Recent reviews by Tankbox

Great game. Embark has done a great job here.

Gameplay is fantastic and gunplay feels great. A lot of strategy and mix of arena shooting.

Monetization is insanely friendly. Cosmetics are actually very creative and worth unlocking, not just color reskins.

Nexon has said they are not thrilled with player engagement and earning on The Finals. Embark deserve a chance to keep this game going. It's spending whatever you think the game is worth.

Highly recommended.

DOOM levels of adrenaline while playing.
I think the final boss battle gave me heart palpitations.

Before I begin, I would like to preface this review with a couple of footnotes:
1. I played through the game on Hard. In hindsight I think that was a mistake.
2. I played The Forest solo, and I think this is an experience best shared via co-op.
3. This review is just my experience, all reviews are subjective, and I'm going to try and criticize the game fairly.

Now that's out of the way...

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I did not like The Forest. There was a lot that I didn't like, and not much that I actually did. I'll go through my experience (albeit anecdotal) to highlight why I feel this way.

Day 1-2
The game opens with a cutscene of you, the protagonist, losing your son in a plane crash. It is immediately implied he's alive and it's your job to go and find him. My first night I rely on some supplies in the plane, make a shelter and a rabbit trap to try and begin my soiree into the forest. No issues so far as I begin to build a more permanent shelter near a water source nearby. On my second night, I have a fire going in the dark cooking some rabbit that I caught that day. Out of nowhere a strange man rushes the fire and scares the ♥♥♥♥ out of me. First big scare on night two. I end up killing this cannibal and get some rest.

Day 3-4
On the dawn of the third day I kick things into high gear, it's clear that this island is hostile. During the day I get raided by more enemies. I have to fight 3v1 in a nerve-racking fight that had me panicking the entire time. After this it's almost dark. I can't finish my wall tonight. I'll pick it up tomorrow.

Day 5-10
By the 5th day I have a wall, a cabin, a permanent fire pit, and a source of fresh water. Things are really looking up, and I can resume the search for my boy. While I'm reading through my survival guide inside the walls of my compound, more enemies show up and start bashing on the walls, damaging them. I wasn't even moving a muscle and a squad of them are beating down my beautiful wall. I kill them by hitting them through the wall and cheesing the fight. Little did I know this was an early precursor of what's to come...

As the days go by, I keep exploring and returning to camp, similar to a cat. A little further in each direction and then back to the safety of my walls. And all the time I keep getting harassed by the locals at my home base, almost every day. This forces me to stop what I'm doing, cheese them through the wall, often wasting precious daylight, and then having to sleep until morning just to find MORE enemies to deal with.

By day 10-15, I realize there is little point to having a camp. I just waste time defending, cheesing, repairing, eating, drinking, exploring for a few minutes, and resting. Repeat. It's time to go do some serious cave diving and see what's really going on here.

Day 15-25 is where I really make my progress. However, almost Every. Single. Fight is me aggroing an enemy, kiting them to the edge of their traversable zone and then stun locking them with my axe one at a time. I am not exaggerating when I say this was the ENTIRE COMBAT LOOP for me. Block. Kite. Cheese. Stun lock. Each enemy takes 10+ hits even with the modern axe with speed+ upgrades. Again, partly my own doing because I elected to play the game on Hard.

Day 25+ was mostly the late game story for me. I will say the final chapter was pretty cool. But getting down the sinkhole was not pleasant. A gauntlet of tough enemies and a harrowing battle with hunger and thirst, just to find out I don't have enough MacGuffins to access the final area. So I had to go all the way out, find those MacGuffin(s) and return later.

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In generally, I know this game is a Open World Survival game. But I think some of the core game design is flawed or just bad:
1. The Sound.
The directional audio is extremely poor at close range. During combat I kept glancing to my left thinking there were more people attacking me, but there weren't. The directional audio when the sound originates within 2-3 meters of the player is extremely poor, misleading, and not fun.
2. The Cheese.
This was my biggest gripe. Every fight I could not take on enemies more than one at a time. This meant some element of cheese in about 75% of all my combat experiences. In addition, if you have to repel or climb down to enemies, they will just swarm the rope or wall at the bottom and attack ad infinitum. So you just get beat to ♥♥♥♥ before you can dismount the rope or rock wall and square up.
3. No Auto Save.
I know this is an intentional game design, so I'm going to try and not knock it too much. I'm all for old school or hardcore design choices. But when you are deep within a cave, no way out, running low on supplies, and you are 2 sticks short of building a shelter to save, this is very frustrating. I died in places I worked very hard to get to and you don't just "load checkpoint." Instead, you are carted off to a cave across the map and have to work your way back to where you fought so hard to get to.
4. The Pacing
This was another major gripe. I wanted to immerse myself in the world. I wanted to become the Tom Hanks of the island. The survivor with amenities, a home, and supplies. The constant unrelenting raids, even when sometimes I was standing still in my cabin, AFK. I realized the best thing to do is just be a nomad, travel and eat/drink as you go, and all the base building be damned.
5. The MacGuffins
Some of the items in the game are almost useless but the game makes you feel like you need them. For example: If you travel north you encounter a snow area, which needs a warm suit. Not an easy item to craft. I thought there would be huge progression gains and the next leg of the game would unfold. But nope, the item in question added no value and the area that it unlocked was devoid of life or intrigue.
6. Sequencing Breaking and Traversal
This is my final gripe. Due to my frustrating experience into the final third of the game, I started going down cliff faces or "Skyrim-horsing" up cave walls out of frustration. This led to some sequence breaks that were frustrating to untangle. Again, my fault, but the game should not allow you to clip on walls/rocks so easily.

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To conclude, I would like to bring in one of my favorite Open World Survival games: Subnautica. This genre's strongest point is a great journey of discovery and wonder. Though sometimes frustrating. But the feeling you get when you re-surface in Subnautica or travel to a new depth for the first time is truly special. I didn't feel that way at all while playing The Forest. It was a frustrating experience and the cave diving all felt monotonous and not very special. It didn't feel like I had really earned this new cave like I did in Subnautica when you first dive below 100/200/500 meters.

There were some things that I did like. This game truly turned me into an island savage. The aggression I felt cheesing and stun locking enemies was intense. I loved driving my axe into their corpses over and over out of sheer anger at having to earn each individual kill one at a time through unconventional gameplay. The game is scary. Going through some of those caves and my first time finding a Virginia or Armsy was truly terrifying.

This game has about 95% Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam at the time of writing this. Most of you will love it. I was just that 5% that didn't.

Play it on Normal, play in with a friend, and you may have a good time.

But I did not like The Forest.

I don't usually write reviews on Steam. But I'm going to make an exception here on the off chance someone on my Steam Friends List sees this.

In short: You. Must. Play. This. Game.
If you have a significant other, even if he/she isn't into gaming at all, this is a game built entirely around an experience for a couple.

This game is whimsical, fantastical, and outright special. It is like playing a Pixar movie, an ORIGINAL Pixar movie, before they were bought by Disney to churn out Cars 5 and Toy Story 8. It has mature themes but still just makes you feel like a kid reading a magical children's book.
The game is relatively easy. Proficient gamers will power through it, but there is so much love and care baked into every nook and cranny of this game. Stop and smell the roses. Enjoy it.

I would put this game on the shelf of "Games-I-Wish-I-Could-Forget" along with Subnautica, Outer Wilds, A Way Out, and others. As I said, a truly special game I'm taking 15 minutes out of my day to promote as much as I can. This game more than deserves your money.

Seriously, I can't sing Hazelight and Josef Fares praises enough. If you haven't played A Way Out. Go find a buddy and play that game. If you haven't played Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, go buy and play that too.

A truly endearing adventure. And yes you can replay it and swap roles, but like that Pixar movie, after the first time it isn't quite the same.

Great game with a good mix of PvP and PvE content.
At the time of writing this review the community has mentioned issues with performance and server connectivity, though that has not been my experience.

Though a reconnect feature would be nice for the odd crash (happened to my friend and me once each), I think the game is in a good place. It just needs more players to flesh out the experience.

So if you're tempted, come join us out in the bayou! The community yearns for the game to become more popular, and I think Crytek are trying their best to make that happen.

Pretty good game to get if on sale and you enjoy horror games. Do not play "Nightmare" difficulty first time through, it makes the experience a chore and frustrating. Play "Hard" as a first playthrough if you prefer a challenge.

Fun game, good developer. Recommend if on sale or a fan of the Alien franchise.