chop down a bunch of trees in peace isn't even an option sometimes.

GRAPHICS AND SOUND

Running on the Unity engine which is always a bit hit-and-miss, there's a good variety here between the lush often pseudo photorealistic surface of the island and the dark creepy caves that make up a considerable portion of the game world. The forest is said to have taken influence from the 2005 film: The Cave and it's pretty easy to see that when you start getting deeper and deeper into these never-ending series of tunnels, finding human skulls used for light sources and dimly lit candles placed ominously around narrow passageways.

The scene is often broken by the blood-curdling scream of a bunch of cannibals that just happened to be residing down there. And for a few brief moments, you're hacking them to death with your axe or katana before the whole thing goes back to being quite again.

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

OS: Windows 7
Processor: Intel Dual-Core 2.4 GHz
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT
DirectX: Version 9.0
Storage: 5 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX®-compatible
Additional Notes: 32bit windows users need to ensure they have at least 4gb of ram usable on their system.

RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

OS: Windows 7
Processor: Quad Core Processor
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560
DirectX: Version 9.0
Storage: 5 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX®-compatible

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REVIEW/RATING

Graphics 7/10
Sound 8/10
Gameplay 6/10
Controls 7/10
Effect 7/10

OVERALL REVIEW/RATING

7.3\10

DEVELOPER

Endnight Games Ltd

PUBLISHER

Endnight Games Ltd

GENRE

Open world‎, ‎survival, survival horror‎

MODE(S)

Single-player, multiplayer

RELEASE DATE

30 May, 2014

CONCLUSION

It's actually not a bad aspect though I guess, when you're sitting there chopping down trees or gathering sticks and you hear this inhuman howling coming from the forest, it really keeps you on edge and truly no area of the island are you ever completely safe.
I'm aware the forest is still in early access but I think the entire core mechanics of the game are in place and it's actually playable now from start to finish which is really saying a lot considering the state of a lot of these early access games we get subjected to.

To be fair, I've barely even touched on the amount of stuff you can do in this game and you could easily spend tens if not hundreds of hours just trying to survive as long as possible without even giving two shits about little Timmy. I also didn't even mention how you can chop down trees with dynamite, so that reason alone I'd say the forest is worth checking out and I'm sure that when it's finally finished and polished a little bit more, it's going to be anything but a bumpy ride.