There are moments where Sons Of The Forest matches the sublime paranoia of Subnautica. There’s the same swaying, exquisite tension as you sink deeper into darkness where you’re not welcome, supplies dwindle, footsteps echo, monsters squirm in the darkness. During my most intense dive into one of the caves, I groaned aloud as the path I’d prayed must be the exit twisted back around, sending me first down a rope, then down a long slide, down to earth, back into the skinny claws of pale, forked mutants. When I finally saw the sun, I could have cried.
It’s still a bit wobbly, but the full 1.0 version makes the Forest a fuller, livelier, and more inviting (or temptingly off-putting) destination to hike—even, as in my case, completely solo. Consider this your cue to crack open some leather bags.
Let’s start with the introduction of the novel foresters. We start with you flying over an island in a military helicopter, supposedly sent to find a family of missing luxurious people. The helicopter is shot down, a mysterious figure appears and knocks you out, and voila, you’re on your way, time to start a novel life in the woods. It’s the same cutscene as in last year’s Early Access version, except the mysterious figure now has a voice line – and the same goes for a few other cutscenes you’ll trigger as you explore your way to the finale. The ending itself is now more substantial, but I can’t shake the feeling that the developers were touting a cinematic expansion that didn’t really happen.
It doesn’t really matter. The better story is written in the abandoned campsites, bloody golf carts, and secret island bunkers, occasionally hiding found footage of cultists and bandits that provide morsels of context for their gruesome remains. As Ollie discovered in his Early Access review, The Forest is excellent at being a forest; all sparkling pools and winding treetops, winding paths, and scurrying wildlife. There are enough campsites and encounters to escape the feeling of emptiness that plagued the initial Early Access stumble, and, in the full release, an incredible number of raccoons that are cute enough that it pains me to say I think the raccoon dial could have been toned down for the sake of realism.
Manage your cookie settings
You can cut down raccoons and stick their heads on sticks to scare the cannibals away. Of course, I didn’t, opting instead to humanely skewer the cannibals themselves on my warning markers. Again, as Ollie pointed out, these human enemies are a delight, their behavior imbued with more life and character than I’ve seen in almost any other game. They don’t just attack: they taunt. They’ll jump back and forth, react to a swinging weapon or a turned back, flee when panicked, or circle you when they sense prey. They’re a joy to interact with – but fighting them, unfortunately, is still a chore.
Swinging melee weapons only starts to feel more satisfying once you find the thicker axes and tools that can stagger or amputate with a single strike, but slashing never stops feeling insipid. There’s simply not enough depth to your moveset (delicate attack, massive attack, block) to make the brawls engaging, nor enough weight behind the animations to make me elated with what’s here. Ranged combat also lacks impact, mitigating the drama of using up a precious shotgun shell with a muted bang and a barely twitching mutant. You don’t get the same luxurious behavior with the more monstrous abominations, though they’re often disturbingly inventive to largely make up for it. Special thanks to Legsy, one of two novel mutant types added in version 1.0, who likes to stagger on unfamiliar limbs while wearing inverted legs, sometimes disguised as stalagmites. He can trot right off the bat.
Let’s take our hand out of the mixed bag of combat elements and dive into the mixed bag of crafting/survival elements, starting with Kelvin: your mute, brain-damaged companion who survives his first helicopter crash. Kelvin is a great innovation and I’ll miss him in every other survival game I play in the future. You can have him finish any construction you start, fill your grapples, repair your tools – or all of the above, since the last update in November lets you have him take care of your base. At first, I sometimes had him pick up sticks and put them on the floor, and then I’d feel guilty when I came back from an expedition to find dozens of them strewn all over my base. I’m glad you can tell him to take a break, though I did it more for roleplaying reasons than because I ever noticed him getting cranky.
Unfortunately, for me, he was the only person I could control. There was a six-legged mutant named Virginia who followed me around during the opening hours, occasionally popping out to cautiously approach my campfires, then running away when I tried to talk to her. I once dramatically saved her from a cannibal, but she wandered off—never to be seen again. To me, she was probably killed offscreen, like a supporting character the writers forgot about, while to Ollie and the others she became a beloved companion. But that’s what happens when you trust the story to the systems. You get the magic, and you get the duds, and for me, Virginia’s disappearance adds to the authenticity of the simulation. There are cannibals, people. The girl was eaten.
I have a problem with the inventory system, which involves presenting all your bits and bobs on a mat that you have to spread out in front of you when it’s time to eat jerky or craft arrows. Sure, it’s nippy to see tools and weapons physically cobbled together, MacGyver-style, which helps immerse you in the game — but it also makes finding your inventory a headache. At one point, I had to Google “Sons Of The Forest, where are the arrows…” and immediately saw “…in your inventory” pop up as a suggestion. I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels this way.
It’s also odd that base building is something you do mostly for the sake of it, rather than because it’s actually useful. I found enough food and energy drinks while scavenging to make cooking or purifying water pointless, and plenty of materials to set up little tarp tents wherever I went when I needed sleep. Update 1.0 improves the comfort level system, restoring more energy, but who needs a good night’s sleep when you can throw back 12 cans of Red Bull? It would have been astute to tie story progression to base building and defense, although the redundancy has the effect of basically ignoring building if it’s not your speed.
I’d lump this in with a larger and more burdensome problem that remains unresolved, though, namely the way in which the all-important sense of the Forest as a real place is tainted by progression blockers that require you to obtain MacGuffin A before you can access gadget B. I was unwell of this from the first time I walked halfway across the island to the mysterious GPS locator marker, only to discover that I first had to obtain a shovel from God knows where. Unless I missed something, your options are either to search every cave you come across and pray that you come across the right tools in the right order, or to seek out a guide who will transform the seductive landscape of the forest’s horrors into a series of goal-oriented mercenary treks. The abundance of golf buggies and newly added trails on which to drive them speed up these journeys, but speeding them up doesn’t solve the structural problem.
It’s a shame, because breaking through this spell is the Forest’s game against its greatest strength. It’s a magnetic place, all the more magical during the seasonal change that blankets the trees in snow and turns the lakes into great sheets of ice that crunch and crack underfoot, spreading out into the cosmic void. When it wants to, it can be terrifying if you’re playing solo, with caves dripping with menace and the oh-so-wise decision to throw you into torchless darkness every time you reload your crossbow.
But familiarity kills fear, and there are only so many caves you can crawl through before the monsters become obstacles to be overcome rather than terrors to be escaped. If I had been able to explore more naturally, without the threat of excessive backtracking, I might have changed my tune a bit later on—though I still spent hours shivering in the dim. Creating a Forest that can stand up to the Subanutica Ocean in terms of scares is a huge accomplishment, even if the whole package still has some leaks.
This review is based on the version of the game provided by the developers at Endnight Games.
