The Forest – Review

Name: The Forest
Developer: Endlight Games
Publisher: Endlight Games
Released: 30.04.2018
Platforms: PC, VR
Reviewed on: PC
Acquired: A self bought copy of this game

What do you do when you’re a survivor of a horrible plane crash, and your son gets kidnapped by terrifying cannibalistic mutants? You set course after them, of course! Unfortunately, you can’t find your son immediately, and the battle for survival is on.

Story

The game starts of with you and your son sitting next to each other on an airliner on your way to paradise, unfortunately it doesn’t take many second before things take a dive (literally).

Regrettably, this is sort of where the whole story ends too. Okay yes, your son gets abducted by cannibals, but the game never really encourages you to find out what happened. Instead, there’s a constant battle for survival, and I never felt like I acquired the necessary equipment and surplus food to take on the cannibals to find out what happened.
6/10

Graphics

I’m pleasantly surprised by how good this game looks. The woods look good, and the cannibals are simply terrifying. This is in no way held back by the excellent sound design either. Another thing I thoroughly enjoyed is the progression when you cut down trees. You can visually see how far you’ve gotten, and you also have to chop from various sides to get all the way through the log (certainly, that’s a weird thing to notice, I know).

There’s really just one thing I would change, and that’s the way your character holds all of the tools you can use. It’s not necessarily anything wrong with it. It’s just very similar to all other games. And it makes it quite obvious this is some standard coding.
8/10

Gameplay

Although I do enjoy most of the gameplay, I did consider the game to be a bit unbalanced. The moment I got a tree hut, the cannibals were unable to get to me, and the nights became way too easy. Yes, that might be a cheap way to play the game, but since I never got the hang of fighting the damn mutants I’d rather stay in my hut and don’t lose progress. Another issue I had was the sheer lack of inventory space. I was constantly told I couldn’t pick up more rocks/sticks, and it shortly became tiresome to erect grand structures.

On the plus side though, once you have enough materials building traps, tools and a place to live was loads of fun. So much so, that it got to the point of me forgetting my son was missing, and that I had a story to find out. In addition, the game features lots of cool mechanics to scare away the cannibals too (for example by hanging up the cannibals’ skulls after they’re killed).
7/10

Controls

The steering in The Forest is relatively similar to other games in the survival-genre. You can adjust pretty much everything to your liking, but if you’ve played games like Rust or DayZ you’ll pretty much know what to do from the get-go. One annoyance I had however was how to set the hotkeys for items. You have to select your backpack from your inventory, and then select the hotkey for each item from there.
7/10

Replay Value

I’m not quite sure what to say about the replay value of the game. I did enjoy the game for the most part, but I’m unsure if I’ll play it again, at least by myself. My problem is primarily that it takes a lot of time before you’re fit to survive more than a night or two for each chunk, and suddenly you get way too much “automated” food, so survival is not a problem anymore. Hopefully, this is better balanced in multiplayer.
6/10

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You can check out our review policy right here, if you wonder how we set our scores.

• Story 6
  6/10
• Graphics 8
  8/10
• Gameplay 7
  7/10
• Controls 7
  7/10
• Replay Value 6
  6/10

Verdict

Most of my time in The Forest pleasant. Yes, it was difficult in the beginning, but that’s something I like about the game. Unfortunately, the story is just mediocre, and I soon forgot to look for my son and the other passengers.

Something I would like to point out is the excellent sound design and good graphics. The music when you are hunted by the cannibals is nerve-tingling, and the moment you get caught is surely frightening. And I’m glad I didn’t experience it in VR.

So, basically, if you enjoy survival games, The Forest undoubtedly deserves a go, just don’t expect too much of the story part.

Overall

6.8/10

6.8/10

Sending

User Review

3 (1 vote)

Pros

• Looks good
• Fun gameplay
• Good Co Op

Cons

• The story is so-so
• Some bugs