Recent reviews by captain kirk

it will change your life. dont install it.

Let me start this by saying how much I loved the forest and how much I have looked forward to this title since its announcement back in 2019. This game had/has many things going for it. These being:

- Beautiful environment and scenery with incredible graphics if you can handle them
- Really cool and unique building mechanics that make you really WANT to build a giant base
- Lots of weapons, (most) of which are satisfying to use
- Cool interactions with cannibals and other NPCs
- Kelvin is, for the most part, pretty great and helps a lot with resource gathering.
Not to mention how fun sledding (or book sliding honestly) is.

Despite these things, this game has glaring issues. Before I get into them, as I've seen every other negative review thread, let me note that the developers put this game into early access BECAUSE they wanted feedback like this. Feedback like this is what lead The Forest to become what it is today, and I'm sure it's what will cause its sequel to become just as great. Feedback like mine and all others that has been blasted by "it's early access, it obviously is going to have issues, shut the ♥♥♥♥ up" despite the fact that this game was thrown into early access 2 weeks before its release. It's pretty clear that Endnight wasn't ready for it to be released but understood that pushing it back further would only lead to more blowback from the same fans who won't stop dickriding this game as hard as they can.

Now to get into the issues:
- The map is huge, which would be great, but it's also very, VERY empty. There are many caves around the map, only a few of which have content. The rest consist of one room with some boxes with resources that you probably already have a full inventory of. There are many green objectives around the map, 2 of which you have access to off rip. This would be fine, however you only gain access to most of these points in the final third of the game, leaving most of the cool content to the end of the game which felt really frustrating. On top of these things, since the map is so big and actual cool objectives are spread so far apart, most of your time is spent running. It's not fun to run for 20 minutes and be in a bunker for 5, regardless of how pretty the environment is. I think I speak for a lot of people here when I say that another mode of transportation would be awesome, whether it be jet ski, ATV, boat, jeep, mountain bike, or literally anything to make travel a little quicker.
- The base building is great, but you have no reason to build one. Me and my friend went to a couple of the caves (rebreather and rope gun), and the 2 bunkers that we had access to, and then found a place to settle down and built a really cool base with a defensive wall, spikes, and a hand made cabin. I can say that from then on, that base was hardly used. We spent the rest of our time travelling the map to other caves and objectives, setting up tents if we needed to save or sleep. We didn't need to use our storage since you practically have an entire storage container on your back at all times, and on top of that there are so many camps and small caves that load you with food, energy, meds, and drinks, that there is really no reason to live on anything other than what you have on you. I really wish there was more reliance on storage or long term defense rather than being a walking house.
- The story. God, the story. I was heavily intrigued by it while reading the emails and seeing the security camera footage from that one bunker, but once we got to the ending nothing was wrapped up well. It was sloppy, sudden, and there was no challenge blocking you from getting to it other than hours of walking. It didn't make sense, either. I had no clue what the hell had happened until it was already over. I had to look up a youtube video to understand what the hell I had just witnessed. On top of that, there was only one voice line in the entire game. Outside of that voiceline, we only got a couple of pretty sloppy cutscenes, utilizing only facial expressions with an occasional grunt. Come on, really? Nothing is less immersive than characters who are all mutes. Kelvin makes sense, but Virginia? The lady in the silver? Any of the people on our team other than voice line guy? I don't know, maybe it's too much to ask, but I feel like consistent voice acting throughout the story would have made it much more immersive and enjoyable, not having to rely on sheets of paper that could be easily missed in order to get a little bit of story.
- The lack of variety in mutants. for 3/4 of the game, the only mutants we encountered were the finger mutants and the twins, which get really boring to fight after a while. I wish they had re-implemented the mutants that were present in the first game to keep it interesting. On top of that, the mutants we DID have were really underwhelming and small. Nothing menacing like armsy or the other mutants from The Forest.

These are all of the broader issues I had with the game, but that's not even including bugs.

- Me and my friend existed in 2 different seasons for the better part of our playthrough
- I saved probably 4 times before getting off one night, only to log back on and be 4 saves behind. It took an hour of running between objectives to get back to what I had prior to being robbed.
- Book sliding. I love it, but god is it broken. I'm sure it's going to be patched out soon, but as it still exists, it needs to be listed.
- A few times, trees and foliage fully disappeared from my game. They wouldn't come back unless I restarted my game.
- Crashes
- Cannibals ignoring spikes and walls and sprinting into our house like rhinos
- Virginia fully disappeared with my pistol on more than one occasion
- Gun duplication
- Log duplication when building shelves or other basic furniture
- Kelvin doing ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. He does a lot of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
- The ability to restock any bunker or cave by leaving and coming back after a while. I feel no need to save ammo/bolts/arrows whenever I can straight up spawn more in by leaving the area. This is present to this day in The Forest, and it's always been pretty busted.

I know there's more i'm missing, but this is the bulk of it.

Since this was a primarily negative review, I'm aware of the people who are going to get emotional in my replies. To those people: You don't need to defend a game to be a fan of it. I consider myself a fan of this game, despite the fact that in its current state I can't say I'm happy with it. Defending its issues will only lead to less improvement and progress from the dev team. Stop lying to yourselves. What we have isn't a complete product, and they only slapped on EA to save face. I am just as hopeful as you are that it will improve with time, but that isn't an excuse to say that what we have been delivered now is good. It's not. And that's okay as long as they keep receiving feedback like this that can help guide them in where to improve the game.

In the state it's in now, I can't in good faith recommend it to anyone who doesn't already like The Forest. It's just not ready for release yet. I'm hopeful that'll change.

I fully plan on updating this review as the game is updated, because it's scummy not to. I hope that in the next year or so this will change to a positive review.

good

the game i very good exept the toxicity in the rounds from russian teammates, when you play csgo there is so much toxicity that you almost feel like in Chernobyl