Green Hell
Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2019 5:31 pm
This review is written after a single evening of playing. I'll return to update it when I've gotten further into the game.
This is a whole lot like The Forest. Same book to track knowledge, there's a story, you're on an island, you can build/craft, etc.
You're some dude who traveled to the island with his girlfriend. She happens to be one of the only humans who can make contact with a tribe there that otherwise shuns all contact. Shit goes sideways as things always do...
As of today, this is probably one to avoid IF you're looking for an accurate survival experience.
Here's the problem, as soon as the survival portion started you'll see how unbalanced the game is currently. First, you get zero help, so I guess the goal is to have players hitting reset on their adventure non-stop. Not a good plan, imho. Second, you have four "needs": thirst, carbs, protein, and mental. If one of them suffers, you lose health. The thirst and food related ones drop WAY too fast. How fast? You can die of thirst within a day. The mental one is silly. If you have a leech on you, your mental health will rapidly drop to where you're hearing voices and whatnot. Really? Stupid. All of these things lead to a death spiral that's almost impossible to get out of, and I haven't even gotten to exhaustion yet. Your guy gets exhausted and will pass out within a day by just doing basic survival things. He will pass out before even getting a single shelter built. You, literally, have no time to explore or find a good spot. If you haven't started at the word go, you're fucked. Oh, and when you pass out you'll become infected with worms driving you more insane. All hope becomes fleeting at that point as the screen goes black from the edges WAY too fast.
FYI: This is on Normal difficulty. There are two difficulty levels above this where they increase the speed for the hunger, thirst, and sanity to hurt you. WTF?
So yeah, the survival part is ridiculously broken unless you're someone who enjoyed Pac-Man for learning the patterns and play over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and you get the point.
The good news is that you can turn all that off and just experience the story. There's a mode for that! You can also customize your mode to turn certain things on or off. I'm going to be attempting that mode soon.
This is a whole lot like The Forest. Same book to track knowledge, there's a story, you're on an island, you can build/craft, etc.
You're some dude who traveled to the island with his girlfriend. She happens to be one of the only humans who can make contact with a tribe there that otherwise shuns all contact. Shit goes sideways as things always do...
As of today, this is probably one to avoid IF you're looking for an accurate survival experience.
Here's the problem, as soon as the survival portion started you'll see how unbalanced the game is currently. First, you get zero help, so I guess the goal is to have players hitting reset on their adventure non-stop. Not a good plan, imho. Second, you have four "needs": thirst, carbs, protein, and mental. If one of them suffers, you lose health. The thirst and food related ones drop WAY too fast. How fast? You can die of thirst within a day. The mental one is silly. If you have a leech on you, your mental health will rapidly drop to where you're hearing voices and whatnot. Really? Stupid. All of these things lead to a death spiral that's almost impossible to get out of, and I haven't even gotten to exhaustion yet. Your guy gets exhausted and will pass out within a day by just doing basic survival things. He will pass out before even getting a single shelter built. You, literally, have no time to explore or find a good spot. If you haven't started at the word go, you're fucked. Oh, and when you pass out you'll become infected with worms driving you more insane. All hope becomes fleeting at that point as the screen goes black from the edges WAY too fast.
FYI: This is on Normal difficulty. There are two difficulty levels above this where they increase the speed for the hunger, thirst, and sanity to hurt you. WTF?
So yeah, the survival part is ridiculously broken unless you're someone who enjoyed Pac-Man for learning the patterns and play over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and you get the point.
The good news is that you can turn all that off and just experience the story. There's a mode for that! You can also customize your mode to turn certain things on or off. I'm going to be attempting that mode soon.