The Forest: My Review

Ah, The Forest is a game that took me ages to play although it was requested ages ago with a few people to play it together and it took me ages to wait until it went on sale before I bought it.

Originally I was going to record this for Playing Games with Snat but it did not work out for some reason I would like to thank Dianna, Kim and an unnamed person for playing this from start to end.

The story of The Forest is about you playing as a father who was on a plane with his son as the plane suddenly crashes down and you are the only person still on board. The objective is quite simple and that is to do the following.

1. Find your son.
2. Find the other passengers
3. Survive the night!
4. Explore the island

The main story isn’t guided and you must go out there and explore caves which allow you to find new equipment that lets you explore other places. As you explore these places you get notes, audiotapes and videotapes that explain the story while I am not going to ruin the story, it is pretty basic and there are not many story items you need and I only found two key cards with one being given to you at a certain point.

Table of Contents

• Story
• Gameplay
  • Survival
• Combat
• Replayability
• Graphics
• Music
• Conclusion

Story

The story involved you playing as a father that has lost their child after the plane they were on comes down and you have to find him while exploring and ultimately surviving what the island throws at you.

The story is simple you will find most of the game’s story and the world is told to you in written form such as letters, newspapers and audiotapes and you have to piece it together. The story doesn’t really “progress” beyond the game starts, getting a bunch of items and then the ending but you can explore most of the island from the get-go which is something I did like.

Gameplay

I would say there are three different focuses on gameplay and I am going to write about each of the three but before we do they are: Survival, Combat and exploring.

Survival

The first part of the game is survival and this involves having to eat, drink, create a base and ultimately survive against the elements and the friendly locals that want to take you out for dinner. I found securing food and water was easy assuming you just went for soda as it seemed to be everywhere and it would have been nice to see soda and snacks be much more limited in the amount there were in the world.

There is a farming feature within the game which is something we did experiment with and it worked simply enough with a few minor issues I found it was far more effective to just eat everyone we came across and just drink soda to make sure it washed down.

When it comes to the base building I do not have much to say about it as I do not like that in games too much Kim seems to have enjoyed herself but had a few complaints about things mostly not snapping together well.

Combat

The second part of the game links together with survival and that is combat. You have your classic melee and ranged weapons and I found myself enjoying using the katana much more than I should have and am still disappointed you couldn’t craft crossbow bolts as I did not like using the bow and the gun you can find in the game is most of a tool to get out of a problem rather than an everyday weapon.

The game has a couple of different friendly locals to kill but outside of the mutants none of them will pose any issues and even then the mutants are simple once you notice the pattern of their attacks.

There is a PvP mode within the game and while we only had a little mess around (or rather I disabled it at the end) and I imagine it might be kinda fun if everyone built up their secured bases and you attacked each other and tried to bypass their defences but we never tried this.

I liked the combat but it is pretty basic. I would have liked to see new skills unlock and there does seem to be a stat system in-game that didn’t do anything from what I saw.

Replayability

I am not sure how much I would want to replay The Forest after the story mode has been completed but there are things to do once you have completed the game and you do get an item that transforms everything you have been fighting to become either passive or very aggressive.

Endgame wise I don’t think there is anything really to do beyond exploring where you haven’t gone yet or picking up equipment you missed. There were a bunch of water caves we found that provided a few cool buildings so if you are into building bases you may enjoy them.

Graphics

There isn’t a lot I can say about the graphics but they work for the game and it does look quite pretty. There is a range of outfits you can get although little in the way of different weapon designs but the limited amount works for what it is.

Music

I am going to be a bit unsure with my response here but I did not hear much of the music as I was playing this while on Discord (the in-game chat had issues with someone playing but for the brief bits I did hear that it did suit what was going on. I do not recall there being music outside of the story bits and mostly just relies on background noise and it worked for me.

In-game you can pick up audiotapes that allow you to listen to music which helps you to rest. I do prefer this method myself when it comes to music in-game for games like this as it helps with the tension.

Conclusion

I did not mind this game and although it is not one I intend to play again I did enjoy playing it. I liked the exploring but I was not into the base building which I think reflects my final score unfairly.

Although I had fun I don’t think it is something I would replay nor do I like the base building side of it, I am going to rate The Forest the following:

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆