The Forest *OT* (Off-Topic)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Monday, November 12, 2018, 11:41 (1985 days ago) @ cheapLEY
edited by Korny, Monday, November 12, 2018, 11:53

I'm curious about Tetris Effect, but games like that seem more fit for something like Couch competition, or the Vita, or mobile, none of which it supports (seriously, not even same-screen?).

One game that we did pick up in the past week, though, is The Forest, a $20 4-player co-op survival game with an actual story.

I'm not a huge fan of survival games (especially not those with warmth/thirst/sanity meters), but since it's co-op, and doesn't have the niche artstyle of "Don't Starve", I've been following its development for a while, and I am happy to report that this is the least annoying survival game that I've ever played.

The premise is that your plane crashes on an island, and your son is taken by a cannibal. You, the father (or fathers in co-op, because it's 2018), are tasked with finding him, and the truth about why your plane crashed in the first place. Oh, and there are a bunch of different cannibal tribes on the island who want to eat you, and something much, much worse that lurks in the dark.

Although you can play it with up to three friends, it feels at its best when you play with just one other person. I played about four hours with Sammy, and six or so with my brother, and while the constant need to feed does get annoying at times, you can craft things such as food drying racks and animal traps to make the routine less intrusive. Playing with just one other person makes it more fun to coordinate your resources, goals, and fights (there is friendly fire), whereas larger groups are more fun if you want to assign roles and team efforts.

The key thing that separates this game from any other run of the mill survival game, though, is the cannibal AI. They don't mindlessly rush you. Sometimes they just watch you from a distance, hoping you'll lure them back to your camp. Sometimes they'll test your defenses, and sometimes they run away when you run into their camps. So in that sense, you never quite know what you're in for when they come along, and we've seen behaviors all over the place (we once saw a pack running across a large open field on all fours, with the lead man on fire). It's a rush at times, terrifying at others, and at one point, my brother and I became the monsters, heading into a cave while blasting 80s rock to murder the inhabitants and take their bodies so that we could make some decorations for our camp.
It's... fun.

The only downsides of the game are how painfully indie it is/feels. There is a pretty substantial lack of polish everywhere, from movement, animations, audio, build variety, animal AI, gameplay depth... Though fortunately the visuals are above what I had expected. Nature is beautiful, and creature design can be genuinely disturbing. And some of the cheapness of the game is charming/amusing, such as when you're trying to land a slingshot round on a monitor lizard as it runs in circles...

The most relatable review that I've watched so far is this one, though he criticizes the weak light provided by your lighter, without mentioning that you can make torches (and there is a flashlight in the game, but you have to find it).

Anyway, it's a fun game to play with one or two friends, or four friends if you're more eager to take on larger swarms of enemies (the enemies come in bigger groups the more your presence in the region is felt).